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That’s Entertainment

November 7th, 2008 · Posted by Skuds in Music · 16 Comments · Music

Tonight Chrystal took me to see Paul Weller start his tour at K2 leisure centre in Crawley.  Her treat.  She did very well a few months ago and won a pair of tickets from Radio Mercury.  I don’t think she enjoyed it too much, but it was certainly an experience for her and I am guessing it was a bit different from her previous concert – S Club 7 at Wembley.  Or maybe it was Steps.  I I can never remember which is which.

Crawley has been in a state of heightened excitement about this show.  It is the first concert in the new K2 centre and the biggest act to play in the town in a long, long time.  In the ten or twelve years I have been here the only concerts I can remember in the town by people I have heard of were Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Status Quo, the Levellers, Doudou Cissoko and Dr. John.

Imagine going to have tea with somebody who never has visitors.  You get there and find that they have dug out the best china, put their kids in their smartest clothes and read them the riot act to make sure they are on their best behaviour.  They have spent a couple of days cleaning the house and mentioning at every opportunity that they are having a guest to tea.  Now imagine what those people would be like if instead it was the Queen coming to tea and that is a bit similar to Crawley’s behaviour recently.

In the end it was a bit of an anti-climax.  As a venue for top-class music concerts K2’s main hall makes a very good multi-purpose sports hall.

Paul Weller has over thirty years’ worth of great tunes, and a band full of competent musicians who were all, I am sure, playing well and yet it was probably the worst-sounding concert I have ever been to.  Either its just me and my hearing has deteriorated, or the sound system was not very good or the acoustics in K2 are poor, but to me it sounded bad, particularly the vocals.It all sounded a lot better during an acoustic segment in the middle, but the rest of the time it was very muddy.

That is not to say it was a bad show.  I am actually not very familiar with a lot of Paul Weller’s work except for the Jam and his last two solo albums.  I’m full of respect for him but somehow I never got round to hearing Stanley Road or Wild Wood, which is probably my loss.  There were a couple of Jam songs towards the end (The Eton Rifles and A Town Called Malice) and a Style Council song in the middle – plus a bit of the Who’s Magic Bus during the acoustic segment and a cover of the Rose Royce song Wishing On A Star. I would have liked to hear Pretty Green, but you can’t have everything.

The highlight for me was hearing From The Floorboards Up.  In my personal opinion it is the best song Paul Weller has ever done and it is one of my all-time favourite songs by anyone.  It sounds very Wilko Johnson-ish. By some miracle, the sound was not too bad during this song either.

Not being a rabid Paul Weller fan I didn’t really know what to expect, and I was a little surprised by how much of a psychedelic sound there was to a lot of the songs – and I do like a bit of psychedelia.  It was a varied set list though, covering umpteen styles -  in much the same way as the latest album does.  I think that the band and the music was let down by the acoustics.  I would certainly think twice about paying to see another show at the K2, and its a shame this was not three nights at the Hawth instead of two nights here.

No doubt some killjoy will be complaining about Paul Weller smoking on stage and that will be a major controversy in the papers next week, but it was good to see a world-class act playing within walking distance of home and not having to take a train into London or Brighton.  Mind you… it wasn’t just the odd puff.  Let’s just say that if he dropped the butts on the stage he is probably in for about £500 worth of littering fines from Crawley Council.

Amusing quote from the stage:

It’s the first night of our tour so we’re all a bit nervous. Also because it’s Crawley

Or words to that effect :)   He is at K2 again tomorrow and then the Cliffs Pavilion in Southend on Saturday, then touring around a bit, ending up at the Brixton Academy for three nights – where the sound will be brilliant as always.

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16 Comments so far ↓

  • Iain Riddell

    Interesting review. I actually disagree about the sound and had no problems with it. It was a lot better than the concert in Bournemouth, so hopefully this will be the first of many concerts at the K2.

    Weller was superb and yet again demonstrated he is the Modfather.

    Good to see Ben Sherman or Fred Perry will not be going out of businness based on the dress code last night.

  • Chris Dutton

    Not sure where you were standing, maybe in the bar upstairs ?
    Yes K2 is a multi purpose sports hall but the sound was not bad at all. Reasonable level, could hear all instruments in their own right, as for the vocals, well thats Weller singing live. Saw the Pistols in Brixton last November, now thats what I call bad sound !
    Great mixture of old and new songs. Paul started playing Eton Rifles again in May, for the first time since the Jam split in 1982. Great to hear it again SOUNDING GREAT, wicked bass, still angry at 50 ! With Butterfly Collector and Town called Malice, 3 Jam songs was a treat for any old fans, Paul has always said he likes to look forward not back.
    K2 is not a concert venue I agree but when i bought my ticket I knew it was going to be in a gymnasium. Think they should be applauded for their work last night.
    Roll on the second show .

