Tuesday 24 March 2015

Alan Parsons Project





Thursday 18th March 2015
The ALAN PARSONS PROJECT 
O2 Shepherds Bush

My first love introduced me to the Alan Parsons Project, aged 15.  I don't think I'd ever thought of them as a band, simply music, the soundtrack to much of my teenage years.  I certainly had no idea that this was the 'Prog Rock' that the old people talked of in hushed tones.  In later years 'The Turn of a Friendly Card' became my poker table anthem.  So, the chance to see them perform live on my teenage turf was the stuff that dreams are made of.

Janie and I arrived at the Shepherds Bush Empire with time to spare, but early indication from the queue at the door was that we hadn't played enough Dungeons and Dragons to have earned entry to the mosh pit, so we allowed ourselves to become distracted by gin and chicken wings in the pub next door.

There were two support bands UROCK and Purson.  We didn't actually make it in in time to see if they did (rock) but we did catch Purson and I'm thrilled that we did.  The band are talented musicians with a truly unique style; on stage visually they resemble Morticia Addams and the Hair Bear Bunch, with the exception of an almost unbearably elegant Samuel Shove, looking like a gorgeous 70s mannequin and giving a somewhat aloof Lady Penelope on keyboards.  

 The music is somehow both everything you'd expect and nothing that you would have imagined.  Plenty of rocking out but with a depth and an elegance to the lyrics that speak to you right at the back of the Shepherds Bush Empire.  

In a dusty attic, he found a magazine 

Full of gods and heroes, of deities and queens 
He took it as his bible, with religion in his eyes 
He saw his life before him, he saw his name in lights 



I cared enough to seek this song out once back at home and they are the lyrics to Tragic Catastrophe, a song worth listening to, a lot!


And so, a little after 9.15pm, on the night before Ofsted, The Alan Parsons Live Project took to the stage.  I'd never seen Alan Parsons before and I don't quite know what I was expecting.  What I got was the love child of Demis Roussos and Professor Lupin with incredibly piercing eyes.


But what I didn't get was a one man band.  All the guys who make up the Alan Parsons Live Project demonstrate outstanding musicianship, most of the band step up to take lead vocals for different songs and seem to swap guitars for saxophones for percussion at lightning speed.

This was, indeed, a greatest hits tour.  I Robot was, in my mind, a weaker number to open the show and I would have loved them to open with the roar of approval that greeted Damned If I Do.  But from that point in every number was magic.

The most poignant numbers of the night were sung by P.J.Olsson, a charismatic man from Michigan with the voice of an angel.  'Time' and 'Old and Wise' were sung with heartbreaking clarity and beauty leaving this dance happy girl in a soggy puddle of emotion, awash with memories.  He stayed absolutely true to the cadence of the original yet his youthful voice belied the fact that these songs are more than 30 years old.

If I was to die tonight - I could die happy.  I would want Old and Wise played at my funeral and if PJ Olson was around, he'd get the booking.


 Hearing the first 5 tracks of The Turn of a Friendly Card melting into each other, as they were meant to be heard, was another highlight.  The concept album may have fallen out of fashion but quality never will and the haunting lyrics of 'The Turn of a Friendly Card Part 1' made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
There are unsmiling faces and bright plastic chains
And a wheel in perpetual motion
And they follow the races and pay out the gains
With no show of an outward emotion

And they think it will make their lives easier
For God knows, up till now it's been hard

But the game never ends when your whole world depends
On the turn of a friendly card
No, the game never ends when your whole world depends
On the turn of a friendly card




 
I was astonished that during 'Nothing left to Lose' (1980) I could hear real echoes of another song, I couldn't place it at first, but it drove me crazy - staying just out of reach.   I think, perhaps, that it's Abba's  'Slipping Through My Fingers' (1981) However,  as it seems that it's fashionable and indeed lucrative right now to claim similarities  in music, it could be that this dance happy girl is just getting in on the plagiarism witch hunt.  
Listen in - and you decide.


14-20 seconds
SET LIST
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