Echoes at The Fox and Duck (March 2014)

Echoes are one of the regulars at the Fox and Duck that I try and catch every time that they play there, because they are always good.

I had to rush a little this time as Hunger Games: Catching Fire lasted longer than I expected but my timing was impeccable and I walked through the door of the pub just after 9pm to the opening chord from In The Flesh?. Echoes always open with this as it starts with the lines, "So ya. Thought ya. Might like to go to the show."

As always with Echoes the pub was pretty full and having fought my way to the bar to get a pint of Doombar I then moved around the front-left where there was still space to stand with a decent view of the band.

For most of the next three hours Echoes delighted the pub with their version of some of Pink Floyd's greatest songs (there are a lot to choose from) including almost all of Dark Side of The Moon and large chunks of The Wall.

That was exactly what the crowd wanted and there was plenty of movement (it would be a little generous to call it dancing) and singing along. I'll admit to the later.

Despite the somewhat less than ideal acoustics the sound quality was excellent and there was a good balance between all the instruments. One of Pink Floyd's strengths is the richness of their music and it needs all the instruments to be heard in order to reproduce this.

A slightly reduced version of Echoes was my highlight, and not for the first time either. It got me thinking that Echoes ought to have a go at Atom Heart Mother sometime.

To make the evening even better I was there with a couple of friends, met a few more people that I know and had the chance to speak to a couple of the band.

I have seen Echoes several times now so I know what to expect from them. And it is because that I know what to expect from them that I have seen them several times. I will be seeing them again too.

Echoes back at The Fox and Duck

It is always good to see Echoes play anywhere and it is even better to see them in The Fox and Duck in Petersham as it is easy for me to get to (I could walk but I usually take the bus) and there is always a great atmosphere there.

The buses were unkind to me and I did not get to the pub until just before Echoes started playing. By then the pub was pretty packed and any hope I had for getting a comfortable place by the bar had long gone. It was hard enough to squeeze up to the bar to get my first Doombar of the evening.

Beer acquired I tried to find somewhere decent to stand where I could both see the band reasonably well (I am only little) and would not be jostled too much by people trying to get to the toilets or the bar. That meant I was pretty near the front for most of the evening, which was fine with me.

Echoes opened, as usual, with In the Flesh? from The Wall with its loud refrain, "So ya, Thought ya, Might like to go to the show." and took it on from there with more songs from, mostly, The Wall and Wish You Were Here. I like the way that they play a combination of the shorter poppier songs, such as Another Brick in the Wall, and longer proggier songs like Shine on You Crazy Diamond.

After an hour Echoes decided that they needed a rest and took a break from half an hour or so.

When they came back they gave us Dark Side of The Moon in its entirety. Not surprisingly this was very well received by everybody there, even the people who looked far too young to know the album,  and there was a lot of singing along. I may have been guilty for some of that.

How do you follow something as brilliant and as famous as Dark Side? Echoes chose to do it with Echoes, though they trimmed it down a little to a mere fifteen minutes. It was my highlight of the evening (again).

Echoes played until just a little shy of the midnight curfew, and remember they started spot on nine. That was one long and very excellent set that went down very well with an enthusiastic audience.

It is hard to fault an evening as good as that, so I shan't. It was perfect.

Echoes at the Half Moon

I had seen Echoes play several times before in three different venues but this was the first time that I had to pay. And I was glad to.

I do not understand the economics of local bands that means that I can see them in a small pub for free or pay £7 to see them in a reasonably sized venue.

The other thing that I do not understand is why so many people are happy to pay £7 to see a band only to stand at the back talking to their mates all evening.

The combination of the talkers and my natural inclinations took me to the front of the stage. The Half Moon had a wide stage set in to one corner (much like the Grey Horse in Kingston) so I had to choose which half of the band to see. I went for guitar, keyboards and sax with a hint of drums.

I chose that side, rather than the possibly more glamorous lead guitar and bass,  because I felt that Guy Smith's saxophone was the defining sound of the band. It was often used to fill in the gabs that Pink Floyd filled with other musicians and singers and this is most notable in Great Gig in the Sky where the sax takes the vocal line but it is the little touches that the sax brought throughout the show that I liked.

