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PIE: AS TIGHT AS RUBBER HOSIERY...
"IF", SHOUTED the man on my immediate right, leaning across, fag in
mouth, "the degree of flex exceeds one three hundred and ninetieth of
the span's total width we'll be sitting downstairs in just a minute."
The balcony at the Edmonton Sundown appears to be respiring - and
expiring - beneath us. Originally designed with sedate cinema-goers in
mind it has now donned another role, as a vast bucking bronco. It starts
one presumes, in the back rows, high up behind us, where your fun-loving
youths are stamping in unison. Gradually the idea catches fire and most
of the balcony follows suit. The results can induce a stomach ailment
akin to seasickness, and no doubt, a fine plaster snow wafting down onto
the heads of the crowd seething beneath.
One sometimes wonders whether - in an in person situation - the music
really matters. Of course it must do initially, but by the time a crowd
has absorbed the psychological build up it has become as mechanical as a
rheostat. Sure, crowd reaction very often determines the whole tone and
style of a performance, but more often than not it's the band itself
that wields the power; all of which is pretty obvious, 'scuse me. It's
just that in so many cases once an audience has been primed and is
ticking over at a certain pitch a band can more or less lay anything
down and it will be devoured. All of which is the point of a live
performance; any mundane Sunday paper will tell you that it all comes
from chappies in the rain forest shaking their appendages to the kind of
furiously boring tom tom rhythms you see in that Golden Wonder ad on the
telly.
UNIFORM
It is odd though, the way audiences are so uniform - in that they always
seem so loopy at exactly the same point in a set. Maybe with The Rolling
Stones it was "Midnight Rambler". With Humble Pie it usually comes with
the opening bars of "Hallelujah I Love Her So", the old Eddie Cochran
number which they recorded on the "Performance" Fillmore album.
The crowd was pretty well wound up by the time Humble Pie came on. Ted
the roadie, amidst a violent burst of lightning, and sporting the
raciest of ringmaster's topper and tails - a '57 light chalk Cleethorpes
weave, I believe - strode on from behind the stack announcing, with a
flourish, "Ladies And Gentlemen, the finest rock and roll band in the
world - from Epping..........Humble Pie" and from then on shooting,
shagging and various degrees of collective lunacy were as we hacks say,
the order of the day.
EFFECTIVE
The lights, sirrah, were splendid. Really effective. The sound was, with
the exception of the first half of last year's Palladium gig, the best
I've heard it here, and the band were, as always, as tight as a rubber
hosiery.
"Up Our Sleeve" from "Eat It" opened with great style and flash. Mr
Marriott is, as usual, in remarkable voice and as dynamic a focus as
ever, spitting and strutting, yanking at the mike stand and working his
feet like Billy Preston's junior partner. Greg Ridley offers a muscle
flexing chorus or two and tugs at his bass, his almost gangling frame
working like a spring in slow motion. Jerry Shirley's drumming is
especially clean and incisive. Familiar number's follow - "Four Day
Creep" from the Fillmore album, "C'mon Everybody", with tingling
duetting between Marriott and Clem Clempson after which the latter
resorts to that distinctively twisted wah wah soloing, and "Honky Tonk
Woman", which ushers in the ladies - the Blackberries, Miss Billie
Barnum, Miss Venetta Fields and Miss Carlena Williams.
Clempson's solo spot follows leading into "I Believe", "I Wanna Take You
Higher" and "30 Days In The Hole". "Hallelujah" did it though and de
joint wuz jumpin - but stopping dead in it's tracks as Carlena takes her
part and starts rapping with the audience. Powerful lady. The band
encores with "I Don't Need No Doctor" and "O La Di La". Ripplingly fine
and all that. The usual standards and the audience is beside itself;
It's not often you get to see real class over here, but from a personal
point of view I was slightly disappointed because although the set's
changed some - in the best part of a year - with the inclusion of "O La
Di La" and the subtraction of "Road Runner", I was expecting to witness
some of the newer material - I mean they have two albums of it - the
ladies own solo album due out shortly, and the bulk of the forthcoming
album "Thunderbox". What they do, they do superbly, it's just that it's
really frustrating to know that what you're seeing and hearing is maybe
only two fifths of their real capabilities.
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