Bert Jansch at St Brides…
OK, it been a few days now without any festival related stuff. The Bonds went to the Acoustic Music Centre @ St. Brides to see Bert Jansch last night. Now I have known Bert Jansch’s music for many years, mainly because I have been around so long, and had some expectations about what one would get; but I also had some expectations that he would have developed over the years, and have experimented with different styles and influences. I have to say that I was disappointed, Bert seems to have taken up residence in his own little folksy box and appears to be reluctant to come out of it; this along with his all too apparent lack of engagement with the audience made for a rather strange atmosphere at an event where one would have expected the audience to be engaged, shouting and whistling etc.. Instead the atmosphere was almost funereal…
Update:
After the comment by Bilius I thought that I would include part of this review that I found yesterday:-
Throughout, the audience was strangely neutral and silent, a fact Bert remarked on when coming on for the second half. By this time, there were many empty seats. I felt frustrated at the lack of clear introduction to the songs, poor diction and sound balance tinkerings. Sitting just in front of the sound engineer, I felt that the balance had been just right when Bert and Johnny played their first number together but that didn’t last. More’s the pity for there were many good things to remember.
His non-engagement with the audience seems to be a pattern.
Hmmmmm. Not so sure about your analysis. I was there too. I suppose that there were expectations that he might have broken into one or two acoustic pieces, but the encore (and it was warmly encouraged) had the familiar Jansch subtly buried in it (funereal as you say). The detuning was so very accomplished and the rapport with the audience so measured, it makes me wonder where you were sitting.
I suppose that different people see things differently Bilius, that’s what makes us individuals after all. We were sitting three rows back from the front in the centre of the row, and it was our perceived lack of “rapport” with the audience which was pretty much the first thing that we commented on; and we had the feeling that this was why so many people left during the gig… He just didn’t seem able to entertain the audience in any meaningful way.