Ralphy's Concert Reviews

Never The Bride & Fish - in Concert

at Spirit of '66 in Verviers (Belgium) 25-02-2004

Well I won't trouble you again with the history of Fish, since it's (including the one of Bospop 2002) my 4th Fish concert review at this site and there is one album review too, all of them can be found here. On this evening we (my girlfriend Monja, my pal Maurice and me) arrived at Spirit of '66 just before 8PM, after a 40-minute drive from home on a snowy night. We were just handing over our jackets when Fish himself already passed by us, we bought some drinks and looked around for the best spot in the venue and ended up choosing to stay besides the sound equipment board, conveniently halfway between the stage and the bar. On the board we could see a note that the opening band Never The Bride was due to play from 20.30 until 21.15 hours and that Fish himself would come on at 21.30. We talked a bit, drank a few more Belgian beers (which give you gas as Fish once again stated, nevertheless they tasted good to me) and just as Never The Bride was preparing to start, we could welcome a few friends of our hometown, who just arrived in time. One of them was Maurice J., who is even more knowledgeable on Fish live as I am.

Never The Bride is basically a cooperation between 2 women, singer Nikki Lamborn from Bristol and Catherine Feeney (nicknamed Been) from Glasgow, who is the main composer. There was a 4-man band attached to them this night, but as I've watched the pictures of their so-called band members on their website www.neverthebride.com, I don't think these were the same guys. Redhead Nikki Lamborn's vocals remind many people of Janis Joplin, and I have to concur with that, she has the same power in her voice and there is even somewhat of an exterior likeness. They started their set with the question 'Are you ready to rock?', which got a bit tame 'Yeah' from the audience. The first song was "Cry for love", followed by "I'd do it for you". I haven't been able to find out, what the 3rd song was called, but the lyrics contained the words "What do you want/love/need". The next song was an acoustic cover of an old Led Zeppelin-song "Going to California" performed by the 2 girls without their band. So far I liked their performance, but it wasn't especially remarkable. Nikki tried to persuade the audience to buy their albums: 'They cost €15,00 and if you buy all 4 of them, you get a complementary g-string', it was meant in a humorous, even sarcastic manor, I believe, because although this is a band with a female lead singer, I do not think they will make it on the looks of her, as so many female artists do nowadays.

Than for the next song Been would do the lead vocals and for me it was their best song of the evening. It was entitled "Kiss, kiss" and both the feel of the song and the vocals reminded me of the works of Melissa Etheridge. I liked Nikki's singing before, but this song had something special. The next song it was back to Nikki on lead vocals and this song, entitled "The living tree" was her best song to me. They finished their 45-minutes set with a song called "Welcome to my world", which was OK too and OK is a term that best describes their entire performance to me. There is some talent there, but I don't think they have fully expressed it yet, at least not on this evening. I would rate their performance with a 6.0.

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After a pause of about 15 minutes it was time for Fish. I had a good idea of what the set list would be, because it was published on the Fish Forum (see Ralphy's Links Page). They started with "The rookie", which was fine by me, because together with "Shot the craw" these are my 2 favourite songs of Fish's new album "Field of Crows". So for me it was already a highlight, the first 4 songs were played without almost any interruption, the 4th one being the second highlight. It was a beautiful rendition of "The perception of Johnny Punter" with a magnificent guitar-solo by Bruce Watson (ex-Big Country). I'm talking about highlights here, but it wasn't all good, Fish's voice was clearly not in best fashion and I don't know whether this is why he has added a male back-up singer (Danny Gillan) to his band, but to me another singer (he did almost all the high notes together with Fish) singing Fish-songs is not what I came to see/hear and it was more annoying than anything else. I had the idea that the entire concept of band and set list was built as to not put too much strain on Fish's vocal chords. For example, if you look at song 3 and 4, both from the "Sunsets on Empire"-album, in them he has a major speaking part and so he does not have to sing that much. I do have to admit that Fish's has a great storyteller-voice in the likes of figures like Richard Burton or John Hurt, so it is quite entertaining to hear him do that in songs at times.

