Whenever I make the mistake of listening to one of those radio stations that promises to play music from the 1980s I end up feeling horribly confused. How is it that I barely recognize any of the music they play? Where, I wonder, are they finding the stuff they call the 'hits of the '80s' and what happened to any of the music I listened to? Sure, some of the stuff was pretty obscure, but quite a bit of it wouldn't be out of place in today's market, and the people who played it are still around and recording. Yet somehow they seem to have slipped through the cracks when it comes to being remembered for what they did 30 years ago.
Sure there's always the possibility that my memory could be clouded by sentimentality and stuff that I remember fondly wasn't actually as good as I think it is. Still, Clash soiunds just as good as they did 30 years ago, so why shouldn't other stuff that I liked back then? So when Hubbie told me we were going to see Joan Armatrading I was excited. I remembered really liking her back in the early 1980s, especially the two albums that came out in 1980 and 1982, Me, Myself I and Walk Under Ladders. So I figured the show last night would capture some of the same magic I remembered enjoying on those two releases.
How wrong was I? Very. The first two songs stunned the audience into silence - it was as though she had been possessed by Jim Hendrix/Eric Clapton and Pink Floyd. You could not hear her voice over the music. Don't ask me the titles - couldn't tell you. She then had a bit of banter with the audience and then proceeded with a completely self-indulgent, ego-driven performance. Admittedly she is a good guitar player and as instrumentals the sound would have been good. I found out later that she tends to play with sessions bands and it shows. There was no bond between her, her bassist, her keyboardist and the drummer. She barely acknowledged them on stage. It wasn't until she sang All the Way from America that the audience tuned in - this was the Joan we came to see, the voice we came to hear, people were cheering, stomping, applauding. her beautiful mellow rounded voice floated around the theatre and it was magic. Joan looked a bit taken aback at the thunderous response to her acoustic sound and then we were subjected to another half an hour of Jimi/Eric/Led Zeppelin this time. She kept plugging her new album (which I will not be buying). At the end of the show the audience went beserk calling her back on stage - she came on and acoustically performed Me, Myself and I and Willow. The audience was transfixed and suddenly everyone burst into song and she was silent. It's not that we wanted to go back to the 80s - we just wanted Joan's voice and presence - which were sadly lacking. I came out of the theatre thinking about my friend Guyla Torok who gave me a CD by Joan back in the 80s and thought 'he must be spinning in his grave'.
