Yestival: Yes at Foxwoods, Mashantucket, 10 August 17

Over two hours into the Yestival, and finally, it's time for The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, with its opening swirl of magical lights, which coalesce to spell out the original logo of 'Yes'.  It's like the actual start of the universe.

The premise of the show is that there's a song from each of the first ten albums up to Drama (released in 1980),  Which quite frankly, are the only Yes albums you need to bother listening to.  So which one to kick off from Yes?

Knee-wobblingly, it was Survival.  I've always wanted to hear this played live.  And here it was, in a casino, in the middle of a forest in Connecticut.

This is There's No Rick?? - You're Kidding! (aka Geoff Downes) playing the gentle opening bars.

Yes, quite a few audience members were astounded that neither Rick Wakeman nor Jon Anderson would be appearing on stage that night.  They could NOT believe it.  "But I've PAID for Anderson!!" 

This is Steve Howe.  No American I talked to seemed confused about Steve, and were all in agreement that he was definitely in the band.

Next up was Time and A Word, and a rather pepped-up titular tune. Not-Anderson (Jon Davison) was sporting a rather risque pair of snakeskin slacks, and, alarmingly, was chewing gum whilst singing (which made me fear that at some point I was going to have to leap on stage and perform a Heimlich manoevre).

Then it was on to The Yes Album, and a rather funky backdrop for Yours Is No Disgrace.

This is Billy 'Whaddya mean, Chris is dead?" Sherwood.

 

It's 1971.  It's Fragile.  It's South Side of the Sky.

Now it's 1972, Close to the Edge, and an epic version of And You And I.

Next, 1973 and Tales from Topographic Oceans.  Steve sat to play Leaves of Green, and Jon came in to sing with him. It's a very delicate piece.

 

Soon from Relayer.

1977 - Going for the One .

Tormato and a funked-up Don't Kill the Whale, introduced by the major pounding drummage of Howe Junior.  Because there are two drummers, Dylan (Steve's son) and Alan White.  More audience confusion.

Album number ten, and it's Drama and Machine Messiah from 1980.  The album which disappointed me the most when it came out, but thrilled me the most when it was revisited and played all the way through live last year, with Jon giving it a new emotional depth.

Now, King Crimson may have a weird load of percussive vegetables. And apparently Jon has a pet green pepper to shake.

 

At this point, I was down at the front of the stage for three (count 'em) encores - Madrigal, Roundabout and Starship Trooper.  But although the guys were inches away, I didn't take any photos, as being down at the front with all your friends is about being in the moment.  Nothing is better than that moment. 

So here are the band, taking their bow.

Junior Howe and Senior Howe.

Yestival: Todd Rundgren at MGM Grand at Foxwoods, Mashantucket, 10 August 2017

Now, I'd never heard a note of Todd Rundgren before tonight.  In fact, I only knew two things about the man.  One was that he had a band called Utopia, which was kind of proggy.  I knew this because mutual friend and musical motherlode David Coutts had two of their records.  (He even had a Harold Budd record, for goodness sake.  That was really going off piste.)

The second was that a girl in my class at school had 'Todd Rundgren' written on her school bag in huge letters.  This was such an eyebrow-raisingly odd against-the-flow thing to declare forty years ago when the other girls at the time had 'Starsky and Hutch' or 'Bay City Rollers' on theirs, that it really stood out in my memory as a highly individual thing to do.

And that was it.

Now, decades later, in a casino in the middle of a forest in Connecticut, I was settling down to the second act of the Yestival, with absolutely no expectations of a man who I only knew from chalked letters on a school bag.

Mr Rundgren, like the girl in my class all those years ago, turns out to be highly individual as well.  He has a badger-bonce hairdo, sunglasses which never come off, and a pair of Chris Squire's startlingly crotch-revealing Max-Wall-style trousers.  Woah.  He has a large, smart-suited band, two perkily bouncy dancers in rubber mini dresses, and he whirls across the stage belting out a tune called 'Come'.  He has a beautiful tone to his voice, understatingly witty lyrics, and a knowingly self-deprecating air. It's all a strangely uplifting and thrilling experience.

Wowsers. Who knew?

I've no idea how he used to sound when he was younger (he's 69 now), and I've no idea how his songs compare to the prog stuff he previously did, but I could listen to this man all night.  By the end of the set, I feel as if I have.

I'm less keen when he later takes off his suit and straps on a guitar, but nevertheless, the whole set is a revelation.  

As for that girl in my class with Todd Rundgren written on her bag - Madam, I salute you.

Yestival: Carl Palmer at MGM Grand at Foxwoods, Mashantucket, 10 August 2017

Here's a few photos of drumming legend Carl Palmer doing the opening set at the US tour of the Yestival.  This is the concert at Foxwoods, a giant casino in the middle of a forest in Connecticut.

Carl only got half an hour for his ELP Legacy Band (something he rather pointedly mentioned every time at the end), so his set consisted of only five songs - Hoedown, an ironic burst of Karn Evil 9 ('Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends...'), Knife Edge, Lucky Man, and Fanfare for the Common Man.

There were two large screens at either side of the stage, which were difficult to see if you were sitting (like me) down at the front.  The show started with a video of incongruous ELP-citiing clips from iconic American shows such as Jeopardy and the Simpsons which introduced the band on stage.  The band consists of a pared down threesome of Carl plus a handsome youngster on bass and a long-haired child on guitar.

During the songs, they played manly clips of daredevil cowboys being thrown from bucking broncos for Hoedown, and manly daredevil men being thrown from motorbikes and speedboats for Knife Edge.  Yes, there was a whole lot of daring manliness going on in Carl's videos.  Mind you, being last man standing out of Emerson, Lake and Palmer is a daring and manly feat in itself.

Anyway, here he is, the man who has found the fount of eternal youth.  He's 67, folks.

Bassist Simon Fitzpatrick. 

Lucky Man.

Look, no hands!  Fanfare for the Common Man.

"I'll be back soon and I'll do two hours!" shouted Carl, who had hardly broken sweat.

"Wales Revisited" Video

I've never made a video before (and might never again!!), but I've put together a short piece to try to give an insight into the process of how I go about making an exhibition.  

It shoes me out on location taking photos, my drawings and sketches, and back in the studio making the paintings.

The exhibition in question is a show called "Wales Revisited", which opens at the Lime Tree Gallery in Bristol on Saturday 2nd September.   In 2012, I had a very successful exhibition with them called ‘The Great Welsh Journey’. It documented my travels through Wales in the form of paintings and drawings.

In the years since, I have returned to Wales, mostly to stay on the Gower Peninsula, in order to gather material for this show, so there's been a very long lead-in time and genesis of the exhibition, and a huge amount of work involved.  The idea was to show how revisiting a location can help you understand the landscape and see it with fresh eyes, and I've used paintings, drawings and new media (such as video!!) to explore that.

So here it is - huge thanks to my very patient friend Robert for making it happen.

Steve Hackett at the Sage Gateshead, 17 May 2017

So here we are in Gateshead - last gig in the tour for me.

It's really very beautiful here at the Sage. "The grime on the Tyne is mine all mine..."

It is very noticeable not only that Steve has toned down his anti-Brexit, pro-immigration speech introducing songs from his new album (due to the negative reaction that he got from the Manchester audience), but it's also very noticeable that we are in a quite different country - in contrast to the Glasgow audience, the good people of Gateshead are firmly sat on their bahookies.

So off we go again - here's Steve, a few more of Nad (because of the angle of my seat, I could see more of him), and sorry, but there's lots of Nick.  Lots.  Oh dear.