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 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 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!