I returned from my usual Shrewsbury festival trip yesterday. Many highlights, with a couple singled out. By 'highlight', YMMV.
1. Grace Petrie. Butch, lesbian, socialist. Think Billy Bragg with a cheeky grin. She did one song called 'Black Tie' which reduced some people to tears, despite her warning over a rhyme* in the chorus. The song is about an imaginary trip back in time to speak to her teenage self and explain that everything is going to be fine, and that is isn't her who is the problem.
*"Those images that fucked ya are just patriarchal structures"
2. Martin Barre, and "50 years of Jethro Tull, featuring three original members". Make that "one original member", Clive Bunker on drums. Martin Barre was brought in after Mick Abrahams AND Tony Iommi. Dee Palmer didn't join until five years after the band was founded. Clive Bunker, however, was an original.
The gig was accompanied by a pretentious pre-recorded narrator with a yank accent, and the screens by the stage played the sort of random old films that OGWT used to show when they didn't have the actual band available. As for the music... There was a second drummer, who really belonged more with Tygers of Pan Tang than Tull, and an Ian Anderson impersonator who didn't play flute, but tried to do all the mannerisms and voice. They were bad enough, but the worst was Barre himself. Now, I am a Tull fan, and a fan of Barre's playing. There is a live recording of 'Locomotive Breath' in which his playing is awesome, and on the same album, his bottom-end soloing and fills on 'Aqualung' are a delight. An entire stage show, however, that consists almost entirely of him wanking over all of his heaviest riffs and solos, one after the other, is not what I want to hear. In the end, I walked out.
It was good to see Dee Palmer on stage, though, smiling, waving, and clearly happily spaced out.