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live review:
arthur lee & love
queen elizabeth hall, london, june 14, 2002:
it appears to be west coast acid casualty season on the south bank. the mojo
crowd have spent much of the week in the company of brian wilson & his
fantastically gifted band of ex-power-poppers, who were playing their second
series of shows this year at the royal festival hall next door. now it's now
the turn of arthur lee to come back from the brink. just for the record,
brian's shows were all extraordinary and celebratory, the perfection of the
songs making them truly the best gigs ever, but he's clearly left something
behind along the way. although his voice is much improved since his initial
comeback in the late 90s, he's never going to sing the way he did when he
made those records. this, together with his discomfort being onstage, makes
his performance feel somewhat like a therapy session. so feelings were mixed
and hopes were noncommital for arthur. I needn't have worried. from the
first tambourine shimmy of "my little red book," he was in full control of
all his faculties. such presence!! having missed the u.k. shows arthur
played in the early 90s before his prison sentence, I was hardly prepared
for how great his voice still sounded. it sounds very great indeed: soulful,
resonant, full of power and emotion. more to the point, he can still carry a
tune. and strike me down, what tunes. occasionally the "I'm a survivor"
spectre would rear its head; the line "we're all normal and we want our
freedom" inevitably having a quite profound resonance after all art's been
through in the past decade. but for me, the show was all about how strange
and beautiful those three LPs by the original love really were. together
with numbers from the latin-garage-psych of their first two records, most of
forever changes was strewn throughout the set, and tonight there's much
gossip of a full-length performance of the entire record accompanied by
orchestra in the not-too-distant future. this evening, sadly the strings,
brass and woodwinds were nowhere to be heard; instead we have frequent
histrionic intrusions from the solo guitarist filling the hole, trying to
approximate that soaring flute line (say) from "she comes in colours" (god,
that lyric still astounds me) or the herb alpert-ine brass from "alone again
or." awww, c'mon. give the guy a break. he's doing his best. an orchestral
forever changes show next year? brian performing smile the year after? I
can't wait. it's a good time to be a west coast acid casualty. harvey
williams
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