Peter Viney's Blog

Shawn Colvin

BST Summer Time
Hyde Park, London

Sunday 15^thJuly 2018

SET LIST
Words
Trouble
Shotgun Down The Avalanche
Polaroids
Sunny Came Home|
Ricochet in Time
Diamond in The Rough

 I lost my set list with notes. This is memory but I’m fairly confident.

A short review of a much too short set. Shawn Colvin was on the smaller Barclaycard Stage at the far end of the Hyde Park enclosure from the Great Oak Stage. We started walking towards it  as soon as Johnny Flynn ended on the Great Oak Stage and just made it to the far end as Shawn Colvin got to the second line ofWords, which she later said she thought it appropriate for the venue. I guess the Bee Gees count as English.

Her location on The Barclaycard Stage  was annoying, because you get early entry for an extra £10.50 each, and lay your blanket on the ground as near to the Great Oak Stage as “General Admission” allows – there are several VIP tiers  and enclosures further forward at staggering prices. We hadn’t chosen the early entry (12 o’clock  instead of 1 o’clock) but Ticketmaster had come up with that tier was all that was left. Friends paid the normal price for General Admission a day later, but wisely had not gone via TicketBastards. The thing is, one of you has to stay with the blanket and stuff, so you can’t both do both stages.

OK, a minor rant. When you line up for early entry (and entry) there are five or six lines with a bag checker and a metal scanning arch. Very good. We all approve nowadays. However, after ten minutes the other lines had emptied and we were still four or five places back. Everyone was having an altercation with the bag checking lady. No apples! (No food was listed). No 35 mm camera? (not listed, recording equipment was). The poor guy was trying to point out that everyone in the line had a Smart Phone with a high quality camera (and video) built in. We got there. Karen had Piriteze  antihistamine and Paracetamol. They were examined. A supervisor was called over to ascertain that we had not managed to break the foil  and plastic blister wrap and insert drugs into the pack. Every cosmetic was opened and sniffed. When we got through we mildly pointed out that everyone else had been checked with smiles and cheery words (and sense), not with her uptight rudeness. She came racing over to say “I’m the only one here doing my job properly! None of the others are!”

I thought that in terms of “star status” Shawn Colvin was about the same as Bonnie Raitt, so should have been on the main stage.  After all, Sunny Came Home from A Few Small Repairs  received Grammy Awards in 1996: Best Female Pop Vocal, Song of The Year and Record of The Year.  #1  Adult Contemporary, #7 Hot 100 in the USA and #1 Canada too. Back in 1991 Steady On won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. She had several other nominations.

However, I can see that solo with acoustic guitar might look dwarfed on the big one. Anyway, a large crowd made the journey to see her.

Shawn Colvin is a fine songwriter, but may be as well known for her covers on Cover Girl and Uncovered and Words isn’t on either. The secret of her covers is presenting songs in totally new light. Even more so here, because she was alone with acoustic guitar. I came to Shawn Colvin because of two covers, The Band’s Twilight on Cover Girl and my most-played Shawn Colvin of all, Viva Las Vegas, (YOU TUBE LINK) which she did on the Doc Pomus tribute album. It’s also in The Big Liebowski.  The languid almost exhausted take on the lyric is an ironic direct contrast to Elvis Presley’s hyped up version.  It would be in my list of best ever cover versions, but maybe you have to know the Elvis version to appreciate the irony. It sums up Las Vegas for me.

Trouble is from A Few Small Repairs which is a carefully arranged album,  and she takes over from the percussive persistent drums, keyboards and bass with just guitar, and it still sounds strong and faintly ominous. As she says afterwards, she doesn’t do happy songs.

Shotgun Down The Avalanche us from 1989s Steady On. The original is almost a Johnny Cash rhythm, again replaced by just guitar.

Polaroids is an extremely good lyric, and the original has such a prominent bass line. The comment remains the same, she has everything arranged for solo guitar and it’s fine.

She described touring with Steve Earle, who described Sunny Came Home as ‘the ultimate break up song.’ Shawn had asked him why, and Steve Earle replied, ‘Because it’s a fucking murder ballad!’ For synchronicity, we watched her do this, then an hour later Bonnie Raitt was doing Talking Heads’ Burning Down The House.

Ricochet in Time is another from Steady On. I guess particular albums come to mind for particular set lists.

Diamond In The Rough We started walking back for Bonnie Raitt’s set after the first verse or so – we could still hear her but were conscious of the need to pick up a drink on the way back.

My main thought was that she really should have had 90 minutes … she’s playing London this week and pointed out it will be a full set. If I lived nearer, I’d have taken the chance of seeing more of her material.