winterbadger | totally rocking concert!

I've been looking forward to tonight's Al Stewart concert for some time. I've been listening to his music all my life, but I never suspected he was still touring until a passing comment (by, I think,

cmlc) indicated he was and made me go check his schedule. Tonight he was in Alexandria, and after a day that left me with some heavy thoughts on my mind, I was looking forward to hearing a musical icon of mine.

The opening act was a chap named Jesse Winchester. I'd not heard of him before, he was a last minute replacement for another artist, and he was unprepossessing when he came to the stage, with a reedy, almost inaudible voice, and a slightly twangy guitar. After the first few songs I liked him, though, and after his set I loved his gentle humour and his Menphis drawl. I knew I would have to look him up when I got home and start collecting his music. And then the kicker; when I looked him up on Wikipedia--he's an EPH! Chris, I think you would like his music, even if he weren't in your bailiwick as once (and surely future) editor of the Alumni Review.

Then it was time for Al, and I waited to see if I would be pleased, disappointed, or lukewarm at seeing and hearing the man in person. Of course, I need not have feared--he was just the sort of subdued, funny, slightly shambolic but wonderfully quirky and poetic man that his music suggests. He was playing with guitarist Dave Nachmanoff, an exceptionally talented player who took most of the solos, including an extended improvisation in the rare, early piece "News From Spain" that Al proudly proclaimed sold 211 copies since released as a single in 1970. :-) The two of them (and Dave's brother who joined them on bass partway through) played wonderfully together, riffed off each other when talking between pieces, and generally gave the impression of enjoying what they were doing as much as we did. There were a couple of times, at the end of a long solo, that Dave started sliding out of the song they were playing into a classic rock standard, Al looked at him, and they started playing it together. The first time they actually played and sang a chorus of "Wild Thing" :-) and started to drift into "Pinball Wizard". I forget what the second one was, but I just started laughing as soon as I recognised it (as did Al and about half the audience...)

Their set list (thank you, iPod notepad)

Angry Bird (which Al explained is all about student radicals in the 1960s, but which I still love thinking about as really being just birds: "Radical penguins/led you astray/you say that wings/are so passe...you fill the night with/sarcastic chirps...you've fallen in with/the avian fringe/that fill your head with/thoughts of revenge..."))
Lord Grenville: Typical Al Stewart, a song about an obscure naval battle in 1591 that is wistful, mournful, and melodic.
Eisenhower Years (which Al introduced with a very amusing recollection of growing up in a quiet country cottage in the New Forest, wishing he was in California being cool, only to find when he got to California in later years that all the rock musicians he had listened to as a kid were longing for some quiet, rural hideaway and would have loved to have a quiet country cottage in the New Forest...)
On the Border (Dave's first extended solo, and quite amazing)
A League of Notions (Al: "I really wanted to do a talking blues song--though of course, again, I'm English, so what am I doing going talking blues, which is totally American--because it seemed like such a cool type of piece to play. So I wrote one about the Versailles Peace Conference because, well, that's the sort of thing I do...")
Palace of Versailles (Al: "The French... they just have wave after wave of revolutions, 1789, 1832, 1848, 1870 with the whole Prussian Army surrounding Paris they have a Commune! it's so French...Then 1968, they have another revolution, a student revolution. De Gaulle--you know, 'Non!' De Gaulle--is in a helicopter, he's about to leave France because he thinks the government is about to fall because of this student protest led by a German, and then he says 'No, the last time I had to leave France was because of a German with a little mustache--we're not doing that again! And he flies back to Paris and puts down the unrest...Anyway, this song is named after a big piece of pointless architecture outside Paris..." Honestly, he just talks like that, the whole time. :-)
Kindred Spirits (A song of Dave's; Al actually walked off to the wings so that Dave would have the stage to himself to talk about and sing this song)
Night Train to Munich (Al: "OK, we needed to play something really rocking..." And they really rocked it, despite it being all about spies and tradecraft...)
Midas Shadow: I don't think I'd heard this before, though it's off "Year of the Cat"
Carol (one of my favourites, for no reason I can explain)
Soho (Needless To Say): Another one they really rocked. Al said that it's his test; if he starts playing it and can't keep up with his own lyrics, he'll know it's time to stop playing...
News From Spain: A long introduction here about how his early work had been very brooding and downbeat and maybe it was his fault that Orange had never done well, as it wasn't very bright bringing out an album at Christmastime with a six-minute moody piece about the Spanish civil war with a huge long piano solo in the middle of it. "Oh, and apparently orange is the colour of insanity--that would explain a lot..."
Year of the Cat: I would imagine that there are some pieces artists just don't ever, ever want to play again, but people ask for them over an over. If this is one, you wouldn't know it, as they played it with energy and joy.

They went off for so long I was almost afraid they weren't going to come back for encores, but they did come back and played "Paint By Numbers" (another song I can't recall ever having heard, despite it being on one of his more popular albums) and "End of the Day", a lovely, gentle closer.

I had a really lovely night. I found a new musician that I like, I heard someone live who I've loved all my life, and I feel dappled and drowsy and ready for sleep. :-)