To me this is indeed the best band he’s had. However, they’re not always that good.
A few examples:
- Into speeding on some tunes making the band sound less tight, and those added ‘last word’ endings after an already proper ending of a song on almost every song (sounds almost amateurish to me)
- Jim being so bored with only getting to play solos on silly songs like IUTC and CBC and being obsessed with playing different every time resulting in progressively wackier and wilder solos the extend that it just isn’t good anymore
- Glenn really got problems with his intonation on the big bass, just listen to any version of Bonaparte from this tour to hear how off he is so many times making the song almost unlistenable at times
- John’s playing isn’t melodically as inventive, original and interesting as Mike’s, also he seems to have some problems with intonation with high notes on the fiddle and he’s got some timing issues when strumming stringed intruments as sometimes is notacible on CBC
- Mike making mistakes on the pipes on many occasions last tour on F&S
- Richard plays the exact same strat solo on R&J since 1996 which baffles me and still it doesn’t sound confident at times
- Guy never does anything else on the keys than filling the soundstage, nothing technically challenging and when he does do a solo like with the hillbillies or in BIA a few tours back it is always free of inspired improvisation and out of the nerve of playing a solo he speeds on many occasions
- Graeme hasn’t played a single good solo from start to finish on OES to date as far as I’m aware of. Always timing errors, notes that are out of key and by far the worst of all are those long way too high notes that he tries to reach and that really hurt my ears
Negativity mode off now. I think this band is fantastic and I really enjoyed the one concert I attended this tour in Antwerp.
Really interesting post.
I completely agree re Jim and weird solos. I remember listening to different recordings of Marbletown in 2015. Jim tended to end up getting two “spots” in the playout of the song and towards the end of the tour, I remember it sounding like he was trying to emulate the whacky solo on the end of Bowie’s Aladdin Sane. Quite a few of his bits on this tour sound like that too.
Re John and Mike. I love them both. They recently played in a pub that’s local to me and I only found out a couple of days after it happened grrrrrr. It does seem that they were “the latest thing” a few years ago. I remember a post on Guy’s forum a few years ago (pre Nigel or Graeme) where someone asked him about what the chances were of having a sax player in the band. I searched for the question recently and can’t find it but I recall his reply running something along the lines of “it would be nice on some songs but he’d end up playing tambourine 90% of the time.” The irony is that John and Mike are playing more percussion in this tour than ever before.
Danny-I love Danny and when I met him I thought he was so friendly and easy to talk to. To be honest, if you think of the whole world of MK as an industry or a business, then there
must be professionalism involved as there is in any job. If Glenn asked for a new drummer then really, as fans, we shouldn’t know about it. That information should be kept among Mark and management. Hard to give an analogy as I’m a teacher so can’t relate to many jobs but if I put in a “complaint” (for want of a better word) against one of my colleagues then I’d hardly expect the parents of my children (as stakeholders and customers) to ever know about it.
I’m not a drummer and don’t want to give an opinion on who is better but Ianto doesn’t seem to pay much attention and, as already stated, he fees the need to have the last word on every song which I feel shows immaturity.
