David Byrne at Manchester Apollo, 10/03/26

I think I'm as guilty as the next sentient being ( or, indeed, blogger ) of overusing such words as "legend" and "iconic" when describing actors, writers, musicians, football players ( well, maybe not football players ) and suchlike... but in this case I think I'm justified. Ladies, gentlemen, people of all persuasions, let me present to you the legendary, the iconic David Byrne. ( Applause. )

Ahem. Okay, that was a bit over the top but - bloody hell - David Byrne! I never thought I'd get to see him play live, and certainly knew that the famously grouchy Talking Heads would never reform, so when the opportunity arose to get tickets for Byrne's Who Is The Sky tour, I had to jump at it. The gig also gave Sarah and me an excuse to spend a few days in Manchester, so we were "mad fer it", to coin a phrase. We had a mostly trouble-free drive up to The North ( apart from some bloke in a black Audi trying to kill everyone on the M6 with his insane driving ) and then had a lovely day in Manchester, seeing the sights, watching trams from coffee shop windows, and parakeets in Whitworth Park - yes, they have a flock of bright green parakeets flitting around the trees there, alongside the more traditional squirrels and a surprising number of rats. After a day of hoofing it around the city, we cheated slightly by getting a taxi from our hotel to the Apollo - we're not getting any younger you know!

After seating ourselves in the plush environs of the Apollo ( yes, it was a seated event - not usually my first choice, but... David Byrne... ) we had time for a drink and then the show started. Well, even before the show started a familiar, dryly humorous voice came over the tannoy to inform us of the evening's safety procedures - yes, it was Mr. Byrne. He advised that the management were okay with us dancing by our seats, but asked us not to dance in the aisles because, in the event of a fire, those people would have an unfair advantage. Sensible, really. A few minutes later the show proper began as Byrne, accompanied only by a keyboard player, a cellist and a violinist stepped out onto the stage to play a beautifully haunting version of old Talking Heads song Heaven. The musicians/dancers/singers ( they really multi-tasked! ) all wore bright orange boiler suits and carried their instruments with them at all times, often strapped to their chests, with no amps or leads in their way as they constantly sashayed around the stage. It was almost like a musical theatre show ( be afraid, be very afraid ) but, er, was better than that. Behind ( and underneath! ) the band were giant screens, which showed backdrops ranging from the surface of the Moon to Byrne's apartment. In fact, Heaven saw DB and friends standing on the lunar surface as the Earth rose behind them throughout the song. "There's our Heaven - there she is" said the main man, pointing at the Blue Marble, "...the only one we've got."

In a similar vein to the legendary Stop Making Sense movie, the band then began to assemble around Byrne and they groooooved their way into Everybody Laughs, one of the standout songs from the Who Is The Sky album. The mood instantly switched to *Partay!* mode as everyone indeed laughed, as well as sung, clapped, cheered and danced - we were all out of our seats with no intention of sitting back down. The upbeat, infectious music lifted everybody up, as scenes from urban ( NYC? ) life played out on the screen behind the band. And the hits kept coming as the 12-piece band then floated into Heads classic And She Was - another literally uplifting tale of a woman who found herself soaring above her neighbourhood, "drifting this way and that." Byrne, in one of his occasional introductions, explained this song was inspired by a strange girl he once met who he didn't realise at the time was on LSD...

And here's our view of her view...

To be honest, I wish we could have been just a little closer, so we could have seen more of the dancing and the musicians performing ( and I could have taken better photos ), but those seats were the best I could get. It still looked fantastic, though.

The Remain In Light-era funk of Houses In Motion was scorching hot and the band played their hearts out. They were an incredibly tight, soulful ensemble and all seemed to be loving what they were doing. Byrne himself was constantly moving, constantly interacting with the band and generally being awesome. And his voice sounded fantastic, with all the old familiar inflections and tones - same as it ever was, in fact. ( See what I did there? ) It's hard to believe the guy is 73 - if I have a tenth of his energy in ( gulp! ) just over 13 years, I'll be very happy.

