My other listening pleasure at the moment arrives via the innovative h-tunes website.
h - or Steve Hogarth - is the lead singer of Marillion and has spent a chunk of this year out on the road doing a solo tour.
I saw him play at the Bush Hall in London earlier in the year and on Sunday at Riffs Bar in Swindon as part of the Oxjam festival.
He plays solo, with only his piano to accompany him, and played sets which combined a number of his own songs, some Marillion songs and quite a few covers. He has a unique take on the songs and the simplicity of the concerts really highlighted what a great voice he has.
He also did a lot of talking - telling parts of his life story and how this fed into his songwriting. At the London gig he recounted a great story about watching the ITV Wrestling on World of Sport with his Gran. He also read from his various tour diaries.
The covers included songs such as Wichita Lineman, Presley's in The Ghetto, The Waterboys' Whole of the Moon, Kate Bush's Cloudbusting, Leonard Cohen's Famous Blue Raincoat, Bowie's life on Mars and various Beatles classics.
Anyhow, this is the clever bit... He recorded most of the gigs on his solo tour and has set up this nifty website where you can download them. And it only costs a mere 11 euros per concert. You can even catch a glimpse for nowt here.
2 comments:
I thought the lead singer of Marillion was a fat guy called 'Fish'
You are about 17 years out of date on that one!
Fish was the vocalist for the first four albums but then split from the band to start a solo career. I saw him live earlier in the year.
Steve Hogarth joind in '89 (I think!) and has sung on their nine (to date) albums since.
Album 14 is currently being produced for release early next year.
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