Review of Steven Lindsay gig in herald 15 march 2005
Steven Lindsay, The Arches, Glasgow - The Herald
THOUGH 14 years have elapsed since the demise of Lindsay's great, unfulfilled band, The Big Dish, and his first tentative steps as a solo artist, there are striking similarities in both the sound and performance. Minus a drummer, but with a visual backdrop of speeded up cityscapes, Lindsay, pictured, spends the majority of the show behind a keyboard, singing his way beautifully through the batch of songs that make up his recent album, Exit Music.
Nerves brought on by the occasion accentuate an already uncomfortable stage presence, but, strangely, it is a technical mishap at the start of Breakdown which appears to set things on an even course.
It is an archetypal Lindsay song: piano-laden, melodic and relentlessly bleak in its lyrical outlook. If this is a well that is extensively drawn on, then many of the highlights come when he deviates from type. Solo renditions of Valentine and Goodnight are a reminder of the depth and power of Lindsay's voice, which matches the soulfulness of his Blue Nile contemporary, Paul Buchanan.
Elsewhere, Submarine is a resplendent pop song, and, though its layered arrangement is slightly clumsy in a live context, Butterfly is an ambitious and brilliant conceit.
Some latter-day Big Dish songs - Miss America and Warning Sign - make an appearance, but while there is no doubting their pop credentials, hearing them 14 years later finds them walking a tightrope between timeless and time-warped.
The oldest song, Swimmer, is offered as an encore (along with a version of Help Me Make It Through The Night), but while Lindsay's strengths clearly lie in writing and arranging, he is now a creditable, quietly-accomplished performer as well.
also this from evening times today (17 march)
SOLO STAR: Steven Lindsay is back in action with a new album
FORMERLY of Scottish 80s nearly men The Big Dish, Lindsay was back in town to promote his debut solo release, Exit Music.
Kicking off with Birdsong, and despite a 13-year lay-off from the live arena, Lindsay's soaring vocal displayed almost effortless fragility and purity.
This was his first solo gig aside from a support to Deacon Blue at the Carling Academy and he admitted his nervousness to the audience.
Performing without a drummer, he reliant on technology to assist.
Unfortunately prior to the excellent Breakdown, it did-!
A full recovery was made however, and it was warming to hear new material such as Butterfly and November alongside such old Big Dish favourites as Warning Sign and the timeless Miss America.
An emotional Shoot The Breeze and Goodnight gave us an insight into the break up of Lindsay's marriage and demonstrated the depth and range of his voice.
But it wasn't until he got out from behind his piano and strapped on a guitar for Submarine that the audience really warmed up.
Friday, 18 March 2005
Wednesday, 16 March 2005
Why Brown is beginning to look like Labour’s only hope
Why Brown is beginning to look like Labour’s only hope - The Herald
Herald 16 March
THREE weeks ago, when this column first noted that the Tories were staging a bit of an electoral comeback, there was much scoffing.
The Tories weren't going anywhere, I was assured. Labour insiders were very relaxed, glad even that at last someone was playing up the Tories and giving people a reason to vote.
Well, they're not scoffing now and Labour is no longer sounding so relaxed. Yesterday, another reputable poll - NOP in the Independent - suggested Labour's UK lead has more than halved in the past month, from 12 points to five. Labour's internal polling is thought to confirm that the Tories are making serious inroads into Labour's lead.
Now, Michael Howard still has very little chance of actually winning the general election in May - unless something cataclysmic happens, such as the chancellor resigning. But the resurgent Conservatives could inflict a moral defeat on Labour, challenging its authority and making a mess of Tony Blair's third and final term.
He could forget the referendum on the European constitution, for a start.
What we could be witnessing is the revival of the Conservatives as a serious political force in Britain.
Today the chancellor, Gordon Brown, rides to the rescue with his budget speech. However, even the best chancellor in 100 years (according to Tony Blair) cannot work miracles. He is not in charge of this election campaign and can only speak about the economy.
He's expected to offer a few sweeteners to first-time home buyers and pensioners, maybe a modest tax cut.
He'll spell out the implications for schools and hospitals if the Tories were to cut - pounds35bn from public spending. There will be one or two of his celebrated surprises, but the main selling point will be the years of continuous growth - south of the border at least.
And almost before the words are out of his mouth, the chancellor's chorus of ministerial critics will be accusing him of promoting his own campaign to become prime minister.
There is no sensible alternative to Brown as the next Labour leader, but his internal enemies just can't stop themselves rushing to brief the Sun that the chancellor is going to be dropped after the election.
The story of how Labour has managed to squander a lead so massive that people were talking about the death of British Conservatism is one of vanity, incompetence, complacency and plain stupidity. It is of a prime minister who has lost his balance, a party which has lost its soul, a cabinet which has lost its bottle and a campaign which has lost its meaning.
