Wed 2 Feb – Teddy Thompson at The Masque

David Ford as support was absolutely fantastic. His singing voice was s clear as a whistle and he played everything himself.. literally tearing about the stage all the while never missing a note.

Thompson decided to treat us to a lot of new material from his album that was out on Monday and so no one new.. the PA was very muddy sounding for him too.. so you couldn't really his voice properly for the first three songs or so..

Wed 20 Jan – Bryan Adams

Bryan Adams was awesome last night.

It was literally just him and an acoustic guitar. He had a mouth organ (around his neck so he could still play like a one man band) and he had a piano player for some of the songs.. but that was it.

No backing singers, no drummer, no other guitarists, no screens. In fact no gimmicks or stage props at all..

The man is just a genius. It obviously helps to have 16 albums of material to cherry pick from (meaning he could start with Run To You…

The signs all boded well for a great new album. With Love Etc. they'd come back with possibly the best single since West End Girls, the album has an iconic white cover just like the early stuff, It's got a nice compact eleven tracks and they'd been working with the production team behind some of Girls Alouds biggest tracks, Xenomania.

I've been a Pets fan since forever (In fact Please was one of the first albums I ever bought in a three for the price of one deal from the Britannia Music Club fact fans!) and let's be honest.…

Wed 8 Oct – James Blunt

My only previous experience of a James Blunt show was his live album, chasing time, released on the back of the success of Back to Bedlam on which he sounds much like any other earnest singer songwriter. Either selling million of albums has been great for his confidence or practice makes perfect cos he was a fantastically assured performer last night. Strutting onto a fairly simple stage set (you know.. band.. lights and a higher sort of walkway affair) in a sharp silver suit with skinny black tie he looked on fine form.…

Fri 18 Jul – Journey South

What can I say about such an event? The venue was barely half full. The sound was terrible for the opening numbers. In fact things didn't really get going until the brothers pulled a decent cover of chasing cars out of the bag and got the crowd going.

They did seem enthusiastic and the brother with the short hair did a lot of talking to the crowd. After about half an hour they did a little acoustic set unaccompanied on two stools.. I requested Summer of 69 and despite claiming not to be a…

Fri 7 Dec – Crowded House, Duke Special

It's been a long time since Crowded House split. In that time Neil Finn has released a couple of solo albums and one with his older brother Tim. All three have been competent but none have quite had the magic of his work with the band. Sadly Paul Hester, the original drummer, commited suicide a couple of years ago. Although he'd already left the band before they split the first time.

Either way you look at it there has been a lot of water under the bridge since I last saw Crowded…

Thu 11 Oct – Damien Rice, Vyvienne Long

I'd been looking forward to this for a long long time. Suffice to say he didn't dissapoint (sorry if that ruins the surprise before I get to the review).

Got there really early (we'd had to travel from the Isle of Man so it took all day to get there) and Vyvienne Long was pretty good. A very quirky you lady and very breathless when she was talking but we warmed to her straight away. Good playing and nice tunes with often funny lyrics.

We didn't have to wait to long for…

I loved the first Tenacious D album, Despite the swearing and the playground humour it had an innocence based on the acoustic guitars, the subject matter and the spark between KG and Jack Black.

The new record is the sound track to their movie 'The Pick of Destiny' and while I've no doubt the movie will be very amusing the accompanying album has a very kind of tossed off appeal that leaves it in the shadow of the debut.

There is very little of the amusing banter that made the first record so enjoyable and whilst many of the songs…