 Liverpool, March 23, Lomax Club:
Melody Motel Mud in your Eyes (audience request) This Summer (a. r.) Stupid Thing (a.r.) Walk Away (a.r.) Monkey On You - recorded by Dr. Feelgood ("Chris & I wrote it 22 years ago.") Let the good times roll (Jimi Hendrix song) To Be A Dad (New one!!!) In Quintessence Vanity Fair When the hangover stikes Tracks of my tears (audience singing loudly with Glenn) Perfect Day (a song by Lou Reed but BBC had an advert using this song that is very familiar to the U.K. audience. Asked for audience members to each sing a line of the song. About 20 participants up on stage.) Elephant Ride Up the Junction (with audience member playing 6-string) Hey Carrie Anne (sp?) (The Hollies song with two audience members singing) Wine Spolley Oley (I never can spell this one correctly) Maidstone - going right into - Goodbye Girl Weather with you Cool For Cats (the entire audience singing EVERY word - Glenn said he wanted to give his voice a rest) Ticket to Ride Black Coffee in Bed Wonderwall Is That Love? Some Fantastic Place 1st Encore: came out with Dave Sullivan and he sang Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road Take Me I'm Yours w/ Dave Another Nail For My Heart Sunny Afternoon 2nd Encore: Annie Get Your Gun (complete with bevy of girl dancers behind him on stage. I decided to sit this one out along with the following songs. To be truthful, I couldn't get to the stage because the venue was so small and too many people - it was like sardines in a can - and it started to smell like 'em too!) I'm A Believer Pulling Mussels... Baby It's Alright (Ray Charles Song) (Glenn leading the audience in all the oooh's and ahhh's) Glenn ended the show and while leaving the stage and an audience member requested Tempted (Glenn said, "Oh yeah, forgot about that one!) Fabulous show and Liverpool really has a great Squeeze following. By the way, it was a sold out crowd of 300!! Can't way for tonight and see how Coventry goes. Coventry, March 24, Hare and Hounds Pub
As expected, another great evening in the company of Glenn Tilbrook. This wasn't so much of a show, but more of a party of 200+ (sold out show) hosted by Glenn. Even though we had heard Glenn was not feeling great, it didn't seem to stop him giving his usual 110 percent. The setting was the Hare and Hounds pub in Keresley Village, just outside Coventry. With regards to audience participation, let's say that Coventry folk are not backward in coming forward! We met some great Squeeze fans at the show, particularly John,
Dawn and Nicola from Melton Mowbray, Leics. who travel all over England
to see Glenn (and Nick Harper) shows. Also nice to meet Debra Goetschius
(see Liverpool review) and Ben Harper from L.A. And of course, as always,
a great pleasure to meet Glenn and Suzanne. So, to the setlist. This may
be incomplete, and I don't know the names of all the cover songs so forgive
me, but it's as accurate as I can recall.
1st Encore
2nd Encore
So the 7000 mile round trip from Canada to Coventry and back again was
worth it - and I got to see my mum also!
Cambridge, April 15th, The Boat Race
Who was that guy who got up with Glenn last night? He and Glenn appeared to know one another and looked very comfortable together - rehearsed even? He looks familiar from a band some years ago which I can't place. I think Glenn said his name was Paul. Anyway, in an exellent solo gig Glenn ran through most of the hits and a smattering of well chosen covers. For Lou Reeds' Perfect Day he got a dozen or so up on stage to sing a line each, and got the guy mentioned above up as well to feed people their line before they got to the microphone. Organised, or what?! Another bloke got up to play 2nd guitar on 'Mussels' with Glenn but got lost on the chorus and ending - but at least he had a go. He went home a happy man. Incidentally, the first mystery guest has a very Diffordesque voice, and sang all of Slaughtered, Gutted And Heartbroken with Glenn joining him on the chorus, and later, Glenn got him up to play rhythm guitar on Take Me I'm Yours. This time, he helped Glenn on the vocals throughout, singing Chris's low vocal part. All most impressive. Is this bloke appearing at all of Glenns solo shows, - if not, why not? -or was it just a one-off? The interesting thing from a Squeeze fans viewpoint is that the two of them together do sound like the full ticket of Difford and Tillbrook, - but you have to close your eyes becuase the guest artist didn't look like Chris and he had a very loud jacket on! C'mon Glenn - own up - who is he?
