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        Pete Atkin >> Gigs >> Kitchen Garden 19th February 2023
        
(Message started by: BrianF on Today at 17:57)

Title: Kitchen Garden 19th February 2023
Post by BrianF on Today at 17:57

Superb show at the Kitchen Garden last night. This was my first PA show for over 47 years and it did not disappoint - the voice and humour remain undiminished. I hadn't requested a song in advance, but had I done so it would have been fulfilled by the performance of Screen-Freak at the end of the first half. Many old favourites and some surprises; definitely worth the trip down from Manchester.

https://www.peteatkin.com/userpics/915777(BrianF)patkin20230219.jpg

Title: Re: Kitchen Garden 19th February 2023
Post by S J Birkill on Today at 21:14

Stunning action shot there, Brian! It wasn't showing at first, but I took the liberty of inspecting the code and saw you'd somehow got duplicate image tags in there, which I corrected. Hope you don't mind.

47 years -- quite the interval, and glad to hear it didn't disappoint.

Pete reports that he too very much enjoyed the evening, and sends along his set-list:

The Way You Are With Me (g)
The Luck of the Draw (g)
Ice Cream Man (g)
Master of the Revels (k)
King at Nightfall (k)
I Wouldn’t Hear A Word Against The Spring (g)
Touch Has A Memory (g)
Beware of the Beautiful Stranger (g)
A Hill of Little Shoes (k)
Screen-Freak (k)

Laughing Boy (g)
Sunlight Gate (g)
An Empty Table (k)
Rain-Wheels (k)
The Road of Silk (k)
Ballad of an Upstairs Window (g)
I See The Joker (g)
Apparition In Las Vegas (g)
The Flowers and the Wine (k)
Thirty Year Man (k)
Have You Got A Biro I Can Borrow? (g)
+
Together At Last (g)

Stay tuned for news of new gig dates!

Steve

Title: Re: Kitchen Garden 19th February 2023
Post by BrianF on Today at 22:19

Thanks Steve, I'm a bit rusty on the coding/tagging!

Title: Re: Kitchen Garden 19th February 2023
Post by dr_john on 21.02.23 at 07:30

Fantastic show, lovely venue. 5 years to the day since the last time we saw Pete there. https://www.peteatkin.com/userpics/964570(dr_john)IMG_1536 (2).jpg https://www.peteatkin.com/userpics/964609(dr_john)IMG_1539 (2).jpg

Title: Re: Kitchen Garden 19th February 2023
Post by S J Birkill on 21.02.23 at 08:33

Well, what a show! I've just been listening to an audience recording of Sunday's event, sent in by a long-serving Voice (thanks, Kevin). The audience was near capacity, and there was nothing polite about the applause. They went wild. I could hear one young lady leading the cheering, who was surely having the time of her life. The enthusiastic atmosphere was contagious, and it must have given Pete quite a boost to be so well received -- he excelled himself with some experimental treatments of the old songs, as well as a goodly selection of the less familiar, and in the absence of Simon Wallace's tasteful pianising, which we've come to enjoy so much at the Pheasantry, Pete took most of the songs at a lively tempo. In fact he jokingly suggested that playing them faster would let him get through more of them. Most remarkable was his extended pre- and post-song chat, with some new (to me) anecdotal accounts of the songs' genesis, warmly recounted, with moments of uncontrolled mirth from the audience. But for the new songs, this could almost have been a gig from the '70s.

Host Julia introduced Pete as an 'amazing legend'. He sat on a perching stool (or perhaps the back of a chair) for most of the guitar numbers, teasing the audience with the possibility of standing up and giving them his Chuck Berry duck-walk, and then smoothly segued (segue'd?) the first three songs ('all in the same key'), using the black Atkin guitar. He followed up with some biographical detail (meeting Clive, recording the first album, radio exposure thanks to Kenny Everett), and decided to include Dai (Russell) Davies's tuba part in his keyboard rendition of Master of the Revels, after which he acknowledged session clarinettist Henry Mackenzie (When I'm Sixty-Four) for his part in the original recording.

The Nord keyboard's versatility was apparent on A King At Nightfall, when at times it sounded for all the world as if there was a guitar above the keyboard's electric piano tones. Beware Of The Beautiful Stranger came complete with a detailed account of the song's inspiration, including 8 students, a Morris Minor Traveller, an all-night café 16 miles south of Cambridge, an eight-mile hike and a travelling fair striking camp in the early morning -- the last of these, fair or circus, being a theme Clive was to return to again and again.

The second set began as the strains of the Ronettes Be My Baby faded out. "They don't make it easy" said Pete, "playing records like that. I get to go on after one of the greatest songs ever written." He justified his £2 price for CDs on the merchandise table with the announcement that his new CD will be released in the Spring, and he needs to clear out old stock. His new greatest fan announced that she'd just bought the whole set. Pete went on to praise his new D'Addario soundhole-mounted guitar tuner before introducing Laughing Boy.

Further down the set he continued with Ballad of an Upstairs Window. Once he'd put the verses in the right order, he was rewarded by ripples of amusement as the comic tale unfolded -- a clear sign that many were unfamiliar with the old songs. Then he offered the audience a choice between the Mob boss and Las Vegas. Predictably, they demanded both. I See The Joker, normally a piano song, he played up-tempo on guitar to an enthusiastic reception, and followed it with Apparition In Las Vegas, which he topped off with a chorus of That's All Right (Mama), to whoops of joy from the crowd.

For Have You Got A Biro I Can Borrow, Pete related the circumstances of his god-daughter's ("although God didn't have much to do with it") engagement, in which she and her suitor had discovered they'd independently known this song for years, and the young man had arranged a surprise proposal in the departures concourse at Gatwick Airport, complete with spoof waiters, real champagne and a performance of Biro by three members of acapella vocal group Elle and the Pocket Belles. (Here's (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZXgG0c6RPs) the group's studio version, audio only -- I think the Gatwick video is private.)

Altogether Pete played, talked and sang for a total of 2¼ hours, and I'm sure everyone must have been walking on air as they left the Kitchen Garden.

Steve

Title: Re: Kitchen Garden 19th February 2023
Post by Seán Kelly on 11.03.23 at 22:02

I am late catching up with these reports and photos - but very much enjoying reading and viewing them - thanks all! :)