DB dipped into less familiar eras of his solo career ( for me, at least ) with songs such as T-Shirt and Strange Overtones, but it was interesting to hear this material, and it all felt of a piece with the other songs. The cheeky Latin groove of Independence Day brought a smile to our collective face, while Like Humans Do became an instant singalong fave for people like me who'd never heard it before. Apparently, there's some connection with the launch of Windows XP involving this song but I really don't remember that. Back to Talking Heads songs and there were hugely excited reactions for ( Nothing But ) Flowers and This Must Be The Place ( Naive Melody ) - apparently Byrne likes his ( parentheses ) as much as ( I ) do. The African guitar sounds and post-apocalyptic parable of the former were a blast of sunshine, comparing the consumer society shown below to a world without humans: "This was a discount store, now it's turned into a cornfield." Sometimes that sounds like a good idea. This Must Be The Place had us all singing "Woo-hoo" like we were a bunch of owls ( you had to be there ) and convinced us that this was indeed the place.

A couple of songs, and their introductions by JB - When We Are Singing and My Apartment Is My Friend - showed how much the Covid-19 pandemic affected his song-writing and outlook on the world. He told us that, just as the restrictions were lifting, he went for a walk around New York and wondered what that strange sound was that he could hear all around him. And then he realised - it was the sound of people talking, people laughing, people interacting. He said that it brought home to him just how much we as a species need human interaction and companionship. In fact, the whole performance seemed to be informed by this need to make a connection - and isn't that what all art is about? Ironically, this was all lost on the woman behind us, who had been screaming and whooping throughout the more well-known songs, and was now calling out "Who cares? Get on with the music!" Some people...

And this is apparently a view inside Byrne's actual apartment. Very nice.

In the home stretch, DB brought out some of the big Heads hitters. Starting with the paranoid, jittery New Wave of Psycho Killer and then going into the even more paranoid and jittery, not to mention prophetic, Life During Wartime. As Byrne sang his strange 1980s premonition of America becoming a fractured, violence-ridden Third World country, the screen flashed up images of people on the streets of the USA confronting the goons of Trump's fascistic ICE organisation. Embedded in the red hot funk of this classic song was a chilling reminder of what's actually happening to 'Merica at the moment, as their much-vaunted liberties are being eroded by the Orange Idiot and his supporters. This was a very powerful moment and got a huge cheer from the crowd.

Of course, there was only one song that could follow this as the band finished the set with the evergreen Once In A Lifetime. Probably the ultimate Talking Heads song - even in this stripped-back version it still sounded like nothing else on Earth. Absolutely stunning and, as I said earlier, a song I never thought I'd see performed live. How to top that? Well, after a quick break, the band came back out to rapturous applause and performed another solo Byrne song, Everybody's Coming To My House, which again returned to that theme of community and gave DB the opportunity to introduce his smokin' hot band. And, speaking of smokin', they then finished with ultimate party anthem Burning Down The House. And they really did. Byrne kicked off with that urgent semaphore guitar riff and the band launched into the irrepressible groove as red light flooded the theatre. A dance monster that grabbed us by the throat and made us dance like crazed monkeys just when we thought we couldn't dance any more. It was fantastic and what a way to end a performance!

 "Watch out! You might get what you're after." We did, in spades.

After all this, we staggered out of the Apollo, tired but happy, secure in the knowledge that we'd seen one of the greatest shows ever. ( Well, that's certainly how I felt - I might be slightly exaggerating Sarah's take on the gig lol. ) Even the slight Manchester drizzle couldn't dampen our spirits as we headed back to our hotel, only stopping for some cheesy chips in a late night takeaway and a quick chat with another Byrne fan, who told us tall tales of watching Joy Division back before they were famous. It was that kind of a night. True stories, legends, myths, confessions, music, music, music.

