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FLASHBACK BLUES
WINDOW SHOPPING THROUGH THE PAST
The Prine Shrine Archived pages
(you never know what you might find here)
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Europe
Opera
House, Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1
December 7, 2001
John Prine
By: İMalcolm Jeffrey
URL: http://freespace.virgin.net/malcolm.jeffrey/ticktock.htm#Prine
I've been playing bass with country and folk bands for coming up to
twenty years (old git alert!), and as time has gone on I've become more
and more aware of the work of John Prine: most of the singers I've
worked with either cover his songs or rate him highly as a songwriter, and
I've ended up sort of familiar with his major works and have come to
respect his poignancy, brevity, succinctness and humour. Lo and
behold, Bob gets an excited call from his friend Jackie in Bolton (a big
JP fan of long standing !) telling him that Prine's doing a rare gig in
the UK, in the snowy, Northern wastes of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Bob sorts
the tickets out, I buy spares for other friends, and myself, Pete the
Glass, Ben, and his American friends Stan and Caroline set off in a hired
people-carrier on Friday afternoon to commute to the gig. the support is
Chip Taylor, the writer of "Wild Thing" (!) but he's written off, as
three separate accidents (other people's) result in at least an
hour-and-a-half's delay getting up the M1 / A1 route and, after some
creative driving on Pete's part, we claw back enough time to arrive at
the Opera House at 8:45pm. as Ben orders the beer in the upstairs bar the
Tannoy tells us the main artist of tonight's performance will be on
stage in two minutes; as Ben pays for the beer it's one minute to go;
and we settle in our circle seats next to Bob, Jackie and her husband John
within twenty seconds of the lights dimming (timing).
The Newcastle Opera House is a cozy, intimate, Good-Old-Days style
venue with a small stage and auditorium and multiple balconies,
ornate and heavily decorated with plaster, and as John Prine and his duo
stroll onto the stage to a huge cheer they easily fill the boards. stage
left, double-bassist Dave Jacques is tall and pony-tailed, guitarist Jason
Wilber is on the right and both of them look smart country, suited and
tied, with Wilber additionally seeming more accountanty, or maybe a Man In
Black : in between them at the back is a little table supporting drinks,
some amp-like equipment and stuff, and a salmon-pink rubber head staring
from it at the audience ! John Prine is in dark suit, shirt and tie, a tad
more portly and thinning up top than recent pictures, a recent survivor of
cancer and a hip replacement : he sports a huge quaff and, business-like,
straps on a huge jumbo f-hole guitar. this feeds back straight away and Mr.
Prine's first words to us are "Sorry 'bout that - I broke my arm."
with a mischievous flexing of those eyebrows ! then, as the crowd's
laughter subsides, it's straight into "Spanish Pipedream", with the
audience straight into singing along with "Blow up your TV" as if this
were a folk club rather than a theatre. the irony isn't lost on me as I
realise that below me in the stalls, Pete the Glass, having driven for
over 5 ½ hours over 260 miles, has only just sat down to have John Prine
sing Pete's most requested cover right back at him !
a huge round of applause greets the end of the song as John passes the
jumbo to a guitar tech to tune the bloody thing, picks up what might have
been a Martin and is straight into "Six O'clock News" before we've
finished clapping. Wilber is playing harp and Jacques is bowing his bass
and John's playing on the acoustic is nice and intricate, and he seems
to be in good singing voice - when he finishes, the audience's
applause is warm and genuine, peppered with a few shouts for requests
including rather insistent ones from a loud, drunken Geordie Prine fan
over to our left (there's always one, isn't there ?). in a croakier
speaking voice than his clearer, singing one, Prine explains that with a
change of record company last year he re-recorded his most famous songs on
the "Souvenirs" CD for the German market : but when he listened to the
resultant quality it was "too good for the Germans" ! then it's "Souvenirs"
itself, nicely sung, followed by a jaunty "Fish And Whistle" with Mr.
Wilber on mandolin : after each whimsical line in these songs, a lady
punter behind us assumes it's her duty to laugh politely at the joke as
if she's never heard them before. then Dave Jacques switches to what
looked like a Jerry Jones Longhorn bass for a sprightly "Picture Show".
