Motorhead - Royal Festival Hall, Melanie - Queen Elizabeth Hall, 16 June 2007
Jarvis Cocker's Meltdown Festival opened with a difficult choice - Motorhead in the Royal Festival Hall, or Melanie in the Queen Elizabeth Hall? I went for Melanie, but squeezed in a few minutes of the other acts first.
I stuck with Motorhead's support act, the tiresome and well past their sell by date Selfish Cnnt, for about five minutes before joining the barward exodus. Still, it was moderately entertaining to see their name on all the promo stuff:
Then I wandered over to the QEH for Melanie's opener, Mathew Sawyer & The Ghosts:
Motorhead sounded on great form, but once you've heard one......
I skipped most of Motorhead's set so I could catch all of Melanie's. She ambled on looking greyer and wider than she used to, but that big voice hadn't changed. Dressed like a Sun Ra refugee and accompanied by her genius guitarist son Beau, she gave us a two hour mix of old and new material, interspersed with chat that got more rambly and bizarre as the night went on:
While Melanie took a break halfway through, Beau did the most incredible virtuoso guitar solo, like a cross between John McLaughlin and Paco Peña:
He even performed some of the lightning fast fingerwork with the guitar behind his head:
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