Give a little bit…

I was over in Manchester today for a business event and to see Roger Hodgson of Supertramp in the evening.
The Lowry hotel (*****) overlooks this stretch of water with a graceful pedestrian suspension bridge leading across to the City Centre. The area is full of developments with very expensive apartments. That building with the sticky-out cubes is some sort of Court Complex at street level.

Inside the hotel, the Atrium has these two large suspended mesh figures.

Roger is the one in white on this blurry sneaky photo I took. Yes, the stage set does consist of shrubs! Note that the house lights are on low- Roger likes to see his audience. Playing Electric Piano, Grand Piano, and two guitars (one a 12 string) he went down very well to the (mostly aged 50+) audience although I was surprised to see in the interval that the upper Circle wasn’t in use. Unsurprisingly he was note perfect, although a couple of the songs were weakened by the lack of expected drums & bass and would have otherwise soared. Most of the solo woodwind was provided by another musician, Aaron MacDonald, who was remarkably versatile and had the ability to stroll onto the stage at the last moment and be on the spot ready to play exactly when needed (although the lighting man was a few seconds behind him!). Aaron also provided harmonies when it was right to do so and even had a Swanee Whistle portamento horn (made up name) for that bit in the Logical Song when it goes a bit noisy.

One song I didn’t expect in the set and was delighted to hear performed live- Rosie had everything planned from their second (& not too hot) album, Indelibly stamped.

One other treat for me- I found a staircase in the Theatre I hadn’t seen before with some splendid tilework.

Something for the weekend?

I’m back, fresh from holidays and the August blogger break. I could do a little bit of surfing whilst in Spain but emails mostly eluded me.

A big thanks to my guest posters who kept up the interest here. I’ve repealed the posting rights now so that the author list goes back to normal. (I wish that some others did the same- my Blogpower Control Panel is getting a bit long…)

Lots of blog reading to catch up on from the last fortnight and lots of material for future posts once I sort out my photos.

In the meantime, here is Hazel O’Connor performing “Will You” on TOTP back in 1981, that song with one of the all time Sax breaks. More on Hazel another time.