Thunder - Tuesday 28th March - Hammersmith Apollo

Luke Morley and Ben Matthews

One of Britain's top rock bands in one of the World's great venues - what's not to like? Well, the venue name of course - I'm not going to call it the Eventim Apollo.

Regular readers of the blog would have known exactly where to find us in the venue (to within a couple of metres) and Danny and the boys were on excellent form. Their new album, "Rip It Up" has been a bit of a slow burner for me - especially after the fantastic "Wonder Days" predecessor. It is growing on me a bit and the new songs worked well in a live setting.

The normally excellent Lynne Jackaman appeared for some background wailing in the encore on "She Likes the Cocaine" and unfortunately it was wailing - her fantastic vocals not really shown to their best ability in my opinion.

So like pretty much every Thunder show I've been to, this was really good. It just didn't quite feel as much fun as normal for some reason. Can't quite put my finger on why.

[ Edit - Subsequent Christmas show(s) added in Wolverhampton - yay! ]

Setlist
No One Gets Out Alive
The Enemy Inside
River of Pain
Resurrection Day
Right From the Start
Backstreet Symphony
Higher Ground
In Another Life
The Thing I Want
Don't Wait For Me
Rip It Up
Love Walked In
I Love You More Than Rock 'n' Roll
+
Wonder Days
She Likes the Cocaine 
Dirty Love

Jackaman - Wednesday 20th January - Borderline

Lynne Jackaman at the Borderline

My first show of 2016 is at the Borderline to see Jackaman - the collective backing the eponymous singer Lynne Jackaman which includes Quireboys Guy Griffin & Nick Malling.

The evening started with a very thorough frisk and electronic wand search on the door - just as well we were in plenty of time as the queue grew noticeably due to the slow progress. Once inside we were able to enjoy a brief set from Pete Shoulder. The "Union" frontman was on his own here, performing an acoustic selection from his previous album and forthcoming one. Pete was in good form and seemed popular with the expanding crowd. A limited sampler EP was available and duly purchased.

Jackaman was always going to be louder, but we stayed in our position under the main speaker at the front. I had not seen the band before (but did have the "No Halo" EP) so sort of knew what to expect. And very impressive it was too. In terms of bluesy Rock and Soul, it's probably not too much of a stretch to compare Lynne Jackaman's terrific vocals to a young Tina Turner. Backed by a stella line-up of musicians, the result was very pleasing. A couple of the songs themselves maybe could have been stronger, but for an artist early in her career, this was very good indeed. The ex-St Jude singer also interacted well with the crowd.

Looking forward to next time.