Metamatic Forums John Foxx John Foxx and Louis Gordon T-shirt gig announced

As someone who lives in the same neck of the woods as you I do sympathize but it must be said that Hull's lack of proximity to London is hardly John Foxx's fault, and neither is HullTrains' and GNER's extortionate ticket pricing structure! Nevertheless we have been lucky enough to have had two relatively close-by gigs in the last few months, namely Metamatic in Mcr and TCM in Leeds so it's swings and roundabouts.

Now the T-shirt gig is over and done with, I am left wondering just what was the point? When it was announced I thought that maybe the gig was going to be videoed for release and the T-shirt thing was to have an audience of obvious Foxx fans - I think Morrissey once did something similar. But in the end the shenanigans of what happened if you couldn't get in the first gig and whether or not you could get tickets for the second gig just seemed to be unnecessarily complex and it destroyed what remote chance there ever was that I could attend.

Perhaps someone could explain the rationale behind it? Otherwise, in future just book a gig and charge money for tickets - it seems to work most of the time.

Transport and accommodation prices etc, all formed part of the reason why I was put off/unable to go to the gig. I'll admit I thought it just seemed so 'typical' that the gig had to be in London, so I knew there was a slim chance I'd be able to make it anyway. It would surely have been easier for some of us had it been somewhere a bit further up the country - but this may not have been possible. There's so many things to take into account when putting on a show, especially a one-off.

That said, I've still got my t-shirt and intend to see John again when I can.

Although I couldn't make the Metamatic tour for other reasons (which was frustrating), I'm simply more than grateful and appreciative that John returned for Leeds to do TCM, which was something I thought I'd never get to see.

So one great gig this year is more than enough to keep me happy. I guess those of you who have managed to see John several times are just plain lucky!

Well, it was good for me. So we were promised a slightly different second set - it was so good in the end I was perfectly happy to see it twice.

Everyone had clearly made a huge effort, the venue was great, the sound was excellent, it looked good. Loved JF's use of micro-korg and vocoder; and the tunes were fab. Splendid.

Clearly pretty tired after giving his all for not one but two shows, JF still came out to chat, which is always much appreciated.

No gripes at all, I had a tremendous time.

mongrel

Maybe two slightly different sets proved to be too ambitions, perhaps technologically. It would make sense to focus on just one great set and make it sound as good as possible, which by all accounts was the case.

I'd be interested to hear which songs you thought worked best?

How did John treat his vocals for "Camera"?

I thought Europe After The Rain and Dancing Like A Gun worked very well live.

Peter

I'm surprised neither of those two tracks had been performed live before. It must have been nice to hear tracks from The Garden. "Walk Away" last year was so good.

Both shows were fantastic - the music had incredible energy, and the fact that there were so many 'new' songs performed really made the shows special.

Yeah, it's about time more tracks from TPOE and last year's albums were played live.

I believe John used a little vocoder to treat the 'Camera' vocals - however I have very little technical knowledge, someone on here may have a better idea of how that worked.

Sounded just excellent, though.

mongrel

Well, that wasn't necessarily my thinking - by saying 'new' tracks, what I actually meant was older material that was new in the context of never being played live before, or at least for a long time. Although what we all want an artist to play does depend on personal choice I guess, I thought the older material was a revelation on Satuday - I'd far rather some of the older work was revisited over hearing newer album material.