London African Gospel Choir (LAGC)
Poole Lighthouse
Saturday 26th September 2026, 19.30
Poole is poor at publicity. We were trying to decide whether to see this at Brighton or Cardiff, then when we went to see Richard Thompson at Poole and saw brochures in the lobby advertising this. I get emails from half a dozen theatres, but never from my local one, Poole. Never a season brochure unless I pick it up in the lobby. Yet I’m registered on their site.
My all-time favourite album? It shifts. Over six decades the contenders are The Band (the Brown Album) by The Band, What’s Going On? by Marvin Gaye, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles (I’d prefer side two of the US Magical Mystery Tour and side two of Abbey Road), Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan, Graceland by Paul Simon, Heavy Weather by Weather Report.
In the last year we listen to a side of an LP every day while we do our gentle exercise. Graceland is easily the winner, the most played of all. There Goes Rhymin’ Simon is second. Hearts & Bones isn’t far behind. Over a twenty year period, from CD to iPod to memory sticks, our default in car album if we can’t agree on what to listen to is Graceland. If I ever get invited onto Desert Island Discs, then Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes is one of my eight.
They got six singles out of the album.
The original track list:
GENERAL
It was full in the main concert hall. Sold out. They are enormously popular without me having known it. They had played here in 2025 and I missed it. They’re into nine years of doing Graceland Reimagined.
There were a few empty seats at Richard Thompson’s concert, but not here. They packed the place out. On the whole they were rapturously received. There was enormous energy, verve and enthusiasm from the performers. They had a good vibe. Great costumes.
Also, no one is making a lot of money from this with 23 performers. Bellowhead said they foundered because the economics of touring an 11 piece band didn’t work out. That was a band with sold out shows and hit albums. Extrapolate that to 23 performers.
You may want to just leave the review there. It will get negative in parts.
POOLE CONCERT HALL
This is an unforgiving venue. The majority of amplified performers get it wrong. Bellowhead and The Waterboys are both bands I love, but I’d see them anywhere but here. They both got this hall wrong. It’s a classical concert hall. A solo violinist, or a solo acoustic Spanish guitarist can be heard in every corner of the hall without amplification. It’s ‘lively’ so the sound bounces. That’s what it was designed to do with quiet classical instruments and no amps. Add amplifiers, and bouncing muddies the sound, destroys clarity and separation.
The Unthanks get perfect sound here and I had a conversation with their sound engineer. Getting it right takes hours, and basically you keep sound checking and reducing volume until every instrument and vocal mic is balanced and audible separately. I’ve seen jazz artists and folk artists get perfect sound here. Very few if any loudly amplified bands get it right. I’m reminded of Van Morrison, who decided to stop putting mics on the drums at one point. He said correctly that unamplified drums can fill a 1500-3000 seat hall adequately. If you don’t amplify the drums, everyone else has to turn down to the level. They amplified the drums though they put them in a perspex drum cage. They have so many performers with so many mics on stage that sound has to be a major issue- the sound from drums and amps bleed into the open vocal mics. With that many mics, you have to cage the drums. Usually it works, but not if you then turn up the drum mics.
They didn’t get it right. Not anywhere near right. When they started the first instrumental, you could hear every one of the musicians clearly. That was promising. As soon as the singers and dancers came on (so vocal mics went live) it turned to loud mush.
We were in P6, and P7 so halfway back to the side. The lead vocal mic was usually very hard to distinguish. Yet in You Can Call Me Al, closing the Graceland set, we went back, stood right behind the sound guy, and the centre mic was suddenly loud and clear (and central) and you could hear the keyboards at last. So bad sound is the result of an inept sound engineer. “Well, it sounds fine where I am.” There was only one sound guy. In my day, long long ago, we always used two, one checking different areas of the hall. That was by ear, now you can do it with a laptop and adjust levels. You can’t do it in an empty hall either. So people seated in the centre further back might add, ‘It was OK where I was.’
I will come to other issues, but in my notes I have ‘Terrible mix,”Awful sound balance,’ ‘Muffled lead vocal.’ ‘Where are the keyboards?’
FIRST SET
There was a lengthy intro announcement from the guy doing the DJ. (Sigh.) Never read to a large audience from notes. Memorise or improvise. Not at all clear either. He said there would be an opening set of their material, an interval and then Graceland.
The line up was two keyboards, drums, congas, electric bass, (what I think was) some kind of contra bass guitar electric guitar, saxophone, trumpet, trombone. I’ve seen Bakithi Kumalo play a similar bass with no tuning head top (they go behind).
Instrumental opening was promising. With just instruments they sounded fine.