Ben and I have a quick few words on Mr. Jacques' solid playing - he
prefers to slide up and down five frets on the strings rather than across
to the next one up or down, maybe a hint of double bass technique ? -
and we agree he's a fine bassist, though for me Jason Wilber is still
finding his fingers and hasn't warmed up enough yet. the set so far is
one long greatest hits show, and next up is "People Putting People Down"
- it clearly delights the crowd, and it's about this point that they
start doing the good old U.S. round-of-applause after the first line
schtick for every song - and Wilber gives me the lie straight away,
firing himself up to producing a lovely, slow bottom E-string guitar solo
a la Johnny Cash, and some clever chord runs which nicely complement Prine's
effortless, emotional delivery. more requests are shouted out, notably for
"Bruised Orange" and "Sabu" and some unintelligible ones from the
drunken Geordie lady: John Prine amuses, and fobs them off, by telling us
"we're doing the songs in alphabetical order".
the jumbo guitar is back on for a rousing "Grandpa Was A Carpenter"
- it's not even in when the song starts, so it's obviously a pig to
keep in tune and is sent off straight after the song again ! Following
this, John tells us that the next one is dedicated to Kitty, the girl who
first broke his heart (but supplied him with material for three good songs
in the process !) and then sings us a sensitive and wistful "Far From Me",
followed by an equally heart-tugging "All The Best". then Prine sings
us a splendid "Angel From Montgomery", with double-bass low and some
super slide work on Jason's guitar, followed by a more up-beat and
almost slow Cajun "You Got Gold", following which, in the enthusiastic
applause, the two supporting members quit the stage, leaving John Prine to
entertain us with a lengthy solo section of the set. he eases us in with a
sing-a-long "That's The Way That The World Goes 'Round", and then,
me being no John Prine expert after all, finally sings one I don't know
- "The Bottomless Lake", a tragi-comic holiday trip accident leaving
the protagonists sinking helplessly into the depths. in a strumming
talk-over bit before the last verse, Prine confides that long ago, he
realised as a songwriter that if you haven't got a good Ending to a
song,
the only substitute is a Moral : "Here's the Moral", he says,
continuing.! after this, he entertains us with the love affair between
"Donald And Lydia", and then hits all of us with a new song, the
tremendous "The Other Side Of Town". written while stuck in the house
after breaking his arm on some ice (earlier he's told us he was only
outside to feed some birds), it's a top funny tale about a man who's
developed the enviable skill of looking as if he's listening while his
wife nags him, but inside he's imagining he's completely elsewhere, at
the bar or the dog track. if only.! next we get "In Spite Of Ourselves"
- in the absence of Iris DeMent, John has to do both parts of this
celebration of love between two people, so he whimsically and
heavily telegraphs the genders of the singers of each verse ("then
SHE says.", "to which HE replies.") and then finally hits us
with a super, sensitive "Sam Stone" to conclude his well-picked,
quality solo section before leaving the stage to a thunderous wave of
appreciation from such a small theatre.
he's only off for a breath, though, returning with his
instrumentalists to open this last section with "Bear Creek" - the
only one of the night not his own, I think it was the Carter Family ? -
and then the punter who's been calling out for "Sabu" all night is
finally sated as the following song is, indeed, "Sabu Visits The Twin
Cities Alone". at the end, with impeccable timing, Ben proposes more
beer - the Opera House is that rare, civilised place which trusts its
punters to take their beer in (either that or they wouldn't dare to try
and stop Geordies doing it !) and he leaves for the bar just as Mr. Prine
does the band introductions. he's also back just in time to hear Prine
begin "Sins Of Memphisto" with a false start - he forgets the second
line and glibly recovers with "I wrote another song just like that, only
longer." then restarting ! then he sings us a
tremendous "Hello In There", with guitar and bass beautifully played,
restrained and supportive, and then only the second one I don't know of
tonight, a series of spoken vignettes centered around events by "Lake
Marie". Ben tells me the following Monday that he would have come all
the way up to Newcastle and paid the £16.50 ticket price just to hear
that one song : it's a powerful, economical scene-setter and proves to
be the last of the main set as, one-and-three-quarter hours after the
start, they take their bows and leave the audience showing heartfelt and
vocal appreciation.
but they're easily called back, and the three of them take positions
again amid more shouts for requests, gloriously including another
tongue-in-cheek call for "Sabu", and a generous "Anything you want !"
