posted by david on Mon 22 Sep 2003 @ 10:19 PM

I don't know much about Tess McKenna. I first came across her when she was playing as part of a Dylan tribute gig at the dearly-departed Continental in 2000. That night it was fascinating to see the grin on her face as she draped her wonderful voice over a crack backing band. I think the launch of "Boom Bam" may have been the first time since that performance that she'd played with a full band and it's easy to speculate that the Dylan shows were a turning point, as if she'd decided that she wanted to try the rocking out thing for a bit, first recording the upbeat "Boom Bam" album and then assembling a bunch of friends to send it out into the world with a bang. I haven't picked up the album yet but I'll be interested to hear it because the fusion of her wonderful voice with a full riffing rock sound worked well, with the occasional departure to something jazzy or country to demonstrate her range. I hope Tess enjoyed the show as much as I did.

see the rest...

posted by david on Mon 8 Sep 2003 @ 07:26 PM

According to the news published at Undercover, Fleetwood Mac will be playing some shows in Australia in late Feb 2004. The lineup will be the same as for the new album "Say You Will": Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. While I'd prefer to see the full classic lineup including Christine McVie, she's repeatedly made it clear that she's not interested in doing the whole Mac thing anymore. In other Mac news, a "Tango In The Night" era concert video will be released on DVD in October alongside remastered/repackaged versions of the "Rumours" and "Tusk" albums. "Rumours" has been in need of a cleanup ever since it hit CD (the DVD Audio version is brilliant) so this is long overdue. It will be nice to hear "Tusk" without the edited version of "Sara" which has plagued the existing CD release. And for those wondering, the new album is sprawling and ambitious and a real grower and is likely to appear on my 'best of the year' list (if I get around to doing one this year).

posted by david on Mon 1 Sep 2003 @ 09:54 PM

Comparing notes after the gig with a friend, we agreed that this time, Chris didn't seem to have the urgency we remembered. Having spoken to Chris earlier in the day at a Basement Discs in-store appearance, the fact that he'd arrived in Australia at 5:30am earlier that day and already missed two Australian shows due to airline mayhem might explain him being a little more restrained than we expected. For the Chris-newbies I had dragged along that lack of urgency may have left them less impressed than I was the first time I saw him live. Nevertheless, Chris is always an extraordinary performer and this time around it was his vocals I noticed more than anything. Sure, there's the blues influence there but there's also a soul feel in the way his voice strides around a tune. Very powerful. He played a few of the songs from the new album "Hotel Vast Horizon" and I must admit that they seemed to work better in the live setting than they do on record. Or maybe it's just that I needed the live setting to appreciate the songs. On a purely technical level, it was fascinating to watch him re-tuning his guitar after each song as he doesn't use anything as orthodox as a capo.