Toyah & Roberts Rock Party
Toyah Willcox & Robert Fripp
with The Posh Pop Band
Wimborne, Tivoli Theatre
Saturday 30 September 2023
BAND
Toyah – lead vocals
Robert Fripp – guitar
with
Guitar/pedal steel/harmonica/vocal – Manolo Polidario
Guitar – Nat Martin
Bass – Mike Nichols
Keyboard, vocals – Chloe du Pre
Keyboard, vocals – Emily Francis
Drums – David Keech
SET LIST
Thunder in The Mountain (Toyah)
Heart of Glass (Blondie)
Are You Gonna Go My Way (Lenny Kravitz)
Echo Beach (Toyah / Martha & The Muffins)
Enter Sandman (Metallica)
It’s A Mystery (Toyah)
Paranoid (Black Sabbath)
Sunshine of Your Love (Cream)
Tainted Love (Soft Cell)
Kashmir (Led Zeppelin)
INTERVAL
leya (Toyah)
School’s Out (Alice Cooper)
Sweet Child o’ Mine (Guns ‘n’ Roses)
Fashion (David Bowie)
Sharp Dressed Man (ZZ Top)
Rockin’ In The Free World (Neil Young)
Relax (Frankie Goes to Hollywood)
Rebel Yell (Billy Idol)
Heroes (David Bowie)
I Wanna Be Free (Toyah)
encore
I Love Rock and Roll (Joan Jett)
This is where it started, during lockdown. It’s had 120 million views. Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox broadcasting totally unexpected duo renditions from home. It went viral. People looked forward to it.
The Tivoli sold out in hours rather than days. Wimborne, Dorset is Robert Fripp’s home town. As explained tonight he first went to the Tivoli when it was a cinema with his sister (who was running the lobby sales stand tonight) when he was five. He proposed to Toyah thirty-seven years ago just along the road. He is the local hero. They could easily have sold out Bournemouth Pavilion judging by the way tickets flew off the shelf. I expect they could have sold out the cavernous BIC, but no, it’s a home town gig in the Tivoli. While it’s a small venue, I have seen such as Robert Plant, Judy Collins, Albert Lee and The Manfreds there.
For many of us in this audience Robert Fripp goes back to The League of Gentlemen and Giles, Giles and Fripp as well as King Crimson. As I increasingly realised working on the record labels on my Around & Around site, we were privileged to live in 60s Bournemouth. (The ‘Greater’ Bournemouth area includes Poole, Christchurch and Wimborne). Robert Fripp, John Wetton, Greg Lake, Michael Giles, Richard Palmer-James, Gordon Haskell (just to name King Crimson connections first), Lee Kerslake (The Gods, Uriah Heep), Zoot Money, Andy Somers (Police), Tim Mycroft (Sounds Nice), Al Stewart, John Rostill (The Shadows), Bob Jenkins (Room, Be Sharp), Pete Ballam (Bram Stoker), Dave Anthony’s Moods, Trendsetters Ltd, The Dowlands. Check out the Bournemouth Beat Boom website for the most detailed information on all of these. As a booming tourist town, Bournemouth simply had far more venues than most places so spawned bands who could actually find plenty of gigs.
I went along to the show with Lisa Wetton. I had the luxury of the only empty seat in the hall next to me as Karen had a cataract operation last week. She decided at lunchtime that bright stage lights were not advisable. The late John Wetton and Richard Palmer-James are two of my three oldest friends, and both were in the 1973-74 King Crimson era. Robert Fripp and John Wetton were at Bournemouth College at the same time as me. Robert, John and Greg Lake all had guitar lessons at Don Strike’s in Westbourne Arcade. Robert then taught guitar there. The last ‘home town return’ gig was Al Stewart who recounted Robert teaching him complex chords that he never used and that Robert used to say Al Stewart was the most successful of his guitar pupils because he ignored everything Robert had taught him. I always say I never review friends’ gigs, so while I have met Robert very briefly a few times in the past with John, he wouldn’t know me.
