AGENDA

A few years ago I visited the free music festival Parkpop in The Hague, my hometown in The Netherlands. My goal was a gig by The John Wetton Band that also featured keyboard player Martin Offord, one of my heroes from the neo-prog movement (Mellotron!). The band blew me away with their splendid renditions of the 'classic' tracks, at some moments the atmosphere was really magical!

This live-CD contains most of the material from that concert and again I'm blown away, what an impressive band! John Wetton plays a lot of material from King Crimson and UK he once joined. The King Crimson covers are great: "Red" features a surprising intro with sensitive electric guitar and a tasteful keyboard addition, "Book of Saturday" has fine acoustic guitar, warm vocals and a flute solo, "Easy money" contains a great vocal performance from John Wetton, wonderful soaring strings and a splendid, very biting guitar solo. "Starless" is one of the highlights with John his distinctive melancholical vocals and halfway a stunning guitar interpretation, very exciting! The UK songs are also worth listening. "In the dead of night" with bombastic organ, heavy electric guitar riffs and harder-edged guitar work than Holdsworth and "Rendezvous 6.02" with sparkling piano runs and a warm bass sound but I miss the spectacular CS80 synthesizer sound. Halfway John Wetton plays on the acoustic guitar on "Emma" (warm vocals and soaring strings) and "The smile of your eyes" (Wetton and Offord create a very pleasant atmosphere on piano, strings and acoustic guitar). I'm not a fan from John Wetton solo but I have to admit that "Sole survivor" (lush organ and fiery guitar), "Battle lines" (beautiful popprog) and "In the heat of the moment" (bombastic organ and guitar, a great final songs for a concert!) sound tasteful and well arranged.

A GREAT LIVE GIG WITH SPLENDID RENDITIONS FROM KING CRIMSON AND UK CLASSICS!

I'll start off saying that I like JOHN WETTON's voice but that alone can't save this live album, recorded in Poland. And I simply don't care about his bass playing. There's so many wonderful bass players in Progressive Rock and JOHN is just a regular one, competent, but his playing is always the same in tone and lines.

If ASIA, band which he was a big part of, arrangements usually suck, here JOHN WETTON shows himself able to ruin this versions even more, with cheesy keyboards (thanks to Martin Orford) and lame acoustic guitar versions (thanks to himself and John Mitchell). Steve Chrisley, the drummer, simply doesn't exist, pretty much, but his drums sound can't be praised.

Not to mention souless KING CRIMSON versions and, to complete the whole package, a really bad art on the cover.

JOHN WETTON, to my eyes, is like a Circus, that jumps from town to town (project to project/band to band), never settles down in any place and is always live from a glorious past.

Maybe that's why he never really get a name by himself.