The last time I saw Mark Chadwick I was surrounded
by a couple of thousand other punters at the Birmingham Academy and he was
surrounded by the band he formed way back in 1988, The Levellers. This evening
he was flying solo and audience numbers were a more modest 200 or so, at least
one of whom had travelled all the way from Cardiff to be here. What’s the Welsh
for dedication...hold on...’ymroddiad’ apparently...hey, who says the internet’s
just a vapid pool of porn and pictures of cats that look like Hitler eh?
First up though local band The Sweet Black Angels,
indie country folksters with some instantly hummable tunes and a bit of an
Oasis twang here and there, minus the OTT Manc swagger thankfully. Well worth
catching if you get the chance.
Ambling onstage at around 8-ish Chadwick launched
into what amounted to a greatest hits set that was refreshingly relaxed and
informal, especially for an artist with six gold discs and a number one album
in his back pocket...yep, I know...you kind of forget that don’t you? It was a timely
reminder for anyone there who wasn’t a superfan (a fair portion of the crowd were
judging by the enthusiastic word perfect singalongs) though just how many great
tracks The Levellers have and it’s a real shame that, so far at least, they’re perhaps
not held in the same esteem as, say, yer Billy Bragg, one of the few other
artists for whom politics and social issues aren’t dirty words.
Despite one of the organisers encouraging him to
have mid set break so he could get his merch out he played on, noting that he
wasn’t “that mercantile” and that if anyone wanted anything his Skoda was
parked out the back with the doors open and they could just help themselves.
From anyone else this would merely sound like an amusing joke but you kind of
got the feeling that he was being genuine. Bless him.
Set highlight, the truly anthemic - and for once the word’s justified - One Way
predictably went down a storm (even if it did only reach number 51 in the
charts way back in 1991) and Mark even managed to inspire a mini moshpit, albeit
one of the gentlest moshpits in the history of moshpits.
Gently teasing the crowd throughout the set for
living in ‘Hobiton’ and having nothing to worry about apart from interior
design issues (gawd knows what he’d make of Whimple...we’ll have to get him
down here to find out) he blazed through the hits with the same kind of passion
and oomph that he brings to the band (“I don’t know what they do in February”
he mulled midset “don’t think I want to know either”) even bantering with the
crowd and taking the odd request towards the end. That’s the (One) Way to do
it.
Tickets
for The Levellers very own Beautiful Days Festival are on sale right here,
right now.
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