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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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JOHN OTWAY AND THE BIG BAND
Half Moon, Putney, London, January 6th 2007 |
| It’s
winter quiet in January London at the moment. Curtains
are drawn early in the afternoon, electric light-bulbs
shimmer, families huddle round glowing radiators
snacking on Christmas surely-past-their-use-by-date
leftovers, and entertainment seems largely to be
provided by North London’s European football
team and Celebrity Big Brother. In case you don’t
know Serge, that’s a TV programme (remember
– the box in the corner?) where run of the
mill celebrities like superannuated rock stars,
end of the pier comedians, forgotten actors and
the odd Member of Parliament sit around in a house
making fools of themselves for the sake of a nation’s
entertainment (perhaps Gordon Brown will make us
all watch it as part of the new British Day celebrations).
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Personally
I don’t get it, but I’m told it’s
a fine way of passing the time if you’ve no
money, and nowhere to go. And gigs are certainly
thin on the ground at the moment. But by way of
avoiding the telly, or worse, we wandered south
of the river on Saturday to Putney to see Whiskyfun’s
old chum, and Rock and Roll’s self declared
‘Greatest Failure’ John
Otway and his Big Band (all five of
them).
Déjà vu anyone?
Okay – it’s an easy way to write a review,
but with the exception of the odd Member of Parliament
who has yet to find his (or her) way onto Celebrity
Big Brother the rest of it is as true as it was
twelve months ago. And it’s a year, Otway
tells us, “that didn't quite take off in the
way I wanted it to”. |
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| He’s
talking about his characteristically absurd plan
to take a jet full of fans around the world (flying
with OTAIR)
in 2006 playing gigs in venues such as Tahiti, Sydney
and Dubai. Madly enough over a hundred folk signed
up and paid for this crazy adventure, but not enough
to pull it off, so it was canned in September. But
the characteristically irrepressible Mr Otway has
put that behind him and is now looking forward to
celebrating his past in what is his thirtieth anniversary
year as a chart star. ‘Really free’,
recorded with guitarist Wild Willy Barret charted
in 1977, the start of Otway’s meteoric rise
to his cult position as rock and roll’s greatest
failure. To mark the occasion there is The Ultimate
& Pen-ultimate John Otway, a double greatest
hits album featuring 30 tracks, and also Bunsen
Burner – the Album, featuring along with some
B-sides and odds and sods, his 2002 top-ten hit
of the same name, based on ‘Disco Inferno’
and written to help his daughter with her chemistry
homework. Naturally both of these featured in the
song-packed set that delighted the friendly crowd
of beer-happy Otway diehards. Actually we took a
hard-bitten twenty-something music industry cynic
who’d never seen Otway before. “Dad”,
she said with a huge smile on her face, halfway
through ‘Beware of the flowers’ (song
number two), “Dad, I’m converted”.
Nuff said? |
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You may remember that when I last wrote about
Otway I described him as a musical subversive.
The thought was a serious one and still remains,
‘though his most subversive act of this
evening was to try and play through the set with
an out of tune guitar, something that ace axeman
and sidekick, Eddie and the Hot Rod’s guitarist
Richard
Holgarth clearly wasn’t going to tolerate.
As I watched Holgarth struggle to impose some
sanity on events I thought, “what better
way to start a musical year than with a performer
who turns the musical world (and it should be
said, himself) upside down?”. A musical
year, I observe, that promises a mixture of something
old, something new, something borrowed, and quite
possibly something blue – and all of that
before the end of April. And if it delivers only
half the entertainment that Mr
Otway produces, then I can tell you now that
we’re all in for some good whiskymusicfun.
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Richard Holgarth tuning |
| Oh
yes, and if you do only one thing this year, then
please go and see Otway. You won’t regret
it. |
| Déjà
vu anyone? - Nick Morgan (photographs by Kate) |
Check
the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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There's nothing more down there... |
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