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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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CONCERT
REVIEW by Nick Morgan
STEVE EARLE, ALLISON MOORER, THE PROCLAIMERS, DAVID
KNOPFLER AND KARINE POLWART,
Reprieve Benefit, The Globe Theatre, London, June
5th, 2006 |
I
couldn’t help thinking that listening to Nick
Yarris, standing on the stage of the Globe Theatre,
talking about his 23 years in solitary confinement
in a prison, was probably almost as moving as anything
written by Shakespeare himself. Ok, I know that
like Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve,
which works on behalf of people facing the death
penalty all over the world, Nick spoke for a bit
too long and was a bit repetitive, but that didn’t
blunt his, or their, message. |

Nick Yarris |
And
anyway, when you go to a charity gig you know that
half the price of the ticket is for the chat. And
of course for the comedy, which never seems far
away from a good cause these days. So we enjoyed
most of Stephen K Amos’ compere routine, all
of Paul Hamilton’s witty poems (especially
the one about the Salvation Army, ‘God’s
terrorists’). The hugely talented Stewart
Lee (he directed and co-wrote Jerry Springer: the
Opera) also chose to focus on Jesus gags, but ended
up in slightly surreal musings about the structure
of jokes, whilst the rather conceited Mark Thomas,
a sort of motor-mouthed Marxist Max Miller, chose
to speak largely about himself – and very
funny some of it was too. |
 |
Of
course we’d come along mainly for the music,
and the opportunity to enjoy it in these most incongruous
surroundings, the wonderful replica of the Elizabethan
theatre that staged many of Shakespeare’s
most famous plays, built only a stone’s throw
from its original site. And so had Whiskyfun favourite
Ron Sexsmith,
whom we spotted with some of his band members in
the pit, and who was happy to discuss the merits
of his fine new album, Time Being, and things Vancouver
Island, with the Photographer during the interval. |

The Photographer with Ron Sexsmith, Karine
Polwart, Allison Moorer, Steve Earle |
I
could see that Ron, like us, was very taken with
Scottish singer songwriter Karine
Polwart, who came on stage to join David
Knopfler and guitarist Harry Bogdanovs and sing
her song ‘Sun’s comin’ over the
hill’, quite a whisky soaked tragedy, the
prolific Knopfler (yes, he’s the other Knopfler
who co-founded Dire Straits) having happily performed
a few songs of his own (‘Deptford Days’
and ‘The King of Ashes’). Finishing
off the first half of the evening were the hugely
infectious Proclaimers,
loved by all I think, for simply being such great
and genuine blokes. They stormed the audience with
‘Letter from America’, ‘I’m
on my way’, ‘Scotland’s Story’
(a sort of Sunday Post history of immigration in
Scotland), ‘Sunshine on Leith’ and “I’m
gonna be (500 miles)”. Phew! The sun’s
starting to go down, the moon’s rising, it’s
getting bloody cold (how did the Elizabethans manage
I wonder) and it’s time for a cup of tea.
Allison Moorer
has just released a new album, Getting Somewhere.
It’s her sixth, but I confess she was barely
known to me before this evening. Believe me she
has a voice to die for – it filled the cavernous
open space of the Globe, and I bet you could probably
have heard it over the river at St Paul’s.
She sang ‘Farewell fairweather’, Soft
place to fall’, ‘Getting somewhere’
and ‘Long time coming’. Hmm I thought,
almost a lady Steve
Earle. Do the research. She married Steve a
year or so ago and he produced the new album. But
her voice is fantastic – all her own work
and well worth looking out for. And then we had
Steve. By this time of course we were running late
(de rigueur for these sort of gigs) and Steve wasn’t
in any rush, but he managed seven songs and some
chilling reflections on capital punishment (“I’ve
witnessed an execution and I wish I hadn’t,
but how can you refuse a man’s last request?”).
He also invited us to return the following evening
and join him for Titus Andronicus (“this is
the only theatre in London where I know where the
front door is; I mean I can’t tell you many
times I’ve played at the Shepherd’s
Bush Empire, but I couldn’t tell you how to
get in”). |
He begins with the spoken ‘Warrior’
from the Revolution Starts Now, “This is the
best time of the day—the dawn, the final cleansing
breath unsullied yet by acrid fume or death’s
cacophony ...”, which is probably about as
Shakespearian as we get all night. “I’ve
waited a long time to play that here”, he
says. He follows with ‘Feel alright’,
‘My old Friend the blues’, ‘I
am Kilrain of the 20th Maine’ and ‘Copperhead
Road’ (on mandolin), ‘Coming around’
(with Allison Moorer) and finally, and appropriately,
from the soundtrack of Dead Men Walking, ‘Ellis
Unit One’, about a prison officer working
in a death chamber.
And that was it. We’d put money in the buckets,
laughed at the jokes, listened intently to the serious
bits (I’m still trying to understand just
what 23 years in solitary confinement feels like)
and enjoyed some fun music and some thoughtful music,
and ‘discovered’ Allison Moorer (please
buy her music). And thankfully we’d run out
of time, and the very nice volunteer stewards at
the Globe (“I always wanted to work with Shakespeare”)
were anxious to get home. So whilst the mike-stands
were put in place for that big everyone on stage
to sing that final song (help – not more Pete
Seeger) moment the sound engineer’s finger
across his throat, ‘though perhaps not the
most well-chosen gesture of the night, told us that
at least we’d been spared. Some aren’t
so lucky. - Nick Morgan (concert photographs
by Kate) |
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