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.