It's not just the slogan, though "Forward not Back" must be one of the worst ever put before the British people. The 2005 pledge card, which didn't actually make any precise pledges, was an insult to the intelligence. But the essential problem is that Labour's entire approach has been negative, unprincipled and ideologically incoherent. The New Labour "radicals" who have been in charge of the campaign seem to believe that radicalism involves appeasing the right. The rest of the cabinet has gone AWOL.
When the Tories moved on to the race agenda with a call for quotas of immigrants, Labour said little - presumably because No 10 didn't want to sound too pro-immigration. The Conservatives have now broken another long-standing electoral convention by raising abortion as an election issue. Labour again seems unable to articulate any kind of principled response.
Being tough on terrorism by denying suspects their civil liberties must have seemed like an easy way of piling up votes. But the PM calculated without the House of Lords, which took a determined stand against the scrapping of habeas corpus. It also underestimated the Conservatives, who also refused to be brow-beaten into giving ministers power to detain terrorist suspects indefinitely without trial.
On health the Tories used a technique Labour knows well from its "Jennifer's Ear" days, exploiting the case of Margaret Dixon's cancelled shoulder operation. Health secretary John Reid galloped around in a lather of indignation, without ever successfully rebutting the story and eventually lost the plot completely, accusing Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman of being prejudiced against him because of his Glasgow accent.
This combination of panic and intemperance has typified Labour's campaign so far. A rattled Peter Hain, Labour's leader of the house, accused Michael Howard of being an "attack mongrel". At the Scottish Labour conference, MP Michael Connarty said that "there are forces of evil in the land, and the Conservatives are among them". This kind of language rebounds on politicians and makes them look weak not strong.
But the real reason Labour ministers couldn't counter the Tory critique of the NHS is that they have endorsed so much of it themselves. By bemoaning the resistance of the NHS reform - "the scars on my back" etc - and adopting the rhetoric of "choice", the government now finds it increasingly difficult to argue a positive case for collective provision.
Labour no longer seems to know what it's there for. Tony Blair gives every impression of loathing the NHS and comprehensive schools.
What seems to get the prime minister fired up are things like top-up fees for universities, spot fines for criminals, ID cards, detention without trial, nuclear power, starting wars. It looks Tory, sounds Tory and by golly . . . the voters are beginning to realise that they are, essentially, Tory policies. So why not vote for the real thing?
Labour needs to respond to the Conservative challenge by more than "triangulation" - the electoral tactic of adopting your opponent's rhetoric as your own. It needs to be clearwhat it believes in, what it thinks; it needs to provide moral leadership.
Labour needs to reconstitute the coalition that threw the Tories from office. This was a combination of young middle-class voters who felt the Tories were old fogies, intellectual reformers, trade unions, the poor and women. Labour has sidelined its women while the macho men - Blair, Brown, Milburn - battle for supremacy.
Intellectuals have been alienated by house arrest and the middle classes have largely forgotten why they used to think of the Tories as the "nasty" party.
Gordon Brown is the only member of the cabinet who still seems to think he is there to change the world - and he means it.
Brown's vision is of a new global economic order in which the productive energies released by free trade and new technology can deliver the old promises of socialism: a global community where poverty and injustice are eradicated.
This is not old Labour. Brown's speech to the Scottish Labour conference was a stark warning to trade unions that no restrictive practice, no inflexibility - in fact, no job - is safe in the new economy. However, the chancellor combined this hardheadedness with a sense of genuine purpose. The kind of purpose that got Labour elected in 1997.
It can't do that by offering little more than Tory-lite. It is a mark of New Labour's enduring lack of self-confidence that it still takes its ideological cues from a party which has been comprehensively defeated in two general elections. Far from side-lining the chancellor, he is beginning to look like Labour's only hope. The call should unashamedly be: vote Blair, get Brown. After all, it's only the truth.
Read Iain Macwhirter also in the Sunday Herald.
Herald 16 March
THREE weeks ago, when this column first noted that the Tories were staging a bit of an electoral comeback, there was much scoffing.
The Tories weren't going anywhere, I was assured. Labour insiders were very relaxed, glad even that at last someone was playing up the Tories and giving people a reason to vote.
Well, they're not scoffing now and Labour is no longer sounding so relaxed. Yesterday, another reputable poll - NOP in the Independent - suggested Labour's UK lead has more than halved in the past month, from 12 points to five. Labour's internal polling is thought to confirm that the Tories are making serious inroads into Labour's lead.
Now, Michael Howard still has very little chance of actually winning the general election in May - unless something cataclysmic happens, such as the chancellor resigning. But the resurgent Conservatives could inflict a moral defeat on Labour, challenging its authority and making a mess of Tony Blair's third and final term.
He could forget the referendum on the European constitution, for a start.
What we could be witnessing is the revival of the Conservatives as a serious political force in Britain.