On this occasion another highlight was the interchange between sax (far right) and lead guitar (far left) in their friendly rivalry to add the most colour to some extended sections.

It was also good to get a decent view of Peter Bamford on keyboards.He is the leader of the band but he normally hides himself away behind the guitars. On the wider shallower stage at the Half Moon he could not do that. The point of seeing the keyboards up close is to match the fingers to the sounds, which I like to do.

The sound quality was excellent. Echoes were able to make use the Half Moon's professional level equipment (I've seen the likes of Arthur Brown and Strawbs play there) and this showed. Oran Halberthal's bass benefited from the better sound system the most and was my second favourite instrument on the night.

Echoes always had played all of Dark Side of the Moon across the evening but as individual tracks. This year they were celebrating forty years of the album by playing it in its entirety.

With Dark Side the main point of the second half of the show the first got a good dollop of The Wall.

The new lead guitarist, Terry Finch, still learning some of the songs the set list was slightly reduced and we did not get any of the more recent songs, e.g. from Momentary Lapse of Reason. I did not mind too much.

It was good to hear Echoes (the song), it always is, though it was a little odd to hear it immediately after Dark Side; I think that I would have preferred it the other way round and to have Dark Side end the show.

The evening ended on a very high note and I managed to have a few, very complimentary, words with most of the band. It was nice to put £7 in their pockets for their efforts and nicer still to tell them how much I enjoyed their show. Again.

The talkers and the order of the songs were very minor gripes in what was another excellent evening of Pink Floyd music. I love this bands to bits and have plans to see them again very soon.

Echoes, without Echoes, at The Berry

Sad events kept me away from Echoes for a while. They lost their guitarist, Lee, in a car accident last year and then when they got back on the road and played at a local pub, the Fox and Duck in Petersham, I was at a memorial for a friend of mine who died recently.

The ill winds finally dissipated on Saturday 13 April when I was able to catch Echoes at The Berry in Surbiton. I last saw them play there two years ago.

Obviously new guitarist, Doug Lean (far left),has had an impact on the band. His style is a little more forceful and aggressive than Lee's and he does not use a slide guitar (yet). Doug has not yet learnt the full set so this was the band Echoes without the track Echoes. Of course Echoes was missed but the Pink Floyd catalogue is not exactly small and the set survived without it.

There is still a heavy reliance on The Wall, and there is nothing wrong with that. This is obvious from the very beginning and the shows opens with the traditional song In the Flesh?,the words, "So ya, Thought ya, Might like to go to the show" and a solid blast of sound that announces to the pub that the band are on and they mean business.

The set continues with more from The Wall and a smattering of songs from the likes of A Momentary Lapse of Reason, e.g. Sorrow and The Dogs of War) and there was Arnold Layne too.

There was nothing from The Dark Side in the first half as they saved that up for the second. This is the album's fortieth birthday and to celebrate Echoes are playing it in its entirety.

To be honest they used to play all of it before but not in the right order and with other songs interleaved,

Dark Side is still a brilliant album (I bought it in '73 and several times since then) and was warmly received by the enthusiastic audience.

Money was an obvious highlight because it is such a great song and another was Great Gig in The Sky because the saxophone did the part of the screaming vocals so well. Despite that, Us and Them was my favourite song on the night as Echoes skilfully pulled all of the meaning out of the song. It was impossible not to sing along.

Now that Echoes are back on the road I expect to be singing along to them again once or twice again this year. And yet again after that.

Echoes Part II

I would normally go to see Echoes play at the Fox and Duck without a moment's hesitation and the only problem this time was that I managed to double-book myself with a theatre date on the same evening. My bad.

Luckily I was able to recover the situation a little. The theatre ended around 10pm and my winged chariot (a.k.a. a number 65 bus) was there to whisk me a couple of miles north to Petersham. I arrived at the Fox and Duck during the interval, which meant that I was just in time for Echoes Part II.

The pub was pleasingly packed. Heaving in fact. I eventually managed to get served and fought my way towards the front where my mate Pete was already stationed. I was a bit worried that we might have been in the mosh pit zone but what dancing there was ended with the group of women just in front of me. From then on back it was a bit of gentle swaying and arm waving only.

