While Ginger Wildheart continues
to release music at an unparalleled rate through his pledge campaigns I have
been left as a fan financially destitute and a little bit worried that I am at
times doing little more than funding vanity pieces.
In conversations I find myself
more frequently saying aloud that sometimes less is more.
The litmus test on this is that
initially not many agreed, but of late more are airing the same view in a
piecemeal fashion.
Even now with the newly purchased
Albion spinning away I’m not getting the sense
of all killer and no filler, although that may come.
However of his recent sonic outings
I couldn’t really find one negative point to highlight about the Hey! Hello! project
that he completed with Victoria Liedke.
The melodic power pop, pop punk,
pop-tastic album is pretty much one that hits every button for me. So it was a
fantastic bonus when it was announced that they would be opening for the
Wildhearts.
My heart sang.
Build up of expectations be
damned as I just knew it would be good, and it was.
Ginger unsurprisingly maintained
the centre stage position as for many he is the draw, but he only held it
physically as the lead was left to Victoria to take, and as a front woman she
had it all nailed down.
They powered through their set at
breakneck speed with Victoria
building up an easy rapport with the audience that must surely dictate that the
support will be there for a follow up release to their debut.
The hint that this may be on the
cards was the inclusion of a new song that matched the quality of everything
else in the set.
With Gingers involvement it is
doubtful that the band will have to start at the bottom rung in playing live
and they can jump straight to good sized venues, and if that’s the case then I
could very well be front and centre.
Following Hey!Hello! were the Finnish
curveball thrown by Ginger that was the Von Hertzen Brothers.
It would be fair to say that they
are a good band, a very good band with some progressive rock leanings, and it
would also be fair to say that they are deserving of an audience, but not a Wildhearts
one.
Song after song the lost the
interest of the audience and that was tough to watch.
If they opened for the classic
Brit rock band Magnum and they would have had the crowd eating out of their
hand, add them to a bill with Helloween and not one person attending would have
had a complaint - and I suspect they would have done a roaring trade in merch -
but the inclusion on this bill was similar to shoe horning 1Direction onto a
stage at Download between Killswitch Engage and Bring Me the Horizon.
While they will have picked up
some fans from the tour in the main they weren’t what the majority would have
been looking for.
It’s a good move to haul a band
out on the road in support that will challenge the perceptions of an audience,
but in doing so it has to be accepted that it can be a bit hit and miss with
this being more miss than hit.
The upside of the lull that the
Von Hertzen Brothers provided was that The Wildhearts didn’t have to stand in
the wings wondering how they were going to follow a headline slaying band and
could simply saunter on and do their thing, and that’s exactly what they did.
It was nice to see Scott Sorry
back in the line up as I’ve always enjoyed the punkier stage attitude he has
brought to the band, but while I was enjoying myself there was a small voice
whispering that it all seemed a bit Wildhearts by numbers.
While one support was an exercise
in giving the audience something they didn’t want, this was a headline set made
up of giving the audience exactly what they wanted, and maybe I was looking for
another curveball with this one being Wildhearts shaped.
Highlight was the introduction of
Gingers son Taylor who along with Scott stormed his way through the classic
People Who Are Dead by Jim Carroll before then hanging around to help out on
Nexus Icon.
It’s very obvious that Ginger wants
to keep the The Wildhearts as a separate entity from his outings as a solo act,
but as the last Wildhearts release was the excellent Chutzpah! in 2009 it’s
possibly time to step away from experimenting under his own name and take
control at the helm of one of the best rock band that this country has seen and
give us a new album that will provide fresh material for any future Wildhearts
tours.
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