Then there was an intro saying the second number was from Ghana. It didn’t sound gospel to me. The vocals were drowning the backing. This and later announcements made me think. They were pan-African. They mentioned Ghana, Nigeria, Congo, Kenya. No one mentioned South Africa which is the home of Township Jive. South Africans played on Graceland. Think about a “Pan-European” band going to Africa to play “European music.” A Greek bouzouki player, a Scots bagpiper, an Irish fiddler, a German from Kraftwork, a Swiss accordion player, Morris Dancers, a bit of David Bowie, a touch of Edith Piaf and Flamenco guitar. Africa’s bigger than Europe too.
The third might be Akawbe which meant ‘Welcome’ and it ended with Welcome home. Or it could be Hakuna Mungo, as on their EP. Lots of energy. Great dancing. Great costumes.
The fourth was Mercy (the title of their virtual EP) and the female singer who announced it moved to the front to conduct them. I scribbled ‘Terrible mix.’
Fifth up started with just piano and singer, and wow, now you could hear the piano properly. Later a trumpet came in, then the band. The title would be something like You’re All I Need To Get By, Lord and it was NOT the Marvin Gaye song. JUdging by their virtual EP, the real title is I Need Your Love. A pity it wasn’t Marvin Gaye really, with an unfamiliar set, you really need to do one number people have heard before. This was full on female soul singing, with a lot of soul and drew just applause. She can really deliver this sort of number.
The sixth was maybe 1-2-3 but in Congolese. The announcer on this was a first rate performer at interacting with the audience, teaching dance moves with the whole audience on their feet and enthusiastically following. He said it was from the Congo, but that they weren’t. The other thing you could hear every word, which you couldn’t with others announcing. So the problem might not be only sound mix, it might be mic technique as well.
THE INTERVAL
No merchandise. A great lost opportunity. Surely they had an EP? A video? Someone was filming with a small hand held digital camera at the back at the end. A programme with their names? Tote bags? T shirts? With 23 artists you need to get some money in. Though on economics, Poole to London doesn’t require an overnight stay.
GRACELAND SET
Having heard the mix in part one, I was worried. Paul Simon has just about the best stage sound I’ve ever heard. That’s because he has a first rate sound crew, and allegedly every venue is analysed in advance and the soundboard programmed to it. They’re not going to be able to match that. Then there’s the musicians. I’ve seen live and on video different line ups with Paul Simon, all impeccable. You have a basic rhythm section that followed him over several years: the late Vincent Nguini on lead guitar, Bakithi Kumalo on bass, Steve Gadd on drums, Robin DiMaggio on percussion. They’re unbeatable. Nguni was not on the Graceland album, and is Cameroonian, not South African. Bakithi Kumalo was on the original album and is South African. Steve Gadd is white and American. I’d heard enough to know the band on stage tonight were League two, not Premier League. I’ve also seen Ladysmith Black Mambazo twice. The choral singing (and dancing) is not up to their standard,
The basic issue is the rhythm section. The LAGC drummer is powerful but too loud in the mix. He can’t get the suppleness of Steve Gadd or any of the Graceland players. They’re playing a groove, he’s playing a ditch. The bass players were poorly served by the mix, they were a struggle to distinguish, so hard to judge. Listen to Paul Simon. Go right back even to Simon and Garfunkel. The bass lines are extraordinarily supple, they have a spring, a bounce. They’re prominent. That covers a dozen bass players, but it’s the sound he achieved. They never got it.
Then there’s the lead vocal. We knew in advance that they were on a hiding to nothing. They weren’t going to get Paul Simon’s crystal clarity on lyrics, and so the lyrics, so much part of the equation, were going out of the window. My assumption was that they’d get the groove, then focus on the choral backing, to the extent of re-arranging radically to bring it forward. To an extent, that’s what they did.
Before we get there I’m fascinated by the potential playlist. Would they perform in the album’s order? Graceland isn’t a “perfect” album in that the last two tracks on Side Two don’t fit. That Was Your Mother was recorded in New Orleans with cajun band Rockin’ Dopsie & The Twisters. All Around The World or The Myth of Fingerprints was recorded with Mexican-American band Los Lobos. They don’t fit the African theme, and we tend to hit replay right after Crazy Love II. All Around The World is a fabulous recording, and Los Lobos have questioned the copyrights with bitterness. Los Lobos didn’t get much luck with famous collaborators. They did some songs with The Band in the early 90s that were never released. They weren’t even given copies. They contacted me after seeing my articles on The Band website, and I had been given a cassette and was privileged to send them a copy of their own work. When John Cale did his Paris 1919 concerts it was clear that Macbeth did not fit the rest of the album in mood, so he moved it from the middle to the end.
