Guardian review of RFH gig featuring Spider

[firehazard]

Robin Denselow
Tuesday June 28, 2005
The Guardian

Backstage, Bert Jansch was telling Roy Harper that "this is the biggest folk club I've ever been to", but out in the audience it seemed more like a potentially brilliant and often frustrating musical marathon. Patti Smith had handed over Meltdown responsibilities to her long-time guitarist Lenny Kaye as "curator", and he in turn devised an event that explored the links between English and American folk cultures.
It was a fine idea, and he assembled a remarkable cast, that ranged from every surviving veteran from the 1960s English folk scene through to Johnny Marr, Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals, Neil Finn, John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, Martin Stephenson, Robyn Hitchcock, Spider Stacey from the Pogues, along with Kaye and Patti Smith themselves. Even the great Shirley Collins was there, in her role as folk academic (but, sadly, not as singer). Spread over two nights, this could have been sensational. Squeezed into one four-hour show it felt like a glorious experiment that had gone slightly wrong.

It all started well. Robin Williamson, in his shorts and long grey hair, sounded and acted like the ultimate veteran hippy hero, playing harp, mandolin and harmonica as he switched from Caribbean to Indian influences, backed by his wife Bina. He deserved a longer set, and so did the magnificent Jansch. He was joined for a couple of strong guitar duets by Marr, who then appeared with his own band to revive that "Mancunian folk song", Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want; but it was urgently in need of the presence of his former colleague, Morrissey.
It was a good night too for Finn with his unaccompanied treatment of a McPeake Family classic, and for Stacey, first backing Smith on tin whistle for an impromptu-sounding The Trees They Do Grow High, and then tackling the union ballad I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night. That cast alone was more than sufficient. The final more lengthy sets by the wacky Hitchcock and over-talkative Harper should have been saved for a separate show.

URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/reviews/ ... 25,00.html

[guest]

bet it was "a good night for Stacey"...He was playing with patti smith!

[guest]

i bet that was a great night. it seems that some of the other pogues are doing really interesting stuff - jem finer's art projects and spider getting the meltdown call, philip and cait's radiators project. it is a shame that shane seems to lurch from one crisis to another - i am thinking of all the recent popes cancellations - when he should be up there doing the real high profile stuff.i cannot agree with the people who constantly make excuses for him, i think it is a great waste of talent and a real shame.