Concert Review : Steve Hackett - The Ferry, Glasgow

It's been about 20 years since Steve Hackett last performed in Glasgow, but the packed Ferry showed that he's still got a lot of loyal and committed fans in these parts. This seems to be very much the time for Hackett with all things prog being something approaching fashionable and also having a very strong album to promote in Out Of The Tunnel's Mouth which neatly covers all of the bases of his solo material in fine fashion.

Hackett fronts an extremely powerful band which means that the songs do come over as much more muscular and dynamic that they can appear on album. That is not a bad thing!

Featuring the new album in its' entirety alongside an eclectic range of material from his previous solo albums alongside some classics from his days in Genesis. The latter included a fine performance of Firth Of Fifth along with the inevitable Horizons. What was a surprise was the version of Blood On The Rooftops from the underrated Wind And Wuthering album.

However, Hackett has long since put his Genesis days behind him and the set concentrated largely on his excellent solo career. I've always found it difficult to work out where Steve lands in the bigger picture. It's not unusual to find blank stares when his name is mentioned but the large crowd tonight showed that his work is reaching a significant audience.

The range of Hackett's solo work suggests that it's always going to be unlikely that he'll be able to appeal to the masses, but it's that selfsame diversity that will make those already on his side will continue to be so.

Let's hope he doesn't leave another 20 years to return.

Film Review : The Men Who Stare At Goats

This is another film based on a book much loved by its' readers. In the case, the book is not a work of fiction but a study of the somewhat unusual methods used in some sections of the CIA to gain advantages of their enemy of the moment.

I've not read the book but it's clear from other comments that the film is a very different take on this topic from the book. Whilst the book appears to be a serious study of the more ludicrous end of CIA activities, the film plays things pretty much for laughs coming across as Coen-lite.

Not that the end result is anything other than an enjoyable film. George Clooney plays the charming and committed idiot whose earnestness and dedication to the task more than overwhelms the absurdity of the situation he finds himself in.

Ewan McGregor plays an equally gormless journalist who decides to follow the story all the way to a middle eastern warzone as a means of proving himself to his wife. You can imagine how that works out.

Whilst both these characters demonstrate an amusing gullibility, Kevin Spacey adds a touch of ambition to the mix. Seemingly always bested by Clooney, his focus means he ends up floating to the top of the tree for the film's climax.

However, the film is pretty much stolen by Jeff Bridges as the soldier who sets the whole shebang up. If you can imagine The Big Lebowski's Dude in charge of a CIA operation then you'll love this performance.

As mentioned before, this is very much Coen-lite and makes the whole idea of what the CIA were doing an object of some ridicule rather than as something sinister (which is how I suspect its' presented in the source material). But if you can't laugh at some of these things that are done supposedly in our name, there'd only be one alternative.

Concert Review : Deep Purple - Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow

Now that we're in a situation where Steve Morse has played more gigs as a member of Deep Purple than Ritchie Blackmore, it's probably long past the situation to consider him the "new boy" but it's always apparent from reading the views of fans that the spectre of Blackmore continues to loom large in their thoughts and opinions of the band.

Any new Purple material is always subject to comparison to their classic period and often held to be inferior. Notwithstanding that precisely the same standard if applied to the Blackmore-era reunion albums would result in the same conclusion. Indeed, if pressed I'd suggest that the best album by any post-reunion album would be the Morse-era debut Purpendicular. A better, fresher album than its' only near competitor Perfect Strangers.

That these two albums represent the first offerings of the respective line-ups from their respective time periods probably says something about the challenge faced by Purple. They do seem to find it hard to sustain a consistent level of creativity to match the burst that produced In Rock, Fireball and Machine Head in the 1970's.

That's not a unique problem to Purple - many bands of a similar age fact the same issues but it does mean that in the case of Deep Purple it is difficult for them to step out of the shadow of the Man In Black.

That leaves live performance as the main arena in which the band can continue to breathe and thrive. And they continue to do so as this performance in Glasgow on 11th November demonstrated.

Whilst the band were reinvigorated by the addition of Steve Morse, they have over recent years had a tendency to slip into the old bad habit of resting too heavily on familiar material and especially Machine Head. This time around the setlist showed some more variation with some welcome additions in No One Came (from Fireball) along with the return of the one true classic from the Morse era which genuinely stands shoulder to shoulder with anything from Purple's heyday in Sometime I Feel Like Screaming. We also got Wasted Sunsets and Not Responsible from Perfect Strangers - not necessarily the top of anyones list of songs they'd like to hear performed but welcome for that lack of obviousness.

The band played as well as I've seen for a while, although Gillan was clearly struggling with some of the higher notes. This is not uncommon in recent shows, but I'm at a loss why he continues to attempt to scream when his voice in normal register remains so strong.

Morse clearly continues to enjoy playing the old material and avoids simply replicating Blackmore's style bringing a different style to the songs. The other new boy, Don Airey is now being more adventurous having taken a few years to settle comfortably into the position previously held by Jon Lord. Nowadays, the band switch between keyboard and guitar rather as they did in their earlier years, before Blackmore's domination chipped away at that magic ingredient.

Paice and Glover continue to be the rock rhythm section par excellence. One notable item missing was Paice's drum solo - not necessarily a bad thing as drum solos are often an indulgence despite the excellence of the player - but I would equally have welcomed the absence of the guitar and keyboard solo slots in favour of a couple more songs.

Ian Gillan told us that the band would be recording a new album in 2010. It's five years since Rapture Of The Deep which was an enjoyable but not essential album. I'd like to hope that the gap can result in stronger material that can produce an album that can rival Purpendicular.