Wed 25 Jun – Buddy Guy

So, my boyfriend Bob's Christmas present finally arrived!
I got him the tickets for this way back in December and then just had to attatch the ticket conformation e-mail to the top of his Christmas present in an envelope. Not the most glamorous of things to open, but at least it was to the point!

To be honest, for me, this gig has been massively overshadowed by the fact that I am seeing Radiohead for the first time on Sunday. I should've been looking forward to Buddy more, but that's the joy of hindsight!

For a number of stupid reasons I ended up having to drive there, even though I hate driving in Manchester city centre - it scares the crap out of me and I will avoid it at all costs until my dying day. Bob made me feel slightly better, though, by saying he knew the way to Bridgewater Hall and it was in fact very easy and stress free. However, we took a left too early off Mancunian Way and got quite trapped in the one-way systems for about quarter of an hour and I nearly cried and just felt like stopping the car in the middle of town, getting out and walking instead. Luckily just as I was about to erupt, we found a car park that was dead close and even though it wasn't the closest one, we just parked in that to put an end to the whole terrible farce.
I'm the last person to ever wanna go on about ridiculous male/female stereotypes but seriously...why say you know the way when you obviously don't know it that well?! It's not like it's gonna make a dent in your manhood. Not with me, anyway. Jeez... =P

So yeah, we finally got there, just before the show was about to start. We had great seats on the row directly in front of the mixing desk, presumably the best possible sound quality as well as having a great view!
Right on time a bent-over, disjointed-looking Northern Irish bloke in a funky hat took to the stage with his acoustic guitar. "I'm not Buddy Guy, just in case anyone's under any false illusions!" He announced, before opening a song with an acoustic strum and then stopping. But the chord was repeating! Ah, turns out he had one of those loop thingies, which he used to great effect. So, he had his acoustic guitar, his voice (with which he was singing lead into one mic and layering harmonies of backing vocals into another) and a little synth (I think...couldn't really see it though) that he was just putting little, quite bassy riffs down with. Of course by the time he'd layered all this stuff it sounded like he had a whole band behind him. Nothing particularly new anymore, but he did it very well. His voice, also, was incredible. Somewhere between Paul Rodgers, Paolo Nutini and Rory Gallagher with even a few Robert Plant-esque decorations thrown in every now and again. His music was often very bluesy, sometimes more folky, but always accessible. After the first two tracks with the loop thing (I really should find out what they're properly called) he finally announced his name: Foy Vance! This wasn't very intelligable at first, but he must be used to that particular problem, as he repeated his name several times, and then again later on, more slowly. The only thing he didn't do was spell it out to us. =P
I was also starting to worry after the set openers that the rest of his set might be a bit formulaic. He had layered his parts in practically the same order doing exactly the same thing, but luckily he did a few songs that were just him and his acoustic, or him and his electric, just letting the songs simply shine through. All-in-all, I very much enjoyed his set. We bought an EP after the gig which he signed for me:



So yeah, Buddy Guy came on at about 8:30. His band took their places and then announced Buddy to the stage! He was wearing (perhaps rather oddly) a blue Adidas tracksuit. Bob said after the show that maybe he'd Googled Manchester and saw a picture of Ian Brown which influenced his fashion choice for the evening. =P
To a certain extent, I really had no idea what to expect from his performance. The only live stuff I've ever seen is on my Supershow DVD and I've never heard any of his actual studio albums; all I've heard is a best-of that I think I copied off Bob. So while I am familiar with his sound and greatly enjoy his music, when it comes down to a lot of the finer details I'm pretty much clueless.
To my moderate surprise it turns out he is a very affable performer and a great entertainer, not just with the actual notes he's playing but with the way he presents them. There is an element of comedy in his live performance that was making me smile the whole way through. At times it was as though he was unsure whether he wanted to take himself seriously or not, but this wasn't particularly distracting in any way. I think the sheer brilliance of his guitar playing only shows that he couldn't take himself anything but seriously, but that there's no need to be dour!
His set was a mix of his own compositions (Feels Like Rain, Damn Right, I've Got the Blues) and old blues standards such as Hoochie Coochie Man and Boogie Mama. He also did his impressions of other blues players which I had been previously told about. I wasn't as impressed with this as I'd been geared up to be. I just think he could've made a lot more of it. A lot of them just sorta blended into one for me, apart from his Hendrix, and that was mostly because he put a wah pedal on and got the Hendrix tone going. It certainly wasn't "if you close your eyes, it could be Jimi Hendrix", like a friend of mine suggested I would feel. Still, again, this was a lot of fun to watch and listen to. To be fair, he could've done anything he wanted because just listening to him play at all is a sheer joy and a bit of an honour, really. The guy's incredible. Also, twice he got off the stage and wandered around the whole audience, soloing and singing as he went and teasing the crowd members. The second time, he even ended up right at the top of the venue, causing all of us to stand up, craning our necks wondering where on earth he'd gone! But as he was wandering about he'd be soloing at full pelt; completely and utterly effortless.
I was disappointed when he went off after about an hour and a half, as he'd said he was gonna play until he was kicked offstage! Oh well. His band was great, he was consistently great. In fact the only little things that let the show down were that the soundman seemed to not be completely on the ball with regards to dynamics half the time (things too quiet and him taking ages to turn 'em up and vice-versa) and some pillock who started taking Buddy to task about some stuff he said early on about Muddy Waters in England. Quite rightly though, the guy just got heckled by half the rest of us, so it was pretty funny really.

So yeah...that's it! ^_^