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It had been a while since a pianist had emerged that proposed a new way of improvising. The music of the time was all rigor and lax, a healthy eco system of competing and crossing personalities that resisted any kind of strict genre tagging. The “Downtown” scene proposed something different again, that pop and rock and anything else similarly neglected might be added to the heady mix. Scofield, Jarrett and Motian all offered hybrid and personal approaches to playing everything from New Orleans-styled vamps to open grooves and songbook standards. Wynton Marsalis was starting to preach but played his arse off. Mike Stern, Bob Berg and Brecker were still making music that was almost like the pop music of the time. Jazz was in rude health – everyone was arguing about what it should or shouldn’t be, and most of it sounded great. In the late eighties, there was a lot going on. Often there were twenty-six musicians onstage, and yet this was the most acoustic of evenings, allowing Weller’s songs to breathe and – at the risk of descending into hyperbole – sound even better than they do on the album.Geri Allen.
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Yes, there was a smattering of old songs – the Jam’s “Private Hell” and “Tales from the Riverbank”, the Style Council’s “Have you Ever Had it Blue” as well as the obligatory “Wild Wood” and “You do Something to Me” – but the bulk of the evening was devoted to the True Meanings album, a record that grew in stature last night as Weller’s songs were robustly supported by his five-piece band, plus an eleven-strong string section led by the intoxicating conductor Hannah Peel, and a four-piece horn section as well as a harpist, a flautist and - fleetingly - three Indian musicians playing sitars and violin, along with the evening’s opening act, British singer Lucy Rose. I know, a cliché, right? And the kind of things critics have been saying about him since he was 19, but last night it suddenly felt like it had some veracity. At the age of sixty – which he was publicly reminded of on stage last night, much to his mock irritation – Paul Weller has final come of age. Which is a very long-winded way of saying that each and every one of us at the Festival Hall knew what we were letting ourselves in for, and judging by the rapturous applause after the encores, I don’t think any of us left the theatre in any way disappointed.īecause it was, I have to say, superb, a night of genuine warmth, a night of genuine musical genius, watching a performer at the very top of his game.
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After all, it’s not often you’re given carte blanche to laugh at other people’s shoes.
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It’s like we’re all turning up to an uncle’s significant birthday every few years he decides to throw a big bash, and we rush to be there, not just because we know we’re going to enjoy it, because also we wouldn’t want to miss it. Last night I saw people who, like myself, have been going to Paul Weller gigs since 1977, those whose belief in the Modfather has over the years slowly developed into a genuine familial fondness.
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Which, in all honesty, doesn’t make them bad people. They’re purists, most of them, much like the man himself, true believers, carriers of the Modernist flame, and the kind of obsessives who laugh at you if you’re wearing the wrong shoes. Paul Weller fans tend to be rather proscriptive, and wouldn’t admit to liking the Eagles if their lives depended on it. Not that any of the people gathered at the Festival Hall on London’s Southbank last night would have cared less.