Recent gigs ( Part Four ) - Muse at the National Bowl, MK and Pulp at the Castlefield Bowl, MCR

( Well, not that recent, to be honest... )

What a load of bowls! ( Well, two actually. ) The final installment of my seemingly endless gig catch-up posts sees Sarah and I bowl-bound ( which doesn't sound like much fun ) for two contrasting, but excellent, shows by two of our fave bands. First of all... the mighty Muse at the National Bowl, Milton Keynes...

We've seen Muse a couple of times and they've always been hugely entertaining and put on a dazzling show, so we were excited to see them again in, of all places, Milton Keynes. Yep, the not-so-new-any-more "new town" that's home to the infamous concrete cows and the National Bowl. This is a venue we visited before, twenty years ago, to see Robbie Williams ( yes, really ) play an actually very good show in the pissing rain. This time, the weather was much better, although other things weren't quite so good...

After a bit of a diversion due to the bloody HS2 monstrosity, we got to MK... and then spent about an hour and a half stuck in traffic, crawling along the last mile or so of the journey. Total bloody traffic chaos ensued, with many people who had ( like us ) pre-booked their car parking finding that the car parks were full and being turned away. Luckily, we managed to get a space but the delays meant we missed both support bands and just managed to get into the bowl before Muse started, without having time to get anything to eat or drink. Not the best start to a gig.

After the smaller, more chilled, Wychwood Festival, this was a much bigger gig ( 65,000 capacity ) and Sarah found the first sight of the huge crowd daunting, but soon adjusted as the boys from Devon hit the stage, preceded by their fiery Will Of The People logo flaming on...

And they kicked off with WOTP itself, its singalong faux-rebellion setting the tone for the night. "We'll smash your institutions to pieces"  -  I don't really believe the revolution will be sparked by some middle class boys with guitars but its a fun fantasy for the duration of their set. The Drones-era banger Psycho, complete with its drill sergeant shouty monologue, had everyone bouncing up and down to its crunchy riff, and Won't Stand Down was another call to storm the barricades. But in a polite way.

Compliance, another strong track from the latest album, sounded great but had me puzzling its meaning. Matt Bellamy's songs often seem to pick up on the latest grim goings-on in this dystopia we're living in, but this one ( as well as WOTP ) almost sounds like a conspiracy theory anthem, with its theme of government mind control. I'd like to think Muse are just reflecting society's craziness back at us, rather than being actual tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracists themselves. But I can't be sure.

One thing I can be sure of is that Muse ROCKED! Regardless of any lyrical ambiguities, they pulled out all the stops with their stage show. As a backdrop to the huge riffage, pummelling rhythms and Bellamy's octave-scaling vocals, they gave us the obligatory video screens, along with confetti explosions, dazzling lights and huge animatronic puppets. For the song You Make Me Feel Like It's Halloween, they projected various horror movie icons onto the metal mask of the WOTP puppet: Jason, Freddie, Pinhead, V ( For Vendetta ) and the Predator all putting in an appearance.

Even Matt Bellamy had his not-so-spooky fizzog projected onto the puppet. He also climbed up on it at one point and played a solo song on its shoulder. Of course he did.

During the home stretch, as the band pulled out the crowd-pleasing likes of Supermassive Black Hole, Plug-In Baby and Starlight, they also pulled out a huge, animatronic demon-minotaur-thing which glared balefully at the crowd. I mean, this was a Muse gig after all.
 

Muse finished with the obligatory Spaghetti Western In Space madness of Knights Of Cydonia, an epic finale to a spectacular gig. Some people near us took the opening notes of this last song as their cue to get the hell out of Dodge, which was probably wise as we had to face the whole crowd / traffic chaos thing again, but in reverse. We joined the thousands thronging the exits ( and group-singing Bohemian Rhapsody for some reason ) and trudged along through a sea of discarded plastic cups, until we took the chance to scramble up a bank, over a fence and onto a flyover, to try and locate my car. We then sat for over an hour as hundreds of cars were funnelled through a one-track road at the back of a Premier Inn before they could escape the gravitational pull of the National Bowl. We eventually got going and finally got home at about 03:00 am. The gig had been great but the organisation was a complete shambles, with Muse's song We Are Fucking Fucked being a perfect anthem for the experience.

