Fristly sorry that due to my ongoing broadband issues this review is so late and also that I have forgotten the name of the support act!
For the record they were a folk duo who were shocked to be allowed to play in front of an audience who remained quiet while they played! they were very polite and had inoffensive material that seemed to often be about relationships. They played very well and went down quite well but for me they were utterly forgettable.
The great thing about going to see Steve Wynn is that it seems most of the audience know each other and this show was almost like a reunion being his first London show in 5 years. It was to promote his new album with his trusty Miracle 3 called Northern Aggression and the re-issue of The Dream Syndicate's legendarily unavailable second album The Medicine Show that as on the only other cd issue of it is packaged with This is not the new dream syndicate album but unlike the original issue that until recently was selling for up to £200 a cd if you could find it it has all of that album on the CD!
Well this is the European line up of the band with Erik Van Loo on bass, Jason Victor on Guitar with Linda Pitmon on drums and Steve on vocals and guitar and the set was a stormer. I'm not familiar with the new songs but both Consider the Source and We Don't Talk About It sounded good and went down well as did the Medicine show material. great to hear Bullet With My Name On It and Merritville as well as loads of Steve's back catalogue from Shelley's Blues to The Deep End.
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Southern California line burned with intensity and a great version of Amphetamine wrapped up the main set. The encore opened with a rare London run out for John Coltrane Stereo Blues that Steve hasn't played here for a good ten years. I'm sure the more anal SW fans will give me chapter and verse on that.
They were then joined by a member of Steve's Norwegian touring band (yes, Robyn Hitchcock himself) who thankfully I didn't need to heckle to get off like I did the first time I saw him in the 80's. He was in fine form on a rollicking version of Street Fighting Man and the closing (seemingly never ending) version of 500 Girl Mornings that worked really well even if Steve had to tell Robyn what key it was in and what the chords were at the start. You'd never had guessed to hear it played!
All in all, a great show and I look forward to the acoustic tour Steve is playing in the new year with Chris Cacavas.
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