…Wow. Just wow.
Toyah Willcox is not a woman to let the ground rest beneath her feet, and nor, one suspects is her husband Robert Fripp. Not only did they do their best to keep music lovers’ spirits up during the pandemic with their Sunday Lunch videos on YouTube (which racked up millions of views), she’s just competed in Strictly and now here they are just before Christmas touring together.
I might say this normally at the end of a review, but I’m going to get this in now: if you get the chance to see one of the handful of remaining shows before Christmas, go and see them. Because I’ve been to a lot of gigs this year, and there’s been a lot of great ones, but of them all, this was The. Most. Fun.
Yeah. Remember fun? Remember enjoying things because they give you sheer unadulterated joy, rather than feeling that you have to be seen to be seen to be listening to, watching or doing something in order to be accepted? Sweet children, happiness is underrated and so is joy. Tonight they were here in spades.
What made it so wonderful? Well, the interplay between the husband and wife team of Fripp and Willcox, who clearly love each other very much after nearly forty years of marriage, is something to behold. They have a wonderful gently mocking way, with each other. Also, they clearly know how to put on a show, and this one shows just how much they enjoy pop and rock music in its different forms. Sure on paper, I’ve no doubt that there were those who wondered how the punky princess and prog rock king would work together, but it’s great. So we get a handful of Toyah originals, and a whole lot of covers that are diverse and well chosen.
Opening with ‘Thunder In The Mountains,’ Toyah seems a vision who still captivates after all these years. When they play ‘It’s A Mystery‘ she mentions it as the song that changed her life (fair point, it was the song that took her into the Top Ten for the first time in 1981, and made her a popstar, as well as a punk icon) and I think her voice sounds even better than it did on the original. Later on we get ‘I Want To Be Free‘ which she recalls starting a riot at the Edinburgh Playhouse that year. When she sings that she wants to turn suburbia upside down, you sense that she still does have this effect on people everywhere. The much more recent ‘Space Dance‘ and ‘Roses In Chains‘ go down well too (my wife tells me that people were talking about the latter in the queue for the toilet afterwards).
The wide-ranging covers are wonderful, too. Like a party playlist that appeals across the generations, we get ‘Echo Beach,’ ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine,’ ‘Heart Of Glass‘ and a rather fine version of ‘Paranoid.’ Fripp, as the brains behind King Crimson, toured with Slade in the seventies and we get ‘Merry Xmas Everybody.’ Having managed to avoid that tune for most of the season, it’s easy to suddenly find yourself up and rock ‘n’ rolling with the rest. Fripp seems slightly dubious when his wife suggests that he gave David Bowie some of his cred, but he gets to flex his considerable skill on Bowie’s ‘Fashion‘ and ‘Heroes.’ And with a final ‘I Love Rock’n’Roll‘ we’re all feeling full of goodwill and peace to all etc..
Wow. Just…