We were half expecting some quirky duo material, but this is Toyah’s full band plus Robert Fripp. The Sunday Lunch USP was unexpected cover versions. See the set list. Toyah said there were various degrees of connections, and some were first degree connections for Robert … namely David Bowie and Blondie. Robert Fripp played on Blondie’s Parallel Lines as well as on an NYC live gig. His connections to David Bowie (Low, Scary Monsters) and to Eno (No Pussyfooting) are music legend. Robert’s image is as the progmeister of all time, yet in the 70s he was in Berlin and New York absorbing the range from disco to Bowie to punk.
It is at its core a Toyah concert with her band, and many of the audience were word perfect on her solo work. I hadn’t seen her before, and she is a great presenter. Lots of confident, informative and lively intros, she never stopped dancing and moving and her lead vocals were spot on. I was in Row N and sound balance was excellent. Never too loud, never too quiet. All instruments clear. They had sussed the hall acoustic. Not everyone does. The lighting? I always note this and they missed the stage left keyboard player and the drummer almost entirely. Shrouded in darkness.
She opened with Thunder in The Mountain, then onto Heart of Glass, with Robert’s Blondie connection.
She introduced her own It’s A Mystery with the tale of how she loathed the song, which sold like hotcakes and went to #4. Compare Lulu, Sandie Shaw and Cilla Black who all said the same about big hits. Here was a novelty. She invited the audience to video the song and make a memory. This is why we have photos here. It’s an interesting ploy particularly as it the stops the sea of lighted screens elsewhere in the set.
They have a great double act, with Robert pedantically correcting facts. She told us several times that Robert was 77 and she was 65. As each of them could easily claim to be fifteen years younger than those ages and get away with it, one can see why.
Mostly she did covers of male vocalists. I’ve often pointed out that the most successful covers of (e.g.) Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen are by women, because then the direct comparison is off the table. The choice of covers veered to stuff I know, but it was 80s / 90s stadium rock oriented (which is why it fascinated in the duo TV versions). My tastes are eclectic, but at home I don’t listen to Black Sabbath, Metallica, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Lenny Kravitz, Alice Cooper, Billy Idol or ZZ Top. Actually, I do have a School’s Out 45. I also have Tainted Love by Soft Cell. They did Kashmir by Led Zeppelin to close the first half. Yes, I have the Led Zep albums. It’s years since I’ve played them. I much, much prefer Robert Plant with Alison Krause or Robert Plant solo.
It was fun to see how well they did it, with Robert Fripp’s choppy guitar lines a standout. I thought Guns ‘n’ Roses Sweet Child O’ Mine was outstanding, particularly with Fripp rising to the challenge of playing Slash. I also loved Sharp Dressed Man by ZZ Top, one of the few ZZ Top songs I’d know.
It’s memory, but the one I really loved was Cream’s The Sunshine of Your Love. If John Wetton had been able to see Fripp playing it, he would have been shocked but delighted. It was a song John used to sing with Tetrad / Ginger Man. This version had some tasteful Hammond organ sounds in it, which Tetrad / Ginger Man also had. It goes with another favourite this year at the John Wetton Tribute streamed gig at Trading Boundaries (LINKED). Chris Difford and Phil Manzanera did The Bryan Ferry Band cover of Let’s Stick Together (John played bass on the recording), and the surprise of the night was Bill Bruford coming out of retirement to drum with them on an R&B Classic. David Cross from King Crimson 1973 to 1974 played that show too. Two surprise covers by great prog artists, then. Fripp, Bruford, Wetton, Cross reminds me that the 1973 King Crimson were one of the best bands I saw. Then the mind goes to the trio Red album, which was voted one of the heaviest albums of all time. That trio in many ways set the stage for so much of the ‘heavy’ stadium rock covered here. Of course all three were too creative to have been a stadium filling heavy metal band for several decades.
Toyah bookended the second set with leya and I Wanna Be Free. The second set had the two Bowie covers, Fashion and the sublime Heroes. First she sang Bowie better than most male artists could, but we were also listening to the man who did the original guitar parts. Neil Young’s Rockin’ In The Free World stood out too. A surprise was Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood which is on a forthcoming Various Artists album, by Toyah and Robert. Joan Jett’s I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll was the encore.
Photos came out for the encore too:
A first class show. The gig list is at the top highly recommended.
Off to see them at the Buxton show and I fully expect this to be a lot of fun!
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