Today is the day of Son’s first driving lesson or rather it
was meant to be but his driving licence has gone missing. So Leamington gets a
reprieve and can breathe a sigh of relief. I’m not sure whether it’s lost, been pinched
or (knowing him) simply lying on his bedroom floor.
I bike today and arrive home revved up for my night out with
Tom Robinson. Although I’m sure this won’t be a late night, it’s sure to be a
10pm curfew, at the latest. We wouldn't want to keep the old man from his cocoa
and not him keep us from ours.
So, on a night when we all expect to be home early for our
cocoas support act Kitten Pyramid turns up already in his pyjamas. After a slow
melodic acoustic start where he does the dedicating a song to his wife sort of
thing, he suddenly changes tact. He ties a naked Action Man to his music stand,
invites his son upon stage to play drums then picks up a bass guitar himself and
turns into the White Stripes. An intriguing transformation indeed but then he
is from Burton on Trent.
Follow that Tom Robinson or should I say the ‘as seen at
Glasto’ Tom Robinson. Tom is the latest ‘oldie’ to reform, if you can reform
yourself that is and he’s now released his first album in 20 years entitled ‘Only
the Now’. It’s an album funded by pledgers on Pledge Music and not surprisingly
this album makes up around half of tonight’s set or should we say sets as Tom,
now age 65, opts to take a siesta half way through.
The majority of the rest of the set comes from an album 37
years old, 1978’s ‘Power In The Darkness’ and he opens with a couple of old
favourites from that record ‘Winter of ’79’ and ‘Too Good to Be True’. These
go down very well, as is to be expected, with a mainly but not exclusively older
crowd tonight. Then he follows those with a track off the new record, the very
appropriate ‘Never Get Old’.
Robinson is, as always, totally engaging on stage.
Every
song has a back story or a joke behind it. ‘Martin’ has, of course, the
whole
crowd behind it with everyone yelling the key parts back at him or in
the case of Mr Irritating next to me singing every single s***ing word
back and he is not in
TR’s league vocally.
The first set ends with a blatant plug for the merchandising
stand and Tom’s big hit 80s ‘War Baby’ one of two tracks tonight from 1984’s ‘Hope
And Glory’ album. His other top 40 hit ‘Atmospherics: Listen to the Radio’
follows later.
The second set starts with ‘Home In The Morning’ off the new
album and then a solo track performed by Lee Forsyth Griffiths ‘Meet Me Halfway’.
‘Glad to be Gay’ comes dedicated to George Michael and with
yet another lyrical makeover. In fact it appears Robinson was brought a lyric
sheet before the song. The memory probably isn’t what it used to be.
One thing that hasn’t changed is his determination to tackle
issues that he is passionate about. His new material tonight took on the banks
(‘Risky Business’), suicide (‘Don’t Jump Don’t Fall’), legal aid (‘The Mighty
Sword Of Justice’ and the Iraq war (‘Merciful God’).
Another thing that hasn’t changed is his ability to belt out
the powerful oldies as a double-barrelled finale of ‘Up Against the Wall’ and
‘2-4-6-8 Motorway’ arrives.
There’s time for one more and he returns to play an encore of
the title track off his new album. Before the song he harks back to his decades
that have passed but was keen to point out that is exactly what they have
done. Their time has now passed and now he appreciates more than ever the need
to live ‘Only the Now’. Good advice.
I tell L to get my cocoa ready but apparently that'll have to wait, a dog has left a ball by the front door that has my name on it.
(Wednesday 11
th November)
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