Speaking about story-telling, after these first 4 songs, Fish began to talk with the audience as he often does. First he was talking to a guy who was filming him with his camera, he was clearly irritated about that, took away the camera and called the guy a twat (among other things), all with a bit of humour as usual, but I did think his actual irritation shone through. Than he began to introduce another new song "Numbers" by talking about the Tony Blair-statement about the 45-minutes in which Iraq could attack British soldiers (uh, uh) and about the fact that it was always easy to assess the number of people present during a festivity at Trafalgar Square like the celebration of winning the world cup rugby, but when it came to peace demonstrators gathering at the same place, no-one could tell you exactly or even approximately how many were attending, so this song is about numbers and how people can even cheat with numbers. The next song also got a lengthy introduction about how he as a tall man always has problems in airplanes with the seating (I can relate to that, I'm even taller), how you come out of a plane feeling like Quasimodo and how you could never get the seats at the exits with extra leg-space and that these are always filled with midgets. Well according to him you had first class in these airplanes and second class, which he referred to as (the title of the song) "Zoo class". I liked these 2 songs and the following one "Old crow" live even better as on the new album, an album by the way that I would rate as his 3rd best solo-effort after "Vigil in a wilderness of mirrors" and "Sunsets on empire".

Next up Fish introduced his band, Tony Turrell plays keyboards, Steve Vantsis on bass, the 2 young guppies Winsor McGilvray on drums and Danny Gillan on acoustic guitar as well as back-up singing and 2 guitarists the before mentioned Bruce Watson and returned to the mother's womb, an old time Fish-aficionado Frank Usher. The latter one being the man who saved the next song "Cliché". In this ballad, my favourite Fish-song, the voice inadequacies of Fish were most noticeable on this night, but the guitar solo by Frank Usher, which he always used to fuck up in the past according to Maurice J., saved the song. What I did not get is why Fish had 2 guitarists in his band, I mean Bruce Watson played a great solo in "Johnny Punter" and Frank Usher did the same in "Cliché" and overall they played well, but shouldn't one guitar player be able to do it all. I mean cost wise through the years Fish has made it common knowledge that financing his career and livelihood hasn't been always an easy thing, so if only in this aspect it seems somewhat overdone to have 2 guitarists, but the big man himself probably has its reasons, even if they surpass me.

Next up was another new song, followed by a golden oldie "Vigil" (the full set list can be found below), both songs did not disappoint. According to my pre-published set list next up would be "Plague of Ghosts", the six-part concept song, but today they only played the last 2 parts, earlier they had also skipped "Lost plot". "Plague of Ghosts" got high praise from most Fish-fans upon its release, in my humble opinion, too much praise, so I wasn't that disappointed that it got cut short, but the true fans expecting it, due to the pre-publishing on the official forum, would not be pleased, as I imagine. Any way this also marked the end of the regular set. The encore would be a medley of old Fish-hits, as far as you can speak from hits in his case, and it was also the moment at which the audience gave some reaction to the show. I know this venue from 3 earlier occasions (twice Saga and once before Fish) and it has a maximum capacity of 350 people, as I've read, but I wouldn't know where to put them in this bar, it seems smaller. Yet it's the first time that I was present that I had the feeling that it wasn't sold out and furthermore the crowd wasn't into it very much either unlike on other occasions. Therefore I wasn't surprised that the possible second encore "Scattering crows" would eventually be skipped too.

All in all I have to admit that from the 6 occasions I've seen Fish (or Marillion including Fish) perform live this one was the worst one or rather to the point the least good one. Fish himself seemed irritated today (at one instance he referred to himself as 46 years old bald dogshit) and there was no spark with the public either on this night. It wasn't all bad, the man's comic interludes always crack me up and he is still a personality on the stage and the band's performance musically was more than adequate, so taking all this into the equation as a résumé I would rate this concert with a 6.5 .

The way home wasn't a pleasure ride either as we had to drive through heavy snowfall. On the highway we passed a car, who was changing a tire and we were just discussing that these kind of conditions were not the best for such bad luck, when we got an SMS that it were our friends who had been standing there, but they had resumed their drive home by now.

The complete set list (which took about 1 hour and 50 minutes):

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