Here we go, it's only taken me a week but I went to see "Off the Wall" last Wednesday and on another thread it's been suggested that we have a reviews thread.
Off the Wall
Bolton Albert Halls
Wednesday 11th October 2006
Never seen these guys before but I must admit I did go with preconceptions, partly because I'd spoken to our illustrious admin Nick about them and also I'd listened to some MP3s from their site, so I wasn't expecting too much.
The venue is quite a nice little hall with limited seating on the balcony (where I sat - it's me bad knees ya know) and plenty of standing at the front. It's inside the Bolton town hall and has all the victorian grandeur that goes with it.
They kicked off the set with the usual SOYCD (no better start to a gig IMHO), and then continued with Welcome to the Machine and Have a Cigar, then followed a couple of Syd numbers - Arnold Layne and Bike. So far so good !
The vocals are shared between the keyboard player who does a sterling job and the female guitarist Stella, quite interesting to hear a different style of voice on PF songs.
Most of the usual favourites made an appearance but the particular high-note ( no pun intended) was the rendition of Great Gig in which Stella just blows the socks off everyone, if you read around the net she's well renowed for this.
The only critisms I would have is that they're not quite as "slick" as the Aussies, in particular on Money, when on the tempo change after the 2nd guitar solo the transition was awful and killed it for me. The other critism I'd have was the amount of Sax they employed. No doubt the Sax bloke Ben is very talented and they tendered to play on this a little too much. I like my live music to be faithful to the original and having a Sax solo at the end of CN, again spoilt it a little for me. I half-expected John Thompson to come on stage and introduce us to "Jazz Club" - Nicccccceshhhh
Overall I enjoyed the gig and it was well-worth ?15 and I'd probably go see them again to get my floyd-fix.
