Hackett to pieces

I'm some what embarrassed to say that until last weekend I had never been to the Brook in Southampton. This is a music venue in the Portswood part of the City. I guess that it holds c500 people in both a downstairs area and an upstairs balcony. It's in an old pub and therefore has two big bars to keep the audience refreshed.

The diary of bookings is made up of good "past their best" artists, local well known bands, tribute bands and some comedy.

So last Sunday saw my mate Gray & I go to see Steve Hackett and his band there. Hackett will always be known as "ex-Genesis guitarist" Steve Hackett, although he left the group in 1977! Since then he has recorded a substantial back catalogue of his own material and is recognised as still one of the best guitarists in the "prog rock" genre.

Gray had been to the Brook on many occassions (he'd been to see the illeagal Eagles two nights before), so on his advice we got there 30 minutes before the doors opened and were close enough to the front of the queue to secure (again on his advice) a position in the gallery with a perfect view of the stage.

The band appeared on stage about an hour later and were an interesting mixture of players. Hackett himself has aged a bit but still looks good for a man in his late fifties. Accompanying him was his usual band of keyboards, drums, bass, reeds and for this tour a female backing singer (and occasional guitarist) BUT the bass player was no other than Nick Beggs from Kajagoogoo! His stage costume consisted of blonde hair in pigtails, with LARGE can style headphones on top, a leather waistcoat, leather kilt (skirt?), knee high black socks and black DM's!!!!!!! That's him in the centre of the photo. So I've now seen one fifth of Kajagoogoo live! He's a very good bass player and also plays the "Chapman stick" on which he played a solo piece at one point. If you want to know about it, you can here

The concert itself was really good and clearly shows that Hackett knows his audience very well. There was some new stuff - good and shows he's still relevant today. Some older stuff - shows he knows which parts of his back catalogue his fans want hear and love. There was some acoustic stuff - Hackett is a brilliant player of classical spanish guitar music and has recorded two albums with the symphony orchestras. Finally there were the Genesis songs - again well chosen and clearly those that Hackett had a large part in writing. Including the encore it was a two hour, twenty minute set.

The highlight for me was a Genesis song - "Firth of Fifth" which included the full piano introduction from the album, which I've never heard Genesis themselves ever play! The band were very tight and it was clear that having toured together for a number of years, they were a "band" rather than Hackett with backing musicians.

All in all a great evening and I'm already scouring the Brooks website to see who to go and see next!