Rosie Bell has kindly written a review of Fiction 2.
Last night’s Springsteen night was a great success – a good variety of songs and performers with a full and enthusiastic audience. If the earlier part of the show over-emphasised the serious singer/songwriter aspect of his work (hard not to when it’s all solo performers with acoustics), Tom McEwan balanced it out with showmanship and sheer bravado and, to the relief of some of the audience members at least, HITS – Thunder Road, Born To Run, Dancing in the Dark. For the audients I was sitting with, the performances had the desired effect of reacquaniting them with Springsteen’s skill as a narrative songwriter and making them want to check out the albums. I had great fun with my little set, backed at points by harmonica players and harmony singers, and joined Tom for Born to Run and Dancing in the Dark. The performance I enjoyed the most, however, was Simon Kempston’s shot at State Trooper, one of the most minimalistic performances ever: a barely audible two-string rhythm on guitar and reverb-drenched voice, all creating silence around it, true to the original atmosphere of the Nebraska album.
Speculation at the end about doing other tribute concerts – Richard Thompson was a candidate. So, strangely, were Chris de Burgh and King Crimson. Hmmm.