They opened with The Boy In The Bubble which opens the album. They had changed all their costumes too. They did an instrumental lead in. The male lead vocal was way too far back in the mix. The horns didn’t fit well.
They had made a decision that I thought sensibe. Get those two ‘non-African’ tracks in early so the set could build to a climax with better / more popular songs. So All Around TheWorld or the Myth of Fingerprints was next. I struggled to recognise it. A female lead vocal. There was so much energy but the sound mix was atrocious.
So That Was Your Mother was third, and again the sound was a mess. The first thought, this band is nowhere near good enough to play it.
I Know What I Know was appalling. Chorus drowned it. The lyric just can’t squeeze into the context. Don’t I know you from the cinematographer’s party? Aren’t you the woman who was recently given a Fulbright? At this point I seriously considered leaving. They were utterly murdering the song. However, pushing along a row mid-song is too rude to contemplate.
Crazy Love II was done as a male / female duet. I thought that novel and a good lovey-dovey idea acted out. I’d have warmed to the interpretation if the drummer hadn’t been absolutely drowning the singers out. Thought. He should have been backing a Meat Loaf tribute band. That would work.
We discussed it in advance and decided the two songs that would work best were Under African Skies and Homeless and they came together. Under African Skies is a beautiful, gentle song at the start. With all those African singers they should have been able to do it, but they were shouting and going at it like a bull at a gate. Totally wrong for the song. They couldn’t get the lithe, supple rhythm.
Homeless was taken without the band. YES! It worked so much better. Easily the best of the night. They should maybe have gone for that throughout. I enjoyed that one. Sack the band!
Gumboots started as a comedy routine with miners’ helmets on the three specialist dancers. When the music came in, the lead guitar sounded really good for the first time. Where had he been all evening? Why hadn’t he played like this earlier? The vocal was very good too, and when the horns came in they were exceptional. I thought the horns fared well overall. I guess that’s a set written chart so you know what to do. I still thought the drummer was doing his best to ruin it, but otherwise the band were sounding better.
After Homeless, I thought they should be able to get the intro vocal part to Diamonds on The Soles of Her Shoes better. Not really, and the rather shrill female lead vocal didn’t fit well. Yet the horns could definitely play it properly, though I thought the guitarist failed to match.
Graceland was next. Audience on their feet. Dance moves. Tremendous audience enthusiasm. Fuck the lyric, just keep shouting GRACELAND, MEMPHIS TENNESSEE and shoving your arm in the air. Well, it’s different.
As everyone stood for You Can Call Me Al, we decided to slip to the back. That’s where we realised that the lead vocal sounded totally different and actually clear and that you could hear the keyboard if you were right behind the sound desk. The horns were very good and the contra bass player had a stab at that bass run, and did it well enough. (Repeat: sound guy was jigging around happy that it sounded reasonable where he was. Arsehole.) At least thirty people were departing during the last song. Like us, they were too polite to push along a seated row to escape.
All in all the three dancers doing somersaults on stage doesn’t compensate for the faults. The major towering fault was the sound engineer. I’ve been highly critical of the poor drummer, but it wasn’t his fault they’d mixed him way too high. I noticed that in the Brighton photos he wasn’t on a drum riser. A drum riser brings him up nearer the level of the mics, cage or no cage. Also Brighton Dome can take ‘loud.’
One of the staff asked me what we thought- we hadn’t stayed for the curtain call, and if they did another number we lost it. He said there’d been a lot of complaints about volume in the interval and the sound guy had been asked to reduce it. He obviously chose to ignore them. When you’re doing sound almost always someone says it’s too loud, and you get used to ignoring it. I’m not sure it was just ‘volume’ though. I can take loud bands as long as the instruments are separated and clear.
I looked on line. The Bournemouth Evening Echo review in 2025 said:
There was plenty of energetic dancing, clowning around, super funky playing and excellent singing, but that was counterbalanced by interminable introductions and an overlong call and response sequence … why did this leave me, despite being desperate for it to succeed, a little underwhelmed? I think a particularly fuzzy sound and a complete under-investment in a light show were probably to blame.
The sound was far worse than fuzzy, but that review also found Homeless the best number.
To be fair, the official 2018 Sony Legacy album Graceland: The Remixes is computer beats and far worse than anything LAGC played tonight.
In the end, I wished we hadn’t gone. On the way home I muttered ‘We missed the football for this crap!’ Then I got home and saw England 2 Spain 3. So it was going to be a crap Saturday whichever.
LINKS TO REVIEWS ON THIS SITE:
Paul Simon – Hyde Park 2018
Paul Simon 2016
Paul Simon & Sting 2015
Paul Simon Nov. 2006
Simon & Garfunkel 2004
Paul Simon Oct. 2000
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