Wishbone Ash and Fabian Anderhub- Amager Bio, København Feb 17th, 2012

 I had posted on Facebook on Thursday looking for someone to go to this show with but no takers. I needed to go down to BETA and pass out more flyers for the ØSC show on the 24^th, right next door to Amager Bio. I was hanging out in front of Amager Bio waiting to see if anyone I knew would come up and by chance a super cool older guy gave me a free ticket! What luck..

          Fabian and his group had just started when I came in the door. They are a Swiss blues rock band (actually, the drummer is from Italy and the bass player and lead/rhythm guitar player are from Montreal). I guess there were about 350 people for this show tonight and I was not the oldest one in the crowd, which is quite often the case with the shows I go to these days! Anyway, they played a strong set of some hard rocking stuff and some more bluesy stuff and all original numbers except for the excerpt of Folsom Prison Blues (I think) inside one of their own songs, Loverboy and the last song which was a mix of Just got Paid (ZZTOP) and Goin’ Down. Solid opening act and lots of cool guitar solos…

          It was maybe 15 mins before Wishbone Ash hit the stage. I had downloaded a recent show from Osnabrück, Germany from Jan 2012, so I was pretty clear on what they were going to play. The sound was really good except for the drums, which were so gated and compressed they had no life into them at all, almost sounded like an electronic drum kit. Guitars were good and loud, so that was great. The opening number, The King will Come is a great one with lots of wah guitar soloing. I am not at all familiar with Wishbone Ash except by name. I don’t own any of their records and have only heard a few sides over at my friend Nils place recently. They played 3 new songs and two of the three were really strong tracks and quite heavy rockers compared to their generally smooth sound. They are a bit too smooth for my tastes but they do some nice long guitar solo sections but I don’t think they are really jamming, they come across as just too rehearsed and tight, a bit of going through the motions playing the same set every night (even though they do not play the same set every night. The Osnabrück concert had 4 more songs than on this night). Phoenix, a long song from 1970 ended the concert but they came back for two encores, the first a new song that was excellent. Then Mud Slick, which seem to be a song a lot of people knew. Overall, I really enjoyed them quite a lot… They played over 2 hrs. I shot a video for a mostly instrumental track, I think called Jail Bait.

Set List: The King will come, Warrior, Can’t go it alone, Lady Jay, Open Road, heavy Weather, Sometime World, Warm Tears, Faith hope and Love, the Pilgrim, Reason to Believe, Jailbait, , Invisible Tread, Phoenix, Blowin’ Free, Mud Slick. 

Anders, Huggorm, SKL- Undomshuset, København Feb 3rd, 2012

This was a very cool show on a very cold night! I arrived at about 18 so I could set up the hard disc recorder for making a multitrack recording of this entire concert, of which some may be released on the Kommun2 label out of Malmö. All three bands have released records on this cool underground label. This was the 2^nd Swedish Psych night arranged by Sven and it was a pretty good success. I guess there was about 100 people considering it was like -5C outside and not much warmer inside this place as it had no heat at all. I never took off my jacket the entire evening!

          Everything for recording was set up and the excellent ever helpful soundman Memo was great to work with again. It was just damn cold. All the sound checks were fine but Hobbiten, who was also guesting with SKL, did not soundcheck with us.

SKL

          SKL (Sveriges Kommuner och Landsting), with whom I was guesting, as well as Hobbiten on guitar (On Trial, Dragontears, etc..) started the show off. We played only two songs in long spaced out versions. Kristallen den Fina was the first. We still have a lot of problems with the violin feedback as we did on the soundcheck but as Hobbiten was so loud in the monitor I could not hear him at all anymore. I could barely hear my own sounds but lucky for me, it was the spacey stuff that Henrik was playing that I matched and he seem to be playing the themes that the band was. The first one as in A so that is all I needed to know. The place was pretty packed and people seem to be into it, It was great and it was not what I expected it to sound like after learning the songs from the record. The 2^nd song was Björndans från Skåne. I think we played about 40mins.

Huggorm

          It did not take long before Huggorm started to play, They are a three piece with a female drummer and bass player and guitar player with long dreadlocks. The music is some sort of slightly quirky melodic punk rock and roll. It was nothing very complex just straight up slightly off kilter rock songs. It is the type of band that you either get their simple vibe strangeness or you don’t and I did not get hooked but a lot of the audience seem to like them a lot. They also only played 45mins. I have no idea what the set list was.

          Anders was what most of us was really looking forward. The old drummer from On Trial has made two solo records on the Kommun2 label and this stuff has never been played live. He put together a band made up of the ex-members of On Trial and Baby Woodrose, all of who play great together, and you know the expected result when these guys play and improvise….. very psyched out stuff. Think Spids Nøgenhat, Dragontears and very old On trial, and you get the drift. Anyway, they played 7 songs from the two records and they sounded pretty cool. I think they ended up getting into the same style of space out each time though and did not really do anything different, so they all started to sound quite a lot alike. I had a really good time though. People loved it. Saw friends from Troldmand, Sinister Creation, and some of the Roadburn crew as well. Fun night and great to play again!

Set List: Intro Jam, In the Dark Hours, Hej Hej Bye Bye, Helena, Holding Back, Hello Friends Again, Country of Wine, Drop your Bombs