From mskalick@csci.csc.com Fri Nov 1 08:56:23 1996 From: Matthew Skalicky Subject: Chicago Concert Review To: app@roadkill.com Date: Fri, 01 Nov 1996 10:44:42 CST Content-Length: 5823 Chicago Concert Review ====================== Wow! What a concert. Not only did I get to see AP and Co, but met lots of new people from the list: Excellent! Firstly, let me say that the event was made much more enjoyable for this lone Australian by the company of Beanhead (m@) and Spaghetti Head (&y). Thanks guys for a great time! Just one thing: don't give up your daytime jobs! ;-) We sang our socks off and made a perfect backing vocal trio! ;-) Now, I'm sure Scott will put in one of his splendid reviews so I'll try and be brief. It was the standard playlist and as for other concerts not a wrong note all night. m@, &y and me sat right at the front on the right hand side of the stage. Directly in front were the speaker stacks! The mix and sound quality were unbelievable. The Vic is a small brew and view venue. The place seemed packed and there was real energy there which the Band fed off from the very first note in Dr Tarr & Prof Fether. We screamed and cheered ourselves hoarse and so its just as well this is email. :-) I am a veteran of a number of Concerts, but for me this one is the No 1! The sheer energy of the crowd plus my own anticipation at finally hearing these guys live for the first time were the reasons why. I was not disappointed. When I went backstage I felt like a kid in toy store again! Who to talk to first? So much to ask, so little time to do it in! I talked for a while with Ian and can only say everything previously said about him is true. One of the most open, giving people I've ever met! Some gems I gleaned from him. He rides a Honda VFX750 and has a racing Motorbike as well, for all fellow rev heads! In terms of his guitar setup, he has two systems a Marshall Stack and a MesaBoogie. He couples these with dual Yamaha SPX 900's and an IntelliFX. He's reasonably happy with this setup but would be happier to have it all in one box instead of 3. I also spoke to Garry Sanctuary and got the low down on how he joined AP. The bottom line is he's a good friend of Ian, who he'd played with before in another gig. When Richard Cottle left, Ian invited him. I asked him about his Keyboard setup and what he uses for the GPP arpeggio. Its a PROPHET from the late 70s. They also have a Korg M1 and a Roland D50. Gary has had a look at some new keys and was interested in the Roland A90 controller. The elusive John Giblin has been difficult to catch, but I was lucky enough to be talking to Gary when John came to talk to him. Here's a tip: DONOT ASK HIM ABOUT SIMPLE MINDS!!! Unfortunately I did, and he politely told me he did not want to talk about that as it was 10 years ago! OOOOPPPSS! We talked briefly about his work during the evening (he was really getting into it during the concert) and he said that he thought he overplayed! I assured him that this was not the case and that I thought he had done a terrific job. He was embarassed and left quickly! Stuart Elliot could not believe that an Aussie was at the concert and that I actually really liked "Take the Money and run". He seemed like a fairly funny guy - a bit of a comedian I think. Peter Beckett was great! He had noticed us during the concert and seemed pleased to talk to us. I asked him when he's going to sing on a studio album. He looked wistfully at AP and said "Ask the big man". Hmmm have I missed something? I seem to remember hearing somewhere that he had a vocal track cut from OA, is this true? If it is, I think he was pretty disappointed by it. He really was a friendly bloke and a great singer. I hope he makes the next album!! I really didn't get much opportunity to speak with Neil although he signed some stuff for me. He did say that Lou Clark, who did the string arrangements for ELO II had come to some of the AP Concerts during the tour. I mentioned how successful the ELO 2 Concerts were in Australia, at which point he told me he hadn't made that tour!!! When it came to talking to Alan, I suddenly contracted Geek's disease and found myself being completely embarrassed and unable to act rationally. Oh well. He did sign some of my album liner notes and we chatted briefly about Touring Australia and Richard Lush. Thankfully, because I was with &y and m@ he spoke to them (he recognized &y and m@ from the mailing list) and I saved myself from any further embarrassment. :-( A SPECIAL WORD FOR AUSTRALIANS! I talked to Ian and Alan about touring Australia. Lets just say it didn't sound promising. :-( Ian summed it up by saying he couldn't see how the band could make any money from it. We all know the situation: cost of transport, late ticket sales, etc... On top of that apparently there is some tax Ian mentioned where they get hit 40 cents in the dollar. When I spoke to Alan, he said that the Band would tour anywhere if someone paid for them! I've heard people say that the band are losing money on this US tour, no wonder they feel the way they do about a possible Australian Tour! So if you really want them to come "Down Under" we need to find a serious sponsor for these guys! RICHARD LUSH One of my countrymen asked about Richard Lush. Here's the story as far as Alan knows. He came back to the UK for the beatles 25th anniversary where AP saw him last year. As far as he knows Richard's still in the UK working. Hope this helps. OK, I was wrong and it wasn't brief! Wonderful night! Wonderful Band! Great Company! Something I'll remember forever! Cheers Matt =================================================================== Matthew Skalicky CSC-Intelicom 115 N. Neil Street Champaign, Illinois Voice: Intl+(217)351 8250 extn 2426 Email: mskalick@csci.csc.com "Man is an over-complicated organism. If he is doomed to extinction he will die out for want of simplicity." =================================================================== From Scott.Holder@fhwa.dot.gov Sun Nov 3 16:29:17 1996 Content-Identifier: 00E1A327D37A901E Content-Return: Allowed Conversion: Allowed Date: 03 Nov 1996 19:24:09 -0500 From: "Holder, Scott " To: app@roadkill.com (Return requested) (Receipt notification requested) Subject: Chicago Show Review Content-Length: 7256 Chicago. Home of Da Bears, Da Bulls, and Da Blues (music). Lest we forget, also home of River North records (named after a geographic section of downtown Chicago). Also the site of another wonderful AP show as recounted by Matt S. This took me a while to input mainly because we couldn't find a hotel in the budget after the show. We finally checked into the notell motel, or was it hotel hell, actually it was the Budget American in some run