Aaaanyway, on to another bowl now, and a far more pleasant gig experience in sunny ( yes, really ) downtown Manchester...

"Good evening. This is a night you will remember for the rest of your life. You are about to see the 528th concert by Pulp. This performance is an encore. An encore happens because the crowd wants more. They make themselves heard. So... Make Some Noise. I said: Make Some Noise! OK. We hear you. This is what we do for an encore."

Sarah and I had seen Pulp about twenty years ago ( Hereford Leisure Centre, a very strange gig with a Jarvis doppelganger on stage and a weirdly hostile mainstream crowd ) but hadn't expected to ever see them again. But, as this was the year of Britpop revivals, Pulp returned in all their acrylic glory and we managed to get a ticket for Manchester. We'd never been to Manchester before, so it was exciting to Hit The North ( as The Fall might say ) and check out this iconic city. After a refreshingly easy drive up the M6 we checked in to our budget hotel, only 15 minutes' walk from the venue, and had a couple of days to mooch around Manchester ahead of the gig. It's a beautiful city, a beguiling mixture of old ( trams, railways, canals ) and new ( gleaming skyscrapers, tapas bars ) and we had a great time exploring. Check out my Manchester photos in my previous post here. If you want to, of course, there's no charge if you don't. 

A couple of hours before the gig I bumped into major Pulp fan Pip Madeley, of Twitter / YouTube / Doctor Who Magazine fame, and had a lovely chat with him as he was queuing to get down the front. Top bloke! Sarah and I later walked down to Castlefield Bowl, a large concrete space bordered by a canal on one side and a railway line on the other, and found a great spot on a bank overlooking the stage. The atmosphere was absolutely electric as we waited for Pulp... but first, Baxter Dury...

Oh dear. Dury ( son of the famous Ian ) came out onto the stage and immediately launched into some kind of performance therapy / primal scream session as he started shouting "Mummy! Daddy!" and threw some ridiculous, slow motion kung-fu shapes, while letting the keyboard player handle all the actual singing. It was as if a local drunk had wandered onto stage and was desperately looking for his lost can of Special Brew, while taking his shirt off and yelling. This went on for some while. An embarrassingly poor performance which left most of the crowd non-plussed and even more eager to see the headliners.

At last, the video screen behind the stage blazed into life and relayed the welcome message above, which was replaced by a moon and stars image  -  slowly a shape began to rise in front of the full moon, the shape of a tall, spindly human. It was, of course, Jarvis Cocker. The moon turned a deep orange colour, until it resembled the Bond "gun barrel" image, then the colour filled the whole screen while the lanky silhouette began singing I Spy...

It was an atmospheric, exciting start to the show and the 8000-capacity crowd was instantly hooked.

"I spy a boy, I spy a girl" - well, quite a few of them, actually...

And, as if the crowd weren't already fully engaged, the next song was Disco 2000 and everyone ( including us ) went absolutely nuts. The theme of childhood friends meeting up in that far-off future world of 2000 AD felt very appropriate for us old Pulp fans meeting up in the even further-flung days of 2023 AD. Jarvis had us all clapping our hands, confetti fired out over the crowd, and the song's "woodchip on the wall" appeared in all its 1970s glory on the video screen. It all felt very euphoric and melancholic at the same time. Not many bands can do that but Pulp and their wonderful songs capture that tipping point of emotions perfectly.

We were standing next to a lovely couple of ladies, 'Chelle and Pip, and we'd chatted earlier about which songs we most wanted to hear. Their song was Mis-Shapes, which was up next, and they were - to quote Ultravox for the only time in my life - dancing with tears in their eyes during that song. This outsider anthem, for everyone who's ever felt marginalised or out of place, clearly resonated with them and with many of us there in Manchester: "Mis-shapes, mistakes, misfits / Raised on a diet of broken biscuits" is surely one of the most evocative opening lines to a song ever.