Cambridge, April 15th, The Boat Race
First visit for me to this venue, not sure at first but crowd certainly seemed to like Glenn. After correcting the sign above the bar which said Glenn Tilbrook (formerly of Squeeze) he seemed ready for a good evening. I'm vague about the running order apart from the 1st song and being amazed that the first hour was virtually all old Squeeze which pleased me but I wasn't sure about my three friends who had never seen Squeeze before let alone Glenn - well here goes I won't ever go drinking again
Only one encore, songs somewhere in above list and a rather sudden end
as he had over run the 11pm cut off time by 25 minutes.
Swindon, April 16th, Level Three
I seem to spend half my life going up and down motorways to see Glenn
(or Squeeze or D&T) but it's always worth the effort! This time the
setting was Level 3 in Swindon, a strange little venue in the middle of
the most bloody awful one-way system on this Earth, complete with Magic
Roundabout (which I negotiated twice, in different directions!) However,
the end result was two hours ten minutes of pure joy from a man in top
form as always. There was no support act, no introduction, Glenn just ambled
on stage before a less than capacity crowd and proceeded to show that the
other half just don't know what they're missing. He opened with a new song
(possibly called Domino?) which appears to be about an amorous encounter
with a female Police Officer, and followed soon after with another, To
Be A Dad - both holding promise of good things to come on the long-awaited
new album. Among the highlights for me were Alison, Daphne, Tracks Of My
Tears (during which we failed miserably at being the Miracles as usual),
Perfect Day - a scream if you weren't involved, highly embarrassing if
you were - and the ever-gorgeous Temptation For Love, which he did beautifully
sans microphone despite (or perhaps because of) the irritating gits who
talked loudly throughout - why do people come to acoustic gigs and then
talk all the way through? It seems the height of rudeness to me, and spoils
it for everyone
Domino(?)
Matlock Bath, April 23, The Fishpond
Matlock Bath, The Fishpond, renewing my aquaintance with Glenn after years away, about 10 (anno domini- cah! ay?) apart from a year or so in love with Some Fantastic Place, great album I heard only thanx to Danny Baker and his much maligned and by me grieved-over Radio 5 show. Talking of tens, I live only 10 mins from The Fishpond so obviously had to go. And how relieved I did, when I thought about it later because.............I was blown away, totally. Look, like loads of people, in my time I've seen great people on stage: James Taylor, Miles Davis, Weather Report, Elvis Costello (15 times +), Sting (when he had a world class band), Pat Metheny, Jan Gabarek (band and Hilliard Ensemble) and dozens of others down 25 years but Glenn the other night was one of the best gigs I've ever seen; the best bar very few. And not being a complete Squeeze nutcase I can still muster plenty of objectivity when judging. It's clear to me that Glenn Tilbrook is a rare, rare talent with a near-genius for playing to a (small) audience. A modern singer and player of the popular song par excellence. And what enthusiasm, commitment to music (not just his own) - he seemed too to be loving every second of it. I won't do u a set list cos although I knew almost all the Squeeze numbers I couldn't name them all w/o going up in my loft and digging out me old LPs, but WT Hangover Strikes, Vanity Fair, Mussels and Tempted were brilliant highlights, Some Fantastic Place the only (brilliant) mistake. From other set lists on the Net here it could be he produced Rungren's I Saw The Light off the cuff after someone shouted it out, but whether a spontaneous move or not, this was the best cover version of any song anywhere, any time I've ever heard by anyone. It was just out of this world, and made u realise, as GT played it what a practically perfect piece of songwriting it is - now that is what I call genius. It suited Glenn's voice perfectly. I was in heaven. What else can I say but produce more superlatives? Oh yes, criticise the 'get the audience up' policy. Some admittedly quite talented but outrageously over-confident egotist got up and did a Stones song with GT playing along on second guitar. Call me old-fashioned but how dare he presume!!!!!!!!!!! I'd paid me eight quid to see Glenn and all that. And frankly, GT was so good, you didn't want to do anything but see and hear him pull off triumph after triumph. The skill, the talent, it was awesome. I'm a bit of musician myself and others out there who've seen Glenn will doubtless have realised just what it takes to do what he does. When someone plays, sings and handles an audience in such a way as to make u think it the simplest thing under the sun to do (and it's not, it's one of the hardest) then u know you're in the presence of greatness, and I really don't use the word lightly, espesh as I'm Great Britain's biggest musical snob. Perfect Day was a hoot tho'. Glenn, if you're on the Net and reading this, you're so great the whole
world of music practically ought to get down and bow at your feet. There.
Stoke-on-Trent, April 25, The Wheatsheaf
Ashton-Under-Lyne, October 10, The Witchwood
To the Witchwood at Ashton Under Lyne for Glenn's last solo show of
1998.
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