down Chicago suburb and it was 1:00am so we weren't particular. Sandra was too beat to put up with another of my crack of dawn concert reviews and the little technical fact that you needed to put down a $10 "phone deposit" in order to get an outside line. Man do I know how to pick a place! This review will try to expand on some things that go with the advantages of seeing multiple shows during the same tour. Let's get the usuals out of the way: Ian's great, Peter and Neil sing their lungs out, and everyone is a joy to meet. The Chicago show was no exception. Actually, Ian did his usual job on Primetime but also did more on Cloudbreak and really added little bits and pieces to every solo than I'd seen previously. It was fascinating to watch and compare his work with other nights. He's gotten better with each show I've seen. If any of you have read some of Alan's interviews from the Stereotomy days, it's very clear why Neil and Peter do the live shows. Each of their vocal ranges are fantastic PLUS both can really belt out the high notes. Peter has mentioned before how he liked singing Eric's tunes, or in Eric's phrase "his dying voice" (a reference to it's style not the fact is was going). As Eric once said, that wasn't always something Alan preferred. It certainly has it's place on the albums but I can see why, now that it's no longer the Project, Alan wants people who can just overwhelm the audience vocally. So, this time I studied two of the three people we don't discuss at great length in terms of the show, John Giblin and Gary Sanctuary. It's impossible to study Stuart because he's buried in one corner behind the drums. It's pure serendipity, but you get a wonderful contrast on stage left and right with Gary and John. First John. I'm amazed he can play bass blind. Sure he can see but you'd never know it from watching him onstage. His eyes are closed tight and an amazing array of expressions cross his face with every note played. That includes the bass sequences he plays on the stand up version with the bow. It's over two hours of facial contortions. Then you switch gaze to Gary. He stands above everyone except Alan behind his 3 keyboards. The main thing you see is his foot (clad in black high top Converse-the man obviously has great taste in footware-no really, I own a pair and wear them with tuxedos to weddings and such and boy do I endear myself to people) tapping time. There he stands with an almost Mono Lisa-like smile that pops out while nonstop gum chewing highlights the steady presence. He's certainly not in the "John Entwistle" mode of studied blase-ness onstage but he and Alan are the most alike up there in terms of cool presence. This all adds up to a kaliedoscope of stage presences, something that sometimes gets overlooked in the cosmic scheme of concert performances. I hope those of you unlucky enough to not see a show have a better "feel" for it. The Chicago crowd was definitely different. The guy next to me in line was there with his "fiance" (that's what he called her but she didn't look too sure). He sat at the table next to mine down front (general admission seating is a wonderful invention for small venues). She dissapeared about 2-3 songs into the show. Shortly thereafter I felt a thump on my chair. I turn to see him fall to the floor. When the venue gorilla's showed up, he was limp and out. I don't think he was dead because I saw that happen once and people get blue. Then, there were the two 30-something women, one of whom tried dancing on the table in front of the stage (she was told to get down but at least was not tossed out). They didn't look like the types who might otherwise indulge in such rock concert behavior. Down at one end of the front row were the skinheads in Rush tshirts. Now THEY were from the Entwistle school of practiced blase-ness. NONE of them got up except for the second encore. Of course, Matt S observed most of the audience "gyrating" (I can't put his description in words, not that it was filthy, but I'm not sure how to spell it) in their seats. As I've observed before, people at these shows don't have a tendency to get on their feets and stay there. It should be expected but doesn't do much in terms of getting the band going. Nonetheless, this crowd was the loudest of "my" shows. Furthermore, because this was Chicago, when Sirius began, most of the people in front of the stage got up and stayed up. For those of you who don't know, Da Bulls basketball team comes into the arena here in Chicago with Sirius blasting. Size wise, it was smaller than the St Louis show but larger than the Detroit show. My typcial scientific polling of the line outside the theater before the show revealed the usual lack of promotion, advertising, etc. You'd think River North would have done SOMETHING in their home town. To compound the problem, the Who was doing Quadrophenia cross town the same night. That's probably something that couldn't be helped but if anyone who knew about both shows would have made a tough decision (okay not for me or anyone on this list but were talking about the "newsgroup" crowd here-ha ha) assuming they knew in the first place. Probably the best part of this show (aside from the performance) was meeting a ton of people from the list. Matt S, M@, @y, and the head fan himself, Steve Martin, were all in attendence. Then there's Jane's husband (I'm horrible with names, mea culpa) who had been to Kalamazoo with the professional fans. So although all of us had aftershow passes, I think we spent more time talking with each other than we did working on face time with the band. If anyone wonders why this mailing list is so polite, you'll know why when you meet some of the people who inhabit it, actively and passively. That meant we hung back to let the rather large crowd get the requisite autographs and photos and get to know each other instead. I mean Alan and Ian have gotta be sick of seeing my face at all these shows. I was amazed at the number of people who asked about the Avenue when they saw the web site address on my tshirt. I made the tshirt up the day before (trying desperately not to be outdone by Wes, Jon, and Kirk) and one part of it had the Avenue's web site address printed on the front. So at the least, we should see more people at the various web sites and hopefully more actual subscribers. After a rest day in Chicago (there was no way we could drive to Minneapolis and back to Milwaulkee and take in 3 shows plus sleep) we're off to Milwaulkee for the final show in the midwest madness tour. And I bet all you can breath a sigh of relief that I can only inflict one more review on you. Sandra will be glad because she can get to sleep at a decent hour. Scott H