Wednesday 12 August 2009

Byrne in full swing

During the weekend Ka and myself took a brief and deliberate break on the Saturday night. We went through to Edinburgh to see Mr. David Byrne again. We last seen him in Glasgow at the end of March as he hit Scotland on his Everything That Happens tour and I was delighted to find he was going to be part of Edinburgh's Edge Festival and booked the tickets with a mere week to go before the gig. Unfortunately after Gran passed away I was unsure whether to still go through for the gig but after various relations told me not to be silly and what Gran would have said I agreed that it may still be a good idea and would maybe even help take our minds off the grief that was to come on Sunday and Monday.
It worked, if only for the Saturday night, and Mr Byrne and his band were great. There were a few teathing problems for the first half hour however as Byrne had to restart the third song after realising the guitar he had started using for that song was completely out of tune. Unfortunately there was also a couple of gobsh*tes in the audience who revelled especially in the guitar tuning break yelling at the musician and his band in the first half hour or so whenever they got the chance. Presumably they were shut up at some point as they went quiet after the first half hour or so once the music was back in full swing. In fact, after Byrne had tried and failed with that guitar he seemed to start up full throttle again as if in answer to the critics in the crowd and after a couple of songs more everyone in the Playhouse was on their feet and dancing. Byrne's dancers were excellent, spiralling, jumping and swaying over the stage, behind, in front and around Byrne and his band as they played a good mix of new tunes and old, mixing new material from the 'Everything that happens...' album and the Talking Heads material, mostly from the Eno produced albums. The sound in the Playhouse was not great (certainly not as good as Byrne had sounded in the Royal Concert Hall in March) but was certainly not the worst, being a hundred times better than any stadium gig I've been to in recent years.
Talking of which, U2 will be at Hampden next Tuesday with their new sci-fi looking spider stage. U2's sound at Hampden had been a major disappointment the last time on the Vertigo tour so hopefully things will have improved since then.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I just don't get people heckling musicians who are having a hard time and trying to sort out the tuning. I was at Womad the other week and saw Eliades Ochoa (from Buena Vista Social Club), and he was having terrible problems with his guitar, it must have been so frustrating, but even despite that he was so amazing I would think anyone thinking of heckling would have been beaten up!
Jackie