Glenn Tilbrook Live at the Lincoln Park Festival - 6/20/04
Jun 21 '04
The Bottom Line Glenn Tilbrook is still as good as he was twenty years ago with Squeeze. There should have been a lot more of us to learn that firsthand the other night.
There are some events that are simply bigger than the space they occupy. Small, local gatherings at a makeshift venue, with the right spark and energy, can put the huge arena tours to shame. Glenn Tilbrook's concert at the Lincoln Park Festival in Chicago on Sunday night was one such show.
Festival organizers fenced off a few blocks at the corner of Clark Street and Lincoln Park west, and most of the space was taken up by local artisans hawking their wares and ethnic-food-on-a-stick vendors. Off in one corner, though, was a small makeshift stage, probably no more than twenty-five feet from one end to the other, with all four sides open to the air, and nothing more than a simple scaffolding holding up tarp to protect the performers from the elements. No lights. No fancy set pieces. It's the sort of venue where you typically see local amateur acts thankful for the chance to play in front of an audience, but it was also the setting for the last stop on the U.S. leg of Glenn Tilbrook's current concert tour with his backing band, the Fluffers (Simon Hanson on drums, Lucy Shaw on bass, and Stephen Large on keyboards).
As six o'clock approached, a crowd of about two hundred began to congregate loosely in front of the stage. Much of the assemblage consisted of lapsed yuppies in their thirties and forties who remembered they heyday of Squeeze, but there were a fair number of younger types such as myself who were a bit too young for Squeeze, but still know good music when we hear it. Before we had the chance to grow restless, Tilbrook and his band wrapped up their investigation of the festival's booths and took the stage, starting things off with a bit of witty banter. Naturally, someone in the crowd asked about the origin of his band's name, a question which Tilbrook artfully dodged, either because their were a few young children in the crown, or perhaps simply because the truth wouldn't be nearly as entertaining as our own imaginations.
The evening's music started out energetically as Tilbrook and company launched into Pulling Mussels From the Shell, whetting our appetites for some of the great Squeeze hits to come throughout the course of the evening. Fans who only knew of Tilbrook's days with Squeeze may have been a little disappointed that he followed up this opener with a few solo songs, but nobody could deny that the wistful pop This Is Where You Ain't from The Incomplete Glenn Tilbrook and the tongue-in-cheek disco of Hot Shaved Asian Teens from his more recent Transatlantic Ping Pong both captured the same endearing vibe of the better known Squeeze hits. As the set rolled out, Tilbrook acknowledged his awkward feelings of playing his songs electrically with a band, having spent the last several years before 2004 playing nothing but solo acoustic shows, but he came across perfectly natural. He and the band were clicking wonderfully.
The band continued to sprinkle songs from Tilbrook's solo albums in among Tempted, Take Me I'm Yours, Is That Love, and other Squeeze hits, but Tilbrook's mind seemed to keep drifting back to the past, hitting on both the good and the bad. As he introduced Neptune from his latest solo album, Tilbrook elucidated on the lyrics as a critical view of his feelings about former bandmate and songwriting partner Chris Difford. But then, moments later, he lead the audience in a sing-along on Squeeze's Piccadilly,for which he praised Difford's lyrics as being some of the best he's ever heard.
The energy seemed to dip slightly when Tilbrook dismissed the rest of the band and played a few songs by himself. He sounded impeccable on Another Nail For My Heart and Up the Junction, as well as on Hostage from his newest album, but without the rest of the band the feel of the music just wasn't as big and a few members of the crowd wandered off to some of the food stands. When he picked up an unamplified acoustic guitar and stepped away from the microphones, it looked as if the might be in serious danger of running out of steam. Thanks to the small, impromptu nature of the festival though, what resulted was truly fantastic and stands out as the high point of the evening.
After a quick joke about the risk of accidentally getting himself killed, Tilbrook leapt down into the audience, and proceeded to start up Goodbye Girl with his acoustic guitar. Given that there were at most two or three hundred of us in the audience, we all crowded in tightly to be able to hear clearly. The commotion drew the attention of the festival goers still milling around the art and food stands, and soon there were even more people packed in front of the small stage. Tilbrook weaved his way between the fans, building our enthusiasm, and once he head us all under his spell, the rest of his band converged on him, armed with bongos, melodica and shakers. Together, the band rounded out the acoustic performance of Goodbye Girl, then led smoothly into Black Coffee in Bed, complete with the audience singing along to cover the song's classic keyboard riff. The band continued to dance and play the audience, making sure to pass by as many fans as they could. They held out in the audience as long as they could, returning to the stage only at the last second before the song's guitar solo, when they picked up their electric instruments once again and proceeded to jam their way through the bridge.
From there, the band rounded things out with Hourglass, Parallel World, Lost in Space, and a few others before departing the stage and returning for an encore of Third Rail, Untouchable, and an absolutely scorching rendition of Slap and Tickle to end the show. By the end, the show had a little bit of everything. All of the big Squeeze hits were there, as well as a few of their overlooked gems, and Tilbrook's solo material had the chance to shine as well.
For such a small, low-key venue, the show was absolutely huge. Given that there were only about three hundred people in the audience at any given moment, Tilbrook had the chance to make an personal connection with just about everyone in the crowd. And despite the small confines of the performance space, Tilbrook and his band played with enough energy and enthusiasm to fill an arena.
With the open nature of the makeshift stage, we could see an awful lot of downtown Chicago behind the band. From where I stood in the audience, the Sears Tower stood just off to the side of Tilbrook's right shoulder. Since the tower was about three miles away from the festival, its highest floors barely rose higher than Tilbrook's head from our perspective. Rather than simply making the tower look small, though, I like to think back on it as a symbol of just how much larger Tilbrook's presence felt in comparison to the small, humble venue.
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