Tag: setlist

Great gig, bizarre encore: David Gray in Cape Town, 2022

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I mean, you knew that the evening was going to be a belter when you get escorted right across the local casino, drinks and all, into the VIP room with free beer, bubbly and gourmet pizza before the concert has even begun. [Thanks, Andrew 😉 ].

And then, when it did begin, it was just a lot of fun with some great music. Ten songs in the first half, starting with You’re The World To Me and Fugitive before finally getting the audience involved in Be Mine, and bewitching us all into silence (incredible for a South African crowd) with a raw, emotional performance of Alibi. Hospital Food rolled neatly into the catchy Nemesis to end off a tight, professional set by a clearly accomplished band and singer.

Twenty minutes later – beating most of the bar-queuing audience back – he returned with a new drummer (the one and only Craig McClune) and a bang, for the main event, and Please Forgive Me and Babylon got the crowd – and the band – bouncing.
Running on through the album, he remarked on his two favourite songs that “took him back like a time machine to that tiny bedsit in Stoke Newington, N16”: Nightblindness and Silver Lining. And then after those two poignant, introspective numbers during which he seemed strangely distant, it was like a switch was flicked and he back to engaging the now slightly less reluctant audience with the now seemingly obligatory cellphone waving to This Year’s Love: “Come on, I know you’ve all got phones. And I know you’ve all got arms!”.
Sail Away and a really beautiful Say Hello, Wave Goodbye completed the album set and then there was… the encore.

Right.

Back on then, and having just given us one Marc Almond number (from the album), he went straight into another song that Soft Cell made famous: Tainted Love. A real poppy, swingy, almost silly version though. It was fun, but it didn’t quite fit. And then he sat at the piano and told us the story of the day in June 2000 that White Ladder and David Gray finally made it into the big time. A tale of a father on chemotherapy, a lucky break of a near headline slot at Glastonbury, and a chance backstage meeting with an apparently bewildered David Bowie, complete with pictures of the whole thing. It was more what I had expected from the whole evening: a bit of background, some anecdotes etc. But this was the only window we got into the story of the album. And then – using the somewhat tenuous Bowie link – the rest of the encore: Life On Mars and Oh! You Pretty Things. And it was great, but it wasn’t David Gray, it was David Bowie, and it wasn’t what the audience had come for. I’m sorry to say that we watched a fair percentage leave during these two songs. Bit disrespectful, but then that’s sadly par for the SA audience: we’ve been here before (more than once).

When you’re playing your biggest album in full, you can’t save your biggest hit for the end of the encore. Still, we thought there would be a rousing repeat of Babylon or something, because why not? But the second Bowie song was segued really awkwardly into the last few (admittedly energetic) bars of Please Forgive Me. But only the last few bars. It was just weird to finish off a concert with 4 cover versions (from three different artists) and then the false ending reprise of one of your songs.

It was still really good, but it was also really odd.

Anyway… overall, an altogether lovely evening and (even before the encore) we’d been treated to a lot of genuinely great music and some amazing vocals. It’s been 16 years since we last saw him here, but if he does come back again, I’ll definitely be there.

The Perfect Setlist

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It’s always a toughie when a band is touring. They’re out there promoting their new material, but the fans turn up wanting to have a good night listening to their classics. Finding a suitable balance is always going to be difficult, but apparently, there is some thought that goes into it.
Here’s how my hometown boys and recent 6000 miles… featurees work it out, their strategy revealed by lead guitarist Jamie Cook to NYMag.com.

“The View From the Afternoon”
“When I saw the Strokes at Madison Square Garden, they started with the first song on their first album, and it was great. I thought we should do the same.”

“Brianstorm”
“To start off the set, we play stuff people can dance to.”

And then, that awkward moment discussed above:

“Don’t Sit Down ’Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair”
“This is the first new one, five songs in. Some people are waiting to hear it, and some people are going to be like, F*** this! Why can’t they play an old one?

Before he demonstrates that he’s been to gigs as an audience member as well:

“I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”
“I imagine a fan bringing a date to our show who doesn’t know us that well. We play loads of new stuff, and when we get to ‘Dancefloor,’ he turns to her and says, ‘You’ll definitely know this one.’ If she says, ‘I don’t know this one either,’ that’s when maybe you shouldn’t see much of her again. We’re helping our fans: If they pass this test, it must be love!”

Acknowledging the difficulties of introducing new music on tour:

“She’s Thunderstorms”
“We’d love to go out and be able to play twelve new songs, but that’s not really fair, so there are five new ones on here — this one opens the new album. At the first few gigs, the idea is to test them out and see how they go.”

And ending on the right note:

“Fluorescent Adolescent”
“It’s good for singing along. For the last song, that’s what you need. That’s it! Let’s hope the sun shines, but just in case, bring an umbrella.”

And I agree with most of what he says, but let’s be honest, his hands (and those of every other band on tour promoting a new album) are tied. That might account for the “interesting” guitar work on the new album, incidentally. The fans are not there to hear the new stuff – even when it becomes a hit some way down the line, they won’t remember seeing it live.
There’s no familiarity with a  favourite lyric, no personal link to an event or events in one’s life; there’s no emotion attached to it.

But  – against what the Arctic Monkeys told us “There’s only music so that there’s new ringtones” – without new music, there would be no tours and the whole argument would be rendered invalid anyway. Thus, it looks like the age old recipe of the 70:30 split of old to new. And working on a set of about 20 songs, that still means that you’re going to get 14 of your favourites in.

It’s probably still worth the price of a ticket.

Suck It and See is the fourth studio album from the Arctic Monkeys and is released on 6th June.

The band recently announced two hometown gigs at the Don Valley Bowl on June 10 and 11. They will be headlining the annual V festival occurring August 20-21 with Eminem, Rhianna and Plan B and will also be headlining the T in the Park festival with Coldplay and the Foo Fighters which runs from July 8-10.