Great venue. Great music. Could have been so much better! (Apollo)

Member Name: opinions4u

Product:	Apollo
Date:	30/01/03 (333 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Intimate venue, Brilliant musicianship

Disadvantages: No showmanship

Having survived a life threatening operation to remove your pancreas, where the odds of survival were 2-1 against, you have the right to live life the way you want to.

Chris Rea chose to record the album he wanted to. Dancing Down The Stony Road. An offering of the Delta Blues played immaculately by a small band of musicians who have been with Rea for donkeys years. While the £10.99 handed over to www.cd-wow.com for this superb double album is money well spent, I also chose to part with over £50 for two tickets to see Rea at Manchester's intimate Carling Apollo venue. A venue I far prefer to the impersonal arenas that dominate indoor concerts.

Sited in Ardwick, just 5 minutes walk (if you are foolish enough to risk your safety in this way) from Piccadilly Station in the City Centre, there are plenty of car parks charging between £3 and £5. I was lucky enough to park on the main road for free. Numerous buses and taxis also pass this way.

The venue itself is a throwback to the sixties and probably hasn?t had its décor changed since then. Holding 2,500 in an all seater theatre, a well sized stage can be clearly seen from just about all seats.

So, what did Mr Rea have in mind? Well, a support act to start with. The very impressive Chris Difford (formerly of Squeeze) and the brilliant guitarist Francis Dunnery (formerly of It Bites - you may remember Calling All The Heores). They put on an enjoyable acoustic set lasting 30 minutes, taking tracks from Difford's latest solo album as well as Squeeze material such as Cool For Cats and Pulling Muscles From A Shell.

A short break, and Rea appeared to a somewhat muted reception from an ageing audience. This is a thinner Chris Rea compared to the one that hit the big time in the late eighties, where he collected numerous Brits nominations. But there is certainly no lack of talent here.

Screeching slide guitar. Booming gravely vocals. And new songs. In f
act, too many new songs. While I love the new album, Rea is a man with pedigree. There was no Fool If You Think Its Over. No Lets Dance or I Can Hear You Heartbeat. Auberge and Looking For The Summer were lost in the back catalogue. No place for Loving You Again.

So, of the eighteen tracks played, 14 came from Stony Road. References to his brush with death. References to Delta Blues. And a blues show this certainly was. The influences of Ry Cooder clear in the exquisite slide guitar. Rea knows how to build a song. Opening with Changing Times, he quickly merged this in to Dancing The Blues Away, recently performed live on the Parkinson show. The gospel feel of Sun Is Rising is an example of building a song though. Layer upon layer of instrumentation culminating in a superb crescendo of blues and classic guitar pose.

While spending most of the show switching between two marvellous sounding guitars, midway through the show a peculiar looking rectangular guitar appeared. In a (far too) rare acknowledgement of the audience, he pointed to the Shell logo and explained that he had found this guitar in South Africa, made from a petrol can by a guy who couldn't afford to buy his own guitar. It sounded fantastic, perfect for Catfish Girl, a simplistic ditty that lifted the mood.

But as Rea has done to me before, he immediately took the mood down to the depressingly doleful I Ain't Going Down This Way.

Heading For The City led us in to the older Rea material. But this was restricted to just On The Beach, played with an almost Hispanic tinge, Josephine, with an additional verse acknowledging the developing life of his eldest daughter and the unsurpassed Road To Hell (Parts I and II), with Robert Ahwaii playing the rhythm guitar that laid the foundations to the superb slide guitar that is Rea's hallmark.

A brief departure, loud applause, and a two track encore. Straight back to the new stuff. My Peace W
ill Come, a beautifully sung ballad at a moment that demanded something up tempo, followed by the concluding track The Hustler, lifted to heights well above those it offers on the album, brought the show to a close. Crys for a second encore went ignored.

It was, all in all, a frustrating night. I had witnessed a new Blues star in the making. 51 year old Chris Rea is treading in territory that delivers music of the highest quality. And there is no doubt that the musical content of this performance was of the highest quality, vocally and instrumentally.

But I felt let down. A lack of talking to his appreciative audience. The repeated habit of raising the tempo only to kill it stone dead. And you simply cannot justify the omission of Stainsby Girls in any circumstances. 95 minutes is too short a gig for an artist with such a marvellous back catalogue.

I?m told the tour is sold out. Dates at smaller venues in Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield, Glasgow, Newcastle and other towns remain. If you have tickets, enjoy what you see. But do not expect to see a showman. Rea is a musician who plays live. Not a live performer.

More information from www.chrisrea.com or www.ticketmaster.com

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