Echoes did just what I expected and wanted. They played a fair amount of very old stuff, including Echoes, as well as a lot of merely old stuff, such as large chunks of Dark Side.

Part II ended around midnight in the usual manner with Comfortably Numb and Money after a thoroughly uplifting and joyous hour and a half or so. That's why I keep going to see them.

An echo of a distant time

Echoes are a band that I am happy to see at any time and so its was that I found myself back at the Fox and Duck for another evening of excellent music.

It may be almost forty years since Dark Side of the Moon started its World Domination in album sales but the memories are long and pleasant and so the pub was packed to relive the music of Pink Floyd.

I've said before that the pub is not really the right shape for them, the stage area is too narrow and is in the main bar, but they manage to overcome these obstacles.

The narrow stage means that the saxophonist, Guy Smith, is banished to the corridor that leads to the toilets and then outside but this works fine. Guy even manages to wander in to the centre towards the end as the climax approaches.

Being in the bar means contending with bar chatter but that's an easy problem to solve. Just play loudly.

The mark is set at the very beginning with a raucous, "So ya, Thought ya, Might like to go to the show" that demands attention the same way that a two year old child does.

From there things progress much as expected with large dollops of Dark Side and The Wall mixed in with a smattering of other songs from See Emily Play through to Sorrow, the closing track from A Momentary Lapse of Reason.

In that blend a particular favourite of mine was the track that we were informed that Pink Floyd named after the band.

That may not be true.

Great Gig in the Sky was another highlight mainly thanks to the clever use of the sax to do the female vocal line. It was magic.

Somehow the pieces came in to place from my vantage point behind a bench and I managed to get all the band members in one photo. I don't think that I've managed that before.

They are (L-R): Guy Smith (Saxophone), Peter Bamford (Keyboards), John Vassar (Lead Vocals), Simon Melvin (Drums), Oran Halberthal (Bass) and Lee Deal (Lead Guitar).

And it's good to be able to name-check them all as the whole point of Echoes is that they play as one unit.

There were no surprises in the evening but I went expecting to thoroughly enjoy myself and so no surprises was a good result.

It really was a very good evening. Again.

Echoes back at The Berry

Echoes and The Berry go well together so when they went back there so did I.

What makes The Berry so good for Echoes is the performance space that they get and the quality of the sound this produces in the lower bar. There are some downsides, such as the lack of space for the audience, no bar in that section and the behaviour of some of the locals but on balance the strengths far outweigh the weaknesses.

One of the nice things about Echoes is that they vary their set each time. It's still, broadly, a quarter Dark Side, a quarter The Wall and a half everything else but there is room for manoeuvre within that.

The main surprise this time was See Emily Play, which I had not seen them do before. Mind you, I still tend to think of this as a David Bowie song thanks to his version on Pin Ups.

The set order was also different this time with nothing from Dark Side until the very end of the first half of the set. I was actually a little upset by this as I had convinced myself by then that we were going to get Dark Side in its entirety in the second half. Perhaps next time.

And there will be a next time. When Echoes play one of my local venues again I'll be there again.

Echoes in Petersham

My third experience of Echoes in about as many months was at The Fox and Duck, just a mile or so up the road in Petersham. The 65 bus takes you door-to-door.

The venue can work well for music, as it did when I saw the Bowie tribute band The Thin White Duke, but it's a little awkward for a band as numerous and popular as Echoes.

One outcome of this was that Guy Smith (Tenor Saxophone) was banished to the corridor that runs alongside the stage area. Hardly ideal but it just about worked.

The other outcome is that the pub was so packed that even sitting at the very front in the middle my view was obscured at times by people standing around me. Again, no big deal, just a minor annoyance.

I managed to secure the good seat by arriving before 8am and just before the pub really started to fill. The poster outside the pub promised an 8pm start, the one inside was more honest and claimed 9pm. Not that I minded sitting in the pub for an hour particularly as I was able to grab a few words with some of the band as they fought with cables and boxes.

Come the appointed hour Echoes launched straight in to the familiar, and expected, In the Flesh? from The Wall, chosen because it opens with, "So you thought you might like to, Go to the show."

And we were off!

What followed has almost an hour and a half of Pink Floyd classics, a short break for drinks, and another hour and a half of songs.