This was followed by Something Changed, which Jarvis dedicated to Pulp's late bass-player who sadly passed away earlier this year. A very poignant song, also dedicated to all of us, as Jarvis acknowledged that we have all had such losses in our lives. A beautiful moment.

But it wasn't all about the melancholy. Jarvis Cocker was as captivating a performer as ever, looking and singing barely any differently to his '90s-era pomp, and entertaining the crowd with ( failed ) attempts to throw grapes in the air and catch them in his mouth (!), reading passages from Lewis Carroll and Walt Whitman, and bigging up an art exhibition at the local Aviva Studios. The band themselves were red hot, replicating their old sound perfectly but with added oomph! for this outdoor venue. At one point a train trundled along the viaduct which bordered one edge of the bowl and Jarvis got us to wave at the occupants, saying "Wherever they're going it won't be as interesting as this." Damn right!

The classics kept coming. Pink Glove was suitably pervy ( some audience members were waving their pink-gloved hands around and squealed as Jarvis acknowledged them ), Weeds / Weeds 2 was another powerful song about the underclass, and F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E was an epic ( Jarvis lying on his back on the stage, singing "It's so cooold" ) ...if a bugger to type out.

Sorted For E's And Wizz prompted Jarvis to recall the song's origins, at The Stone Roses' legendary Spike Island gig, and wax lyrical about Manchester being the epicentre of rave, the first place "someone twisted a melon." This Is Hardcore was a sleazy masterpiece, the stage glowing pink and red, and Do You Remember The First Time? got everyone dancing, as Jarvis recalled the band's first Manchester gig, at Salford University, way back in 1992. "Yes, I do remember the first time."

As we'd previously mentioned "songs we most wanted to hear", mine came along in the form of Babies. I've always loved this song about illicit, dodgy affairs ( Pulp have a few of those! ) and the performance was extraordinary, making me want to jump out of a wardrobe all over again. "I wanna take you home / I wanna give you children." A sweaty, guilt-ridden classic.

The set finished with a late-period classic, the mighty Sunrise, which was absolutely huge and a fantastic showcase for guitarist Mark Webber. We were dazzled by the stage lights but knew the show wasn't over. We had to know what exactly the band did for an encore...

Jarvis came back on stage to perform an acoustic Like A Friend, then the band ( and string section who I've completely forgotten to mention, but were awesome ) twanged into Underwear. ( Little joke there. Allegedly. ) This typically Cockerian ( yes, that's a word now ) anthem of lust and longing was a suitably seamy delight, setting us up for, of course, Common People. No other song sums up the band or their appeal as much as that one. It may be "The Hit", the one that all the straights know, but there's no escaping that it's one of the greatest pop songs ever...

Before the song, Cocker introduced the band, then said: "My name is Jarvis. I was put here to perform and I exist to do this. And when I grow up I want to live with Common People like you..."

Venomous, righteous, hugely singalong-able, Common People was sublime. A huge, anthemic masterwork, prompting hysteria and absolute joy among the Common People of Castlefield Bowl, as supermarket packaging images shone down from the stage and Jarvis said "Alright. Come on, why don't you sing it?" And we did, for all of Manchester to hear.

And then it was over, the neon Pulp logo lighting our way out of the Bowl. Sarah and I went and got a drink, a hot dog and a Pulp T-shirt ( well, I did ) and reflected on surely one of the greatest gigs we'd ever been to. An emotional, cathartic, communal experience, with so much sheer love being radiated from the crowd to the band and back again. Easily in my top 10 gigs ever, which is saying something. It would be great if Pulp were to properly reform and give us new music, tours etc. but, if not, this amazing experience was more of an encore than we'd ever expected.

( The next day we had a look around Salford Quays and came across the above in a Cadbury's shop. It couldn't have been more perfect. )