Today the chancellor, Gordon Brown, rides to the rescue with his budget speech. However, even the best chancellor in 100 years (according to Tony Blair) cannot work miracles. He is not in charge of this election campaign and can only speak about the economy.
He's expected to offer a few sweeteners to first-time home buyers and pensioners, maybe a modest tax cut.
He'll spell out the implications for schools and hospitals if the Tories were to cut - pounds35bn from public spending. There will be one or two of his celebrated surprises, but the main selling point will be the years of continuous growth - south of the border at least.
And almost before the words are out of his mouth, the chancellor's chorus of ministerial critics will be accusing him of promoting his own campaign to become prime minister.
There is no sensible alternative to Brown as the next Labour leader, but his internal enemies just can't stop themselves rushing to brief the Sun that the chancellor is going to be dropped after the election.
The story of how Labour has managed to squander a lead so massive that people were talking about the death of British Conservatism is one of vanity, incompetence, complacency and plain stupidity. It is of a prime minister who has lost his balance, a party which has lost its soul, a cabinet which has lost its bottle and a campaign which has lost its meaning.
It's not just the slogan, though "Forward not Back" must be one of the worst ever put before the British people. The 2005 pledge card, which didn't actually make any precise pledges, was an insult to the intelligence. But the essential problem is that Labour's entire approach has been negative, unprincipled and ideologically incoherent. The New Labour "radicals" who have been in charge of the campaign seem to believe that radicalism involves appeasing the right. The rest of the cabinet has gone AWOL.
When the Tories moved on to the race agenda with a call for quotas of immigrants, Labour said little - presumably because No 10 didn't want to sound too pro-immigration. The Conservatives have now broken another long-standing electoral convention by raising abortion as an election issue. Labour again seems unable to articulate any kind of principled response.
Being tough on terrorism by denying suspects their civil liberties must have seemed like an easy way of piling up votes. But the PM calculated without the House of Lords, which took a determined stand against the scrapping of habeas corpus. It also underestimated the Conservatives, who also refused to be brow-beaten into giving ministers power to detain terrorist suspects indefinitely without trial.
On health the Tories used a technique Labour knows well from its "Jennifer's Ear" days, exploiting the case of Margaret Dixon's cancelled shoulder operation. Health secretary John Reid galloped around in a lather of indignation, without ever successfully rebutting the story and eventually lost the plot completely, accusing Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman of being prejudiced against him because of his Glasgow accent.
This combination of panic and intemperance has typified Labour's campaign so far. A rattled Peter Hain, Labour's leader of the house, accused Michael Howard of being an "attack mongrel". At the Scottish Labour conference, MP Michael Connarty said that "there are forces of evil in the land, and the Conservatives are among them". This kind of language rebounds on politicians and makes them look weak not strong.
But the real reason Labour ministers couldn't counter the Tory critique of the NHS is that they have endorsed so much of it themselves. By bemoaning the resistance of the NHS reform - "the scars on my back" etc - and adopting the rhetoric of "choice", the government now finds it increasingly difficult to argue a positive case for collective provision.
Labour no longer seems to know what it's there for. Tony Blair gives every impression of loathing the NHS and comprehensive schools.
What seems to get the prime minister fired up are things like top-up fees for universities, spot fines for criminals, ID cards, detention without trial, nuclear power, starting wars. It looks Tory, sounds Tory and by golly . . . the voters are beginning to realise that they are, essentially, Tory policies. So why not vote for the real thing?
Labour needs to respond to the Conservative challenge by more than "triangulation" - the electoral tactic of adopting your opponent's rhetoric as your own. It needs to be clearwhat it believes in, what it thinks; it needs to provide moral leadership.
Labour needs to reconstitute the coalition that threw the Tories from office. This was a combination of young middle-class voters who felt the Tories were old fogies, intellectual reformers, trade unions, the poor and women. Labour has sidelined its women while the macho men - Blair, Brown, Milburn - battle for supremacy.
Intellectuals have been alienated by house arrest and the middle classes have largely forgotten why they used to think of the Tories as the "nasty" party.
Gordon Brown is the only member of the cabinet who still seems to think he is there to change the world - and he means it.
Brown's vision is of a new global economic order in which the productive energies released by free trade and new technology can deliver the old promises of socialism: a global community where poverty and injustice are eradicated.
This is not old Labour. Brown's speech to the Scottish Labour conference was a stark warning to trade unions that no restrictive practice, no inflexibility - in fact, no job - is safe in the new economy. However, the chancellor combined this hardheadedness with a sense of genuine purpose. The kind of purpose that got Labour elected in 1997.
It can't do that by offering little more than Tory-lite. It is a mark of New Labour's enduring lack of self-confidence that it still takes its ideological cues from a party which has been comprehensively defeated in two general elections. Far from side-lining the chancellor, he is beginning to look like Labour's only hope. The call should unashamedly be: vote Blair, get Brown. After all, it's only the truth.
Read Iain Macwhirter also in the Sunday Herald.
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