Peter Hammill, La Salumeria della Musica, Milano, May 13 2012
I have had plans for a Peter Hammill section in my website for many years now, but it is still to be built… Fortunately, his sofasound site and a couple of great sites are updated on a rather frequent basis.
Few artists in popular music have proved so tenacious, clever, ambitious in the right way, uncompromising and unwilling to sacrifice music and texts to trade and trends.
The 1st pop/rock/jazz concert of 2010 was Peter Hammill at La Maroquinerie in Paris. Peter is not a person to arrive late – something I really appreciate – but due to our congested public transport system I was the one who was a couple minutes late and missed the 1st song, Easy to Slip Away.
I was not happy with it but quickly focused on the songs the thin man delivered with passion, anger, humour, and all the range of human feelings.
As usual with solo gigs, PH opened playing on the keyboard, performing brilliant versions of Other Old Clichés, Shell and Gone Ahead. This song is one of my favourite from his album Incoherence, the follower of Clutch, 2 masterpieces from the 2000s.