from the noisy Geordie drunken woman. John sings us a pretty fine "Bruised
Orange", a rousing, almost rockabilly "Please Don't Bury Me",
featuring some finger-manglingly fierce, intricate country picking from
Jason, and then an absolutely top-notch "Paradise" with some super,
melodic bass lines from Mr. Jacques and all sung along to with gusto, and
then, with a cheery "My name's John Prine. Goodnight", the show's
over and they're off. queuing down the stairs, the drunken Geordie woman
serenades the crowded stairwell with a solo Christmas song by way of a
farewell, and then our party troll off in search of a curry house to allow
sustenance to be consumed, additional lager to be drunk, and poor Pete the
Glass, the other hero of the night, to rest for a bit before driving us
all home again. with all the traffic and accidents out of the way, the
return leg takes Pete 2 hours 55 minutes and I'm home asleep at 4am.
Verdict time then. for an obscure (i.e. not MTV-commercially
successful) singer-songwriter, I was surprised how much of John Prine's
set I was familiar with - though this was largely due to his sporting
willingness to do a greatest hits selection all night, which is something
not many "celebrated" artists will do for you. overall, what a
privilege, I thought, to see the great man on such fine, humorous form :
the rest of our party already being Prine initiates, the consensus seems
to be that it was a finer-than-most outing for Prine, and I found him a
literate, earnest and poignant performer with a refreshing sense of
mischief, and a pretty fine, controlled picker to boot. Coupled with his
excellent, long-term duo, whose accompaniment could complement his variety
of performing styles with ease and sensitivity, I was treated to an
evening's entertainment by an acclaimed legend and it was an honour to
have been there. Could have been closer, though.!
İMalcolm Jeffrey
Olympia
Theatre, Dublin 2
December 10, 2001 with Todd Snider
By: Goran Bendiktsen Aasen
Read Goran's
review and check out his photos!
By: A singer who is almost as old as John and still waiting for a
break
This was a fantastic concert, John did 2 hours 15 mins nonstop. His bass player and electric guitarist took their usual 20 mins break but John as usual continued to entertain a packed house in his own inimitable way. He got a well deserved standing ovation and we look forward to his next gig here in Ireland.
Opera
House, Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1
July 12, 2001 with Todd Snider
By: Graham
My 7 year old daughter, Louise, and I traveled from the far north of Scotland (800 miles round trip). About 4 songs into John Prine's set she turned to me and said "Daddy he's ace"! A taxi driver earlier in the day told us he'd had a lady from London in his cab earlier singing John's praises. It's a big old goofy world!
By: inky
bliss!! great gig (nice to see chip taylor) but the icing on the cake was the bar in the basement called dylans which played nothing but and served timothy taylors landlord bitter. a veritable middle aged playground !!
 Waterfront Hall,
Belfast
December 8, 2001 with Todd Snider
By: Goran Bendiktsen Aasen
See his review and photos here
By: Harrycameron
thanks John for another magical night. I have listened and lived my life to your songs on vinyl/CD for 30 years. However when stripped of the studio ambiance and heard live they never fail to bring me to tears and every concert is a "memory that can't be boughten". Hope you'll be back soon .
PS I know that there are many great songs that are available to pick from your back catalogue but never get played live. Could I put in a request for one from the overlooked Common Sense Album and request "He was in heaven before he died". Its a real gem.
By: Declan Forde
Small town, bright lights, Saturday night...well, Belfast is not quite middle America and in the cold of a December evening it can be somewhat bleak outside. Inside the atmosphere in the Waterfront Hall was muted and workmanlike. The Show started promptly at eight and Frank Galligan, extolling the craft of the singer-songwriter, introduced the capacity audience to Chip Taylor and his two fellow musicians. Gradually Taylor wove his musical and anecdotal spell leaving the crowd demanding more.
John Prine slipped onto the stage with his shadows, Dave Jacques and Jason Wilber, and launched into a set of musical short stories and tall
tales. It was Prine time entertainment and the man could do no wrong. The audience shouted up requests and John Prine laughed along as the waves of affection just rolled and rolled from the audience onto the
stage. It was
a, paradoxically, robust understated performance. It is indeed a rare thing to be in the presence of elegiac genius.
A friend of mine once told me that there are three stages in a mans life...when he believes in Santa Claus... when he stops believing in Santa Claus and... when he becomes Santa Claus. Well, in this most John Prine of seasons the man himself
dispensed his words and music with all the love and warmth of Kris Kringle himself. Christmas came early to Belfast.
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