Date: November 27 2008
Place: Principal Club in Thessaloniki
It was 21.40 when suddenly the lights turned off and a nice music coming from the stage made Principal's Live stage shaken... Dub Pistols were On Stage!
"Dub Pistols" is a six member dub band from West London. They proved to be the Highlight of the night, performing songs with an admirably professional way that I didn't expect.
Their best part of the night was when they performed live the songs "The problem is..." and "Gangsters", you could see the ecstatic audience at its best.
Their total performance was almost excellent and they came back for an encore, that made their fans extremely happy. They were Grrrrroovy, Alive, Vivid, OUT THERE, playing for more than an hour!
Exactly at 23:11 the lights turned off once again. A mysterious tune started playing on the background as the time for Tricky's turn to impress us had arrived. The first song that opened the live was from his new album "Knowle West Boy" called "Past Mistake". From the very beginning I realized that there were some issues with the sound of the microphones as we couldn't clearly listen to the vocals. Later I realized that the problem wasn't based on Principal's equipment but on the performers.
Some songs sounded like acoustic rock versions of the tracks as the vocals could be scarcely heard.
Now, as for Tricky's new vocalist, Francesca ...
She didn't persuade me that she had previous experience in a live concert, in addition she gave me the impression of a next door girl with a good voice who was too shy to sing aloud.
"There were several times I felt the stage was empty!"
[I would like to make clear that Dub Pistols are not included in this remark.]
As for the final song of the encore... I can't find the proper words to describe that mess. He performed a cover of "The ace of spades" by Motorhead and suddenly the supposedly dark and moody atmosphere he was trying to build was ruined by a punk rock song that gave me the image of a hooliganism episode on a stage! All the front row of the audience and almost 20 more people, run on stage to jump around and throw bottles of water everywhere.
I'm not against experimentalism on stage but not in such an irrelevant way.
I heard many and different opinions about this cover but I decided to write my personal view.
I wasn't expecting to see neither Martina Topley Bird (ex vocalist) nor Pj Harvey. But at least I was expecting to see a good live and not something average.
||Highlights||
The highlights of Tricky's Live were the songs "Pumpkin" and "Black Steel" both from the album Maxinquaye.
The worst ones were "Love Cats" [a Cure cover]
and I would include the extended version of "Past Mistake" too. [My favorite song of the new album that was almost destroyed from the low vocals. I believe that the magic of this song is the vocal part which we couldn't hear.]
In conclusion I saw an average live of Tricky and his band that lasted almost 2 hours. If the sound was a bit better surely everyone would be satisfied.
Sum Up:
Dim highlights were striving desperately to improve the nonexistent atmosphere.
Perhaps the Spirit of Trip Hop had fallen asleep or even better it was totally absent!
Quotation of the day:
Don't judge an artist from a past live, it might lead to a past mistake.
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