Nick at Manchester Academy 3,
Saturday 31 May 2003 - by Graeme Dutton


I went to see Nick Harper at the Academy on Saturday, we arrived early and caught the support act Darren Poyzer, who did a great job and has some great lyrical songs. I also spoke to him briefly after the show and he runs several songwriter nights around Manchester to encourage people to get out and sing their stuff, good on him and I will be trying to take advantage of this.

Nick walked on at 9ish almost unnoticed and flew through She Rules My World and Karmageddon before you could catch your breath, and I was left stunned, remembering why I'd been looking forward to this for ages. The exact set list escapes me and it also escaped Nick 'cos he gave it away after the 2nd or 3rd song! He then asked for it back, then gave it away again, who got that? [I couldn't possibly say, but she'd better be scanning it for us! - P.]

Anyway, some of the highlights of the night were, after a heckle of "I like your shirt," during Watching The Stars I think, he added the lyrics "I bought it in Edinburgh, it's a nice shade of blue" - he's quick! During Guitar Man/Whole Lotta Love, I looked around the room to see all the virgins' faces. As they were picking their jaws up, he did a longer version of Whole Lotta Love than normal and had to shake himself out of it.

We were treated to an extra special Headless where we got Love is music, then a brilliant rendition of Out Of Time by Blur, and one that I was hoping for was Grace by Jeff Buckley, a first for me, fantastic! I swear that he was trying to break 6 strings at the same time at points but never broke one in this song. 2 strings were broken in all but both at non continuous points. How does he do it, I wish I could. (by the way, does anyone know why he had his old Lowden, as many tuning problems seemed to be due to this, is he breaking the new one in gently?)

He's really too good to miss.



Created 1st July 2003
© GD/PLC 2003