My front-row seat put me almost in touching distance of front-man John Vassar on Lead Vocals, Electric and Acoustic Guitar. In the middle here is Oran Halberthal on Bass Guitar and on the right it's Lee Deal on Lead Guitar, Slide Guitar and Acoustic Guitar. Lee was celebrating a year with the band.

Hidden at the back was drummer Simon Melvin and off to the left was Peter Bamford on Keyboards. Guy Smith was even further left.

The set was obviously very similar to the last two times that I saw them, it had most of Dark Side and highlights from The Wall, but there were also some nice surprises.

Added to the set were Have a Cigar and, from the very easiest days of the band, Arnold Lane. Also added was the eponymous Echoes (from Meddle), an absolute favourite of mine even when played alongside other great songs.

Evenings do not get much better than listening to three hours of live Pink Floyd music played with skill and enthusiasm in a local pub.

Echoes in Berrylands

I love the music of Pink Floyd and I love the way that Echoes present it.

This love affair only started a few weeks ago when they played the Alexandra Tavern just down the road and went through a rough patch a couple of weeks later when they pulled out of another local gig (blaming the snow) but more than recovered when they played the following week at The Berry in Berrylands.

Berrylands is a nondescript part of Surbiton occupying the enviable position between the main line to Southampton, Bournemouth and Weymouth and the A3 to Portsmouth. It has its own railway station, that only the most local of services stop at, which has a few shops clustered around it. And a pub.

The Berry (formerly The Berrylands) is much better suited to bands than the Alexandra. The latter is long and thin which traps the band and their music at one end whereas The Berry is refreshingly wide allowing the music to run riot throughout the pub.

It's also conveniently situated next to the bus stop where the K2 links you to Kingston town centre.

This time I had the presence of mind to make a note of the songs as they played them
but while I am unable to do a direct comparison between the two sets it is clear that they were very similar and they may even have been the same. No problem there, it's a great set.

A quick scan shows a smattering of songs from Meddle, Animals, Momentary Lapse of Reason and Wish You Were Here but the bulk of the two hour set comes from Dark Side and The Wall so we get the crowd pleasing classics Time, Money, Great Gig in the Sky, Dirty Woman, Comfortably Numb and Another Brick in the Wall.

But great songs are not enough, you need a decent band too and Echoes are more than that.

From the opening blast of In The Flesh the rich sound pounds, probes, prods and pulsates filling the room and drawing you in to the unfolding story. This is not a band that plays quietly in the corner while the punters chat over their drinks.

The richness, warmth and depth of the music comes from having five, sometimes six, musicians and just a few tapes to provide the special effects that help to define the Pink Floyd sound.

A few weeks ago I had not heard of Echoes but now I'm determined to see them as often as possible. Next time should be the Fox on Duck on 25 March, as long as the snow has gone by then!

Echoes of Pink Floyd

A mate in one pub alerted me to a concert at another one that led me going to see the band play at a third one; the three pubs being the Hand and Flower, Fox and Duck, and Alexandra Tavern.

The band are Echoes who play Pink Floyd covers but not, oddly, Echoes.

The Alexandra Tavern has gone through some changes recently so it was good to see it packed on a Friday night.

And it was even better to see quite a few familiar faces from the days when I lived around the corner in Kings Road.

But, the beer and pleasantries aside, it was the music that I went for and that worked out very well too.

Echoes opened with the familiar words "So you thought you might like to go to the show" from In The Flesh? off of The Wall and stayed comfortably in that zone for the next couple of hours or so to the clear delight of the fans and casual observers alike.

Echoes are a five piece band, rising to six when a saxophone is required, though the cramped setting meant that the poor drummer was only visible when he moved away from his cage for the interval.

They sound a lot like Pink Floyd too, which is definitely a good thing.

Their set plunders The Wall and Dark Side to a predictable extent but their are a few surprises in their too, like Pigs.

It was a lot of fun to be able to sing lines like "Hey you, Whitehouse, ha ha charade you are" once again.

It's hard to fault a band playing good music well; so I won't. They were spot-on with their song selection and their delivery and it was an excellent evening. So much so that I will be doing it all again in a couple of weeks.

Next time I'll try and pay more attention to the set list and less to the singing!