Ocean Colour Scene

If you wanted to sum up the lot of a commercial lawyer this evening would be a good choice. Four of us had not inexpensive tickets for the Ocean Colour Scene gig for the 20th anniversary of Mosley Shoals, their only really successful album.And of the four of us, I was the only one who made it. Affordable in cost but not in time.

I made it about half way through the first support act, called Cupids I think.

Then up came the second support act. Totally unannounced, well until it was announced to us in the audience, it was Paul Weller. The Modfather himself. Obviously a little ripple went through the audience gathering in their seats. So on the one hand one felt a bit honoured at seeing someone of that status just doing a warm up for his own tour (along with a much younger guitarist pictured below). On the other, well I just don't really like Paul Weller in his ageing troubadour phase. So, I can't say I appreciated this support as much as on paper I should have done.

So then on to Ocean Colour Scene. I had only ever seen the band once before at V Festival in a tent, except that I was so far back that "see" may not be the right word. As it happens I liked this gig more than I expected. Mosley Shoals is a great album, and of course I knew that it was being played through, but it is only seeing a band that you get the real sound and also the vibe, the repartee with the audience. And all that went very well.

One observation however on this and the numerous "anniversary of album" gigs. An album is constructed in the opposite way to a gig. In a gig you normally start with a reasonably well-known, up tempo number, but save your best and most loved tracks for the end. However albums normally have the strongest tracks at the start. This is particularly evident in Mosley Shoals where the Riverboat Song opens and is definitely their best song, followed by their second best, The Day I Caught the Train, So, by playing the whole album start to finish one effectively started at the top and worked the way down. That's not to detract from the enjoyment of the gig; just noting a fact. The energy levels just didn't go up.

Now one of the cool, and sweet parts of this gig is the lead guitarist's young teenage son came out and played on The Day I caught the Train. The privilege of having a rock star dad.