16/06/09: Zappa Plays Zappa- The Colston Hall, Bristol.
The Colston Hall is heaving tonight for what is understandably more than your customary tribute band as Dweezil Zappa visits Bristol for the first time to play a selection of songs written by his father; the late great Frank Zappa.
Joined by multi instrumentalist Scheila Gonzalez, bassist Pete Griffin, percussionist Billy Hulting, guitarist Jamie Kime, drummer Joe Travers and Ben Thomas on vocals; Dweezil shreds through many crowd pleasers from Frank's vast back catalogue.
There where inevitably a few omissions which I was aching to hear such as the instrumental wonders of ‘Peaches En Regalia' and ‘Eat That Question' and the rest of the crowd in their eagerness seemed to holler requests at every available minute.However no one could realistically expect them to play every song from Zappa's collection of almost eighty albums (with more being released each year!).
Any feelings of minor dismay where quickly laid to rest as they did include the ridiculously great ‘Outside Now' and like a medley each song whipped quickly and genially into the next from ‘Village of The Sun' to ‘Echidna's Arf (Of You)' both taken from Zappa's 1974 live album ‘Roxy & Elsewhere'.
They do slightly lack the mesmerising stage presence of Frank Zappa's previous entourage however this was made up in the timing and astounding technical ability to really pull of the songs together with the fret wizardry and conducting of Dweezil. As well as the expected solos from Dweezil each musician took their turn in the spotlight throughout the night including a frenzied Marimba session.
As if serenading us with ‘Dirty Love' wasn't enough a hefty encore brought the frequent shouts of requests but a weird interlude of ‘Don't You Eat That Yellow Snow' lead into the mighty ‘Willy the Pimp'.
Unfortunately there were no guest appearances from any of the surviving Mothers as featured on previous tours but most people seemed content with simply hearing the songs of Frank Zappa played with such apparent capability. Hopefully this was not the first and last visit to Bristol for the Zappa Plays Zappa troupe.
For information on forthcoming gigs including the opening of the Colston Hall's impressive brand new foyer visit: www.colstonhall.org
by Alex Hobbis
As a myriad of instruments and literally a stack of guitars are being brought out onto the stage, excitement ensues as we realise that this will not merely be singer Justin Vernon performing as a solo entity under the Bon Iver moniker. He has on this tour brought more legs to the musical collective, and anticipation of great things abound as they ready themselves for this sold out show at the Trinity Centre.
Occupying the vocal space between Iron & Wine and Anthony and the Johnsons, Justin Vernon carries a unique ethereal voice in his lungs and proceeds over the next hour or so to unleash songs from his outstanding debut album ‘For Emma, For Ever Ago'.
‘Flume' the first track on the debut opens the proceedings swiftly followed by ‘Lump Sum' and the live addition of accompanying backing vocals together with the various extra instruments serves to strengthen the conviction and intensity of the performance.
Tonight we are also privy to a new song ‘Blood bank' which is a slight departure from the lofi Americana leanings of the debut; and before entering into ‘The Wolves' a request is made for the audience to join in on the chorus resulting in a packed out crowd eagerly singing the line ‘What might have been lost' to the top of their lungs.
The rest of the band departs leaving Justin Vernon on his own for a haunting solo performance of ‘Regarding Stacks'. The inevitable encore thankfully occurs bringing with it the recently released single ‘Skinny Love' and to end of the night (with only minutes to spare) they bring the support band Bowerbirds on for a brilliant acapella version of ‘Lovin's for Fools' by Sarah Siskind.
All of the songs performed tonight are a testimony to Bon Iver's incredibly emotive song writing, most of which was written and recorded whilst living in complete isolation in his dad's remote log cabin in the woods of Wisconsin.
Another highly memorable gig at the Trinity is accomplished, a venue which increasingly manages to grab artists around the world destined for bigger things..To see what's coming up at the Trinity visit www.3ca.org.uk
by Alex Hobbis
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