With the Special Guest slots at Leeds & Reading just days away, Ian chose to kick off a couple of ‘warm up’ concerts at Wolverhampton and Oxford. The 2 un-advertised dates sold out within hours largely to members of the Ian Brown official forum so you could say he was among ‘friends’.
Taking his entrance to the stage to the strains of ‘The Godfather’, played out by Tim Hutton on the cornet, the crowd were going wild, being starved of a live performance in the UK for what seems like forever. Opening with crowd pleaser ‘Sister Rose’ Ian went on to play a quite short set mostly comprising songs from his excellent solo material including the current single Stellify, it’s first time played live, a real stomping live tune, going down so well Ian closed the set with it too, I would go so far as to say Stellify even topped a rare outing for the Stone Roses classic ‘Fools Gold’.
The other new song of the night ‘Crowning of the poor’ also went down a treat with the new album ‘My Way’ just waiting to be released in September it all bodes well for the forthcoming winter tour which will again seem a lifetime away to Ian’s army of followers, but they say the best things come to those who wait, so come December and it will be a tour to remember. To sum up a gig for me is like this , I love the green sweets in sports mixtures and last night everyone of the songs on the set list were green sports mixtures…. Beautiful!