  • Skuds

    It did occur to me that it might have sounded better nearer the back and I was serious when I wondered about my own ageing eardrums – although Chemical Brothers a couple of months back was a lot louder and seemed clearer – hardly comparable though, being totally electronic.

    For me the vocals were distorted – like when you crank a cheap stereo up louder than it really should go – and obscured by the instruments a bit.

    Normally I am the last to complain about sound quality. Cheap stereos and low-bitrate MP3s always sounded good enough to me, but last night sounded poor to me. If everyone else was happy it might be time for me to get my ears seen to!

    Talking of which, was it just me or was it loud last night? I’ve been to some pretty loud concerts but my ears are still ringing a bit which hasn’t happened to me since about 1977.

  • jordan

    does any one know the set list from the crawley show?

  • Dave Sardy

    Quality show, terrible review here i’m afraid. Weller was at it from the start and the performance was a million times better than the sleep enducing performance at the Albert Hall earlier this year. Highlights included a bass driven moody remix of Wild Wood and Echoes Round the Sun. The sound problems were no where near as bad as this suggests, K2 is never going to be Sheperds Bush Empire now is it. Smoking onstage? If you care to venture outside of Steps and S-Club 7 gigs youd realise this is commonplace at most gigs thus meaning that the predicted national press coverage will be slightly smaller than the Ross-Brand escapade of last week. I hope the crowd is more awake tonight, or else no one will want to play K2 again, you could hear a pin drop in between songs! Weller, mod legend.

  • janeskuds

    This was not the review of the 17 year-old whose previous gigging experience was limited to Steps/S-Club. I think Skuds was quite open in saying that he is not a Weller fan ( I reckon you are just a year or two too old to have learned to enjoy his music from the start bruv) and, if you actually read the whole review rather than just skimming it, probably apprciates a wider range of musical styles than most. (I won’t mention the youthful appreciation of Mud, Queen and Chas & Dave. Oops)

  • Skuds

    I’m almost exactly the right age to enjoy Paul Weller Jane – I was 15 when In The City came out! – although I had already got the prog bug before that…

    Dave is right – there was a distinct lack of atmosphere at K2 on Thursday, though I should point out that I was not predicting coverage in the national press, but the local press where a lost cat can generate a 3-page spread.

  • skud's sister

    Yeah, looking at Wikipedia’s list of ‘significant singles’ I seem to recall you being more into Yes, The Tubes, ELO and Fleetwood Mac. As I recall you said you would get loads of Punk singles because the real thing wouldn’t last long….
    The Jam were seen as being quite ‘Conservative’ in their early years so maybe they weren’t for you at that point!

  • Skuds

    I couldn’t work out what you meant by Wikipedia’s list of significant singles but eventually decided it was the section on the “1977 in music” page.

    Very interesting stuff – I had to make an edit because it said that Frampton Comes Alive was released by Bachman-Turner Overdrive(!)

    I don’t think I got into Fleetwood Mac until much later when I saw them at Wembley, but deffo Yes, Tubes, ELO and also ELP, Thin Lizzy, Floyd & Genesis. And Ian Dury.

    Bloody hell though, what a good year it was. At the time, I really liked the Vangelis LP and Moonflower but there are a few LPs there I bought in the last ten years and rate very highly – Boz Scaggs, Television, Fleetwood Mac…

    Has to be one of the vintage years for music!

    I never thought the Jam were conservative, its just that back then there was not a lot of chance to hear album tracks unless somebody you knew owned them – or you bought them yourself. It just so happened that nobody I knew had Jam albums so that was a gap – in the same way that Elvis Costello is a gap. I think he is brilliant, but apart from greatest hits all I have of his is some more recent stuff.

  • skud's sister

    Yes, the only albums I know I listened to were those you owned (I still recall the cover of Going for the One – although that could be because I saw the CD on the shelf the other day) or those that prefects at school had. I guess cousin Ray wasn’t still working for London Radio by that point – remember all those singles?

  • skud's sister

    Looking at that last comment I realise that this applied to when you were 14. When I was about 14 I remember going round to see my mate Neal Alston and listening to Joe’s Garage – some interesting album choices there!

  • Skuds

    Admit it – you only remember the cover of Going For The One because it had a naked bloke showing his arse off!

    Joe’s Garage though…. Zappa and Beefheart are another two I have never knowingly heard.

  • skud's sister

    First naked arse I’d ever seen that wasn’t still in nappies, course I remember it. I remember the cover of Tormato as well – probably because of the naked tomato.

  • Hiro

    It was a very “pert” arse

  • skud's sister

    Shaped my standard of arse pertness for many years…