Wishbone Ash - Hardwicke Circus
Andy Powell tipped us off from the outset that we were in for the long haul, and so it proved with a mammoth two hour set that included their seminal album Argus played in full. He must have had the mathematicians in the audience scratching their heads at the youthful vigour of a man already grown up when it was released fifty years ago.
Wishbone Ash at Epic Studios
Last Saturday was National Album Day, celebrating the idea of a collection of songs curated by an artist keen to have you sit down and listen to the whole thing in sequence. These days, an album is little more than a supermarket multi buy, whereby the punter scoops up a basketful of tunes, shuffles them to their liking, having deftly excised the duff songs. Back in the day, when Argus was launched on an unsuspecting public, life was a tad different. You had to get up to flip the record over half way through, for one thing.
The net effect was a tendency to stoically sit through the challenging stuff, frequently learning to love those songs the most. Albums became a thing in of themselves, greater than the sum of the parts, to be treasured or reviled, but rarely disregarded. As Andy Powell reminded us, not only did you buy an album, pouring over it for its lyric sheet and artwork, you very likely remember where you bought it, and who you were with when you first played it. Perhaps no surprise, then, that playing them live, in sequence – something rarely done at the time of release - has become a thing.
Last night, Powell (founder member and last man standing in Wishbone Ash) described Argus as the jewel in the catalogue of their work. So that’ll be the Argus catalogue, my cheeky companion observed. It’s certainly their best known – I’ve had a dog eared copy for years – and sure enough, I can remember where I bought it. Waiting outside Epic Studios, I realise with a jolt that it was across the road, in a long gone second hand shop, at a time when the biggest star the Studios hosted was Nicholas Parsons. It cost me a pound (the sticker is still on the cover) and was worth every penny.
Before I got to hear it for the first time in donkey’s years, however, we got a brief set by four lads from Carlisle, trading under the unwieldy name of Hardwicke Circus. Lead singer Jonny Foster seemed a personable fellow, and did a sterling job of getting the sedentary crowd singing and clapping along. They’ve been well reviewed, have been down the Rabbit Hole at Glastonbury, and have been name checked by the likes of McCartney, so they must have something about them. Their retro anthemic sound – I heard shades of Del Amitri, Dexys, and even the Clash – should have been a perfect fit for a night celebrating music for the mature. Sadly, something was up with the sound – perhaps their engineer was asleep at the wheel – so that the noise produced did them a great disservice. Anyone who runs after Tyson Fury along Morecambe seafront at six in the morning gets my vote, but it took nearly the whole set before they settling in with a tune about broken glass that gave us a taste of what they could do. What a pity.
Andy Powell tipped us off from the outset that we were in for the long haul, and so it proved with a mammoth two hour set. Argus in full was teed up as a treat to come, but before that we got a selection of tracks from the many other albums this prolific band has produced over the intervening years. Powell was in fine form, and must have had the mathematicians in the audience scratching their heads at the youthful vigour of a man already grown up when Argus was released fifty years ago. He’s assembled a fine band around him, but while Bob Skeat has been with him since the late nineties, Mark Abrahams and Mike Truscott are both very recent recruits. Add to the mix Powell’s tendency to reminisce and share anecdotes about times gone by when none of these fellows were about, and one couldn’t avoid the feeling this was Powell and a backing band, however accomplished.
That said, both Skeat and Abrahams played on Coat of Arms, their 2020 album, from which we got We Stand as One – dedicated to the people of Ukraine – and it stood up very well to the tried and tested material. And arguably the stand out tune from the first half of the set was Invisible Thread – again, a relatively new track – so this was by no means just a heritage band. Nonetheless, I can’t have been the only one itching to get the main course, and it was duly delivered, with Time Was setting a course that powered through The King Will Come, Warrior and my personal favourite, Blowin’ Free.
I confess that by close of play, I was growing weary of the endless noodling, however well executed, but the crowd sent the band on their way with a standing ovation, so there’s no denying Powell served up what their audience turned up for. My issue, such as it was, is best epitomised by the song chosen as an encore. FUBB is apparently an acronym for Fucked Up Beyond Believe. Fittingly, it’s off the album There’s the Rub, and here’s the rub. It was, of course, anything but fucked up. On the contrary, it was impeccably performed and for many a gig highlight. By now, however, I was longing for a bit of fuck uppery and for the band to let loose from the shackles of their considerable ability and simply let rip. It didn’t happen. For my companion, an unapologetic 70s rocker, this was manna from heaven. For me, it was a reminder why pub and punk had to come along and shake all this frippery up.
