| |
Whiskyfun
Home
(Current
entries)
Concert
Review
Index
(All Reviews
Since 2004)
Leave
feedback
 |
Copyright
Nick Morgan and crew
|
|
|
Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
|
 |
| NICK
LOWE
AND RY COODER
Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
July 9th 2009
|
 |
| It’s
not often I moan about tickets being expensive;
after all, everything is relative isn’t it?
But I was a little taken aback to find that it was
likely to cost me £75 a seat to see Nick
Lowe and Ry
Cooder perform together in Edinburgh,
in what at the time was billed as their only UK
appearance. |
| Yes,
I was suckered by that one again, because by the
time the gig came around it was part of a neat UK
tour taking in (amongst others) Belfast, Liverpool
and London, in turn a leg of a European tour that
has now gone to Japan, New Zealand, Australia and,
of course, the USA. So much for exclusive. But think
of it this way: when did Cooder last play in the
UK? How many chances do you get to see him? And
when, since their Little Village collaboration with
John Hiatt and Jim Keltner back in 1992, did he
last play with Nick Lowe? I can’t honestly
remember when Cooder was last in the UK, but I do
know I saw him in Glasgow back in the 1980s (the
stage and house lights failed at the horrible SEC
and he played about a third of the set in the dark),
and he may have been here since then, but not often.
So like I said, it’s relative. And who really
knows what the market’s worth? In terms of
recent gigs, seventy-five pounds is almost worth
two Bruce Springsteens, or apparently two Bert Janschs,
three-and-a-half Buzzcocks, four and a bit Sonny
Landreths, a three-day ‘early bird’
ticket to this year’s Rhythm Festival (of
which more soon) and one Michael Jackson (deceased).
But it’s not as simple as that, is it? Bruce
has been playing in the UK almost annually for the
past three or four years, Bert two or three or more
times a year, the Buzzcocks once or twice a year,
and the same with Sonny. You can get these guys
almost anytime. The reclusive Cooder might never
come back. Cooder and Lowe together: who knows if
the chance will ever be repeated? And even if it
is, this time round you could say you were there
for the first one, the original. But hang on, here’s
another consideration. Will it be any good? I mean,
they both have outstanding individual reputations
but together, with no recordings to sample in advance?
It’s simply a lot of money to pay for a transient
hour-and-a-half of aural stimulation. But everything
is relative. |
The
Great Lafayette |
And
as it happens, I wasn’t the only one to take
the plunge. We’re inside the lovely old Festival
Theatre, or Empire Theatre, as it was formerly known.
The early twentieth century interior, installed
following a catastrophic fire in 1911 which claimed
the life of the famous illusionist, The
Great Lafayette, was restored to its former
glory from Bingo House squalor in the early 1990s.
It is in stark contrast to the modernistic glass
frontage and entrance that was built concurrently.
|
| The
boy and I are in row E in the centre of the front
stalls – and the whole block is packed. The
rear and side stalls (tickets being sold for a couple
of weeks before the gig at two for £35) are
almost empty, and there aren’t a lot of people
upstairs. So it was the real enthusiasts who decided
that there was genuine value in the ticket price.
And it has to be said they were not to be disappointed:
frankly, were it not for the fact that I’d
already decided to write about it, I would have
forgotten what I paid by the time I left the theatre
on an enormous high. It was, if you know what I
mean, one of those gigs where everyone leaves with
a huge smile on their face. And when they think
about it later (years later) they will still smile.
|
| What
an odd couple Lowe and Cooder are. There’s
lanky Nick Lowe, with sharp creased trousers, a
retro sports shirt, and that perfect coiffure, bass
swinging low (I haven’t seen him play the
bass for years, and remembered how effortlessly
good he is), his left knee twitching like a crazed
metronome. Cooder is jeans, t-shirt, jacket and
bandana. He crouches over his guitar, a furrowed
brow and worried frown on his face every time he
starts to move his slide for another perfectly impossible
riff, the expression changing to astonishment when
it actually works. Lowe marvellously sweet-voiced,
Cooder gruff and bluesy, with that uncanny ability
to add in a spoken “You know it’s true”,
or “Yes sir” just at the perfectly-syncopated
moment. The referee is Joachim Cooder, fluently
elegant on the drums, never too much, never too
little, and on backing vocals and percussion for
almost all of the set, support act Juliet
Commagere and her keyboard player Alex Lilly. |
|
Ry
Cooder (L) and Nick Lowe (R) |
| Lowe
and Cooder exchanged songs throughout the set, both
looking back and forward. So Lowe’s contributions
ranged from ‘Tearstained memories’ and
‘A fool who knows’, both from Little
Village, his bubblegum hit, ‘Half a boy and
half a man’, the Jim Reeves classic ‘He’ll
have to go’, a new song (I think), ‘One
of these days you’re going to pay’,
and as part of the encore, ‘What’s so
funny about peace, love and understanding’.
Cooder’s contributions began with a medley
of ‘Fool for a cigarette’ and ‘Feeling
good’, and went on to include ‘Chinito
chinito’ from the wonderful Chavez Ravine,
and classics like ‘Crazy ‘bout an automobile’,
a particularly funky ‘Down in Hollywood’,
‘The very thing that makes you rich (makes
me poor)’, ‘Jesus on the mainline’,
the beautifully delicate ‘Teardrops will fall’
(which listening to it could have been written by
Lowe) and ‘Little sister’. Finally the
trio played ‘How can a poor man stand such
times and live’, with such an introduction
from Cooder, who can make a single guitar note go
a very long way, that my notebook observes ‘perfect,
enough to make you cry’. |
| Not
that anyone was. “How is it out there?”
asked Lowe in one of his digressions. “It
sounds good up here on stage, which is all we really
care about”. Well, Nick, it sounded good in
the seven-and-fives too. And if the audience was
divided on anything it was only that Cooder loyalists
felt Lowe had held Ry back, while the Lowe fanatics
thought there was just too much Cooder. Me, I was
in the middle: it was simply perfect. And guess
what, I’m still smiling as I write. –
Nick Morgan |
Check
the index of all reviews:
Nick's
Concert Reviews
|
|
|
|
|
There's nothing more down there... |
|
|
|
|
