Jesus Jones + The Wonder Stuff + Clouds @ The Tivoli, 18.08.2011
The third proper gig I ever went to was The Wonder Stuff. The Great Hall at Exeter University. 20 November 1989. The Wonder Stuff headling, Eat supporting, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin opening. £6. From a music perspective, growing up in near Exeter was far from ideal. Few bands made the 80 miles each-way detour west of [...]
Gary Numan @ The Tivoli, 12.05.2011
Having last been here in March 2009, Gary Numan makes a fairly swift return to The Tivoli as part of his tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of his third album, but the first released under his own name, The Pleasure Principle. I don’t get there until really late, so late in fact that not only [...]
Belle & Sebastian @ The Tivoli, 07.03.2011
Seeing Belle & Sebastian at All Tomorrow’s Parties in the UK in December was exciting. It wasn’t just that the band were curating the weekend and the main band on the Saturday night or that ATP is the more civilised way to experience a music festival but it the weekend was part of a two [...]
Joanna Newsom @ The Tivoli, 04.03.2011
First published on Collapse Board, 13.03.2011 Ironically, after the self-inflicted debacle of photographing Roxy Music earlier in the week, I get a second chance to make amends for a previous photographic misdemeanour, in the form of Joanna Newsom, who’s playing at The Tivoli for the second time in fourteen months. The last time she played at [...]
Smashing Pumpkins @ The Tivoli, 17.10.2010
Once upon a time Smashing Pumpkins were one of my favourite bands. I first got into them when they released the 4-track Lull EP (featuring Rhinoceros, Blue, Slunk and Bye June) which was released in the UK before Gish came out. I saw them when they were touring the EP at The Riverside in Newcastle, [...]
Sufjan Stevens @ The Tivoli, 30.01.2011
I think out of all the new artists I heard in the last decade, Sufjan Stevens has turned out to be my favourite. Ever since I first bought Seven Swans, completely old school, purely on the basis on a couple of reviews and without having heard a note of his music (something I still regularly [...]
Paul Weller @ The Tivoli, 19-10-10
First published on Collapse Board (22/10/10). I’ve never really gotten Weller. Although I can remember ‘Town Called Malice’ on Top Of The Pops, The Jam were largely before my time. But that’s no excuse; I like plenty of bands who split up and singers who died before I started buying records. People have said they were [...]
Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions @ The Tivoli 24-06-2010
One thing I often wonder about the move away from music as a physical product to a digital one is whether the same emotional attachment is there as it was for the older generation. It’s just not the ritualistic nature that used to exist – buying the album, looking at the photos on the inlay [...]
Julian Casablancas @ The Tivoli 06-05-10
Generally a lot of the blame for restrictive terms and conditions when photographing concerts is laid at the door of management and promoters; an assumption that the artists leave the business side up to the people they pay to look after the business side of the industry and any bad treatment is carried out without [...]
Wilco + Liam Finn @ The Tivoli 30-04-10
I was so looking forward to FINALLY getting so Wilco and so ever so slightly gutted when security kicked me out after three songs on the orders of the band’s management that photographers couldn’t stay for the show unless they had a separate ticket. In retrospect I should have shown them the email from the [...]
Dirty Three @ The Tivoli 25-01-10
Back in the good old days of film cameras, one of the harder things to keep a check on, in addition to whether any of the photos you’d taken were actually any good, was how many photos you’d taken of each band member. Many a frustrating Sunday morning was spent developing films in the darkroom [...]
Laughing Clowns @ The Tivoli 25-01-10
I don’t think I’ve ever given a support band a separate post, normally just including the headliner and all the support band musings and photos all in the one post. But tonight Ed Kuepper hinted that this might be the last time that we get to see Laughing Clowns and as it’s been such a [...]
Marianne Faithfull @ The Tivoli 30-01-10
For a while tonight’s Marianne Faithfull show, the first of two at The Tivoli, didn’t look like it was going to happen as a reviewer interested in covering the show couldn’t be found, meaning that it’s a fairly last minute addition to my diary. Looking around the venue, it’s a very mixed crowd; there’s obviously a [...]
Joanna Newsom @ The Tivoli
I think my favourite description of Joanna Newsom (maybe from Mess+Noise, maybe from Drowned In Sound, maybe somewhere else, I can’t exactly remember) described her as “singing like a recently smacked child”. It’s a description that always brings a wry smile as I’ve always thought there is an element of truth in the description and it’s been [...]
The Stranglers + Wind & Brackets @ The Tivoli
The Tivoli is surprisingly full for tonight’s Stranglers show; there wasn’t much in the way of advertising for either the original date (in December, but cancelled with the GFC being blamed) or tonight’s show, and at $90 a ticket it’s a fairly pricey mid-week night out It’s been a long time I last saw Wind [...]
Gary Numan @ The Tivoli
One of my very early musical memories was this on Top Of The Pops. So when Gary Numan rolls into town to play at the Tivoli, how can I refuse. The trouble is that I only really know the very early stuff, and whilst these songs (‘Cars’, ‘Down In The Park‘, ‘We Are So Fragile‘, [...]
Bon Iver + Mckisko @ The Tivoli
The whole Alt Country/Alt Folk scene has been flirting with the mainstream for a number of years, near enough since the start of this decade, but with Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver battling for supremacy in most of the music media’s end of year polls, 2008 definitely seems to be The Year That Folk Broke. [...]
MGMT @ The Tivoli
One of the most obvious signs of the onset of old age in your average music fan appears to be the annual comparison of albums bought versus album included in the music media’s end of year polls. Whereas through your late-teens and throughout your twenties a ‘score’ of ten, twelve or maybe even a fifteen from a typical top [...]
Steve Earle @ The Tivoli
 Last week saw Steve Earle roll into town to play at The Tivoli, the last night of his Australian tour in support of his ‘Washington Square Serenade’ album. For most of the set it was just him and his guitar. However, later on in the set he was backed by a DJ, playing beats [...]
Cut Copy at The Tivoli
It was a night that had it all: drinks, drugs, fighting, guys mopping up their own blood, girls mopping up their own blood, police cars and ambulances outside at the end of the night… And somewhere in the midst of all that Cut Copy played a gig to a sell out Tivoli crowd. The night [...]
Powderfinger + Whitley at The Tivoli
May was a bit of a lean month for photographing gigs, not helped by Cosmic Psychos cancelling their tour and Rave not being able to get a reviewer for Don Letts, both of which I was down to cover. And things haven’t improved much in June, with Barry Adamson, who I was really looking forward [...]
Story Of The Year + The Audition at The Tivoli
 Last Friday I had a very last minute request to photograph Story Of The Year supported by The Audition at The Tivoli. Whilst not being overly familiar with the band I know from having seen photos that they love their jumping. Having had such a good time at Soundwave photographing jumping bands I couldn’t [...]
Whitesnake: 1987 And All That
If you’re male, a long-time music fan and somewhere between your mid-30s and early 40s you’ll probably have a large and varied record collection.  But I can almost guarantee that somewhere in that collection, possibly hidden towards the back, is a copy of ’1987′ by Whitesnake.  I can remember back to my first year at university in 1990 [...]
Toto @ The Tivoli
Ever since I have started going to gigs one of my main thoughts as I walk up to the venue concerns just how popular the band playing is and how many people will be there; my ultimate nightmare is that they’ll be playing to near empty room of the proverbial three men and a dog [...]
