Newcastle - Legends - UK. Saturday May 29th
It's years since we last played Newcastle so it will be great to get back up there and play this well known venue in the heart of the city.
Website for tickets & info:
www.electrickicks.com or
www.newcastlehellfireclub.co.uk.
Classic Rock Society Awards [posted 21/1/10]
Pendragon swept the board at the recent Classic Rock Society Awards in Wath, South Yorkshire.
The first award was for best Classic Rock gig of 2009 which was at the Montgomery Hall last May.
The band then went on to scoop most of the Best Musician awards, Scott and Clive getting Best Drummer and Best Keys player, but were sadly not there to collect their trophies as they were in Bolivia working on Clive's She project. Nick said some words for them and they will be utterly over the moon about this as Scott said this is the first time in his life he has ever won anything for drumming, and Clive has been saying it's about time he won best key player again, and finally Nick took best guitarist.
All awards were handed out by Gordon Gliptrap who was a helluva nice guy and dead funny!
Holland Boerderij, a resounding success [posted 12/12/09]
Sold out as hell, and a crazy crowd of Dutchmen [and women!] greated Pendragon like homecoming heroes at the Boerderij last weekend.
The highlights have to be Indigo, The Last Man On Earth which the audience sang their hearts out to, and a sublime version of If I Were The Wind....which was VERY emotional! Was that a choked up Nick Barrett I saw?
Good to see the Pendragon OCD there too.
We have some great pics from Willem Klopper at www.willemklopper.nl.
Pure on vinyl [posted 20/10/09 - updated 21/1/10]
We've had a few delays with the Pure vinyl (limited edition LP which come in a cunning Indigo coloured vinyl and gatefold sleeve) as there have been some problems with the test pressings. We are hoping however to have copies for sale in approx mid Feb (only 1,000 records will be pressed). We'll do a mail out when we get them to let you know when they've arrived!
Loreley Victory [posted 25/7/09]
NB's Verdict on THE prog fest of Germany Saturday July 11th.
Loreley is a superb place for concerts FULL STOP. There is something about the atmosphere there that really lends itself to rock gigs. Formerly called the Rock Pallast which closed down some 15 years ago, WIV Entertainment have started up shows there again for the last four years and you can see why.
Set in the backdrop of the Rhine valley, there are fields, steep forests, gorges and of course the Rhine river running through it all. All the surrounding villages are yer cuckoo clock type affairs, all the houses looking like something from the kiddy free village in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
The venue itself looks like Bill Smarts Circus, it's basically a giant white tent with a huge backstage area, the stage itself is made from stone and there are stone steps making it look like a dry stone walled Roman amphitheater.
The whole place has this strange calming effect, so unlike any other festival I have known where order of the day is total headless chickenosity.
Walking onto the stage before the gates open, you can really feel the excitement in the air beginning to build up....the calm before the storm.
And then the storm.....
All the bands got a really incredible reaction, much better than in 2007, when only a handful really got the full beans from the audience, Pendragon included of course!
At 6 o'clock it was time for us to go on. I had just been told that my guitar transmitter was broken, which made me hugely pissed off, as I was hoping to get down the front a lot more with the crowd, in fact I also wanted to use the wirelesss vocal mic, as we were thinking of doing 2 am and I wanted to get into the audience, but it was on the same frequency as my guitar, so I couldn't use it....
So 2 minuites before we went on I really threw my toys out of the pram, as I thought the show wouldn't be as slick as I wanted it to be. I wanted to actually walk on playing the intro to Indigo....not amble on, plug in the guitar lead, then start...sluggish....grrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Playing wise it was a tough one for us, as the sound on stage was very odd, very bassy and trebly, with no middle, and I couldn't really hear anything apart from Clive's vocal harmoniser which blasted me into next week, it was so loud! This really threw my concentration, when we came in with the big chorus of WE ARE A BAND OF BROTHER.
All I could hear was the vocal harmoniser, unfortunately it seemed to be on the wrong setting so, all I heard was this ghastly major chord, over what should have been a minor, I looked round horrified at Clive, who fumbled around with some settings, then I went back to the mic and er..........now, where was I....er can't remember, oh dear, forgot the words...ahhhhh just one of those things....yup festivals really are a test of your ability to come up with the goods on the spur of the moment, in a way I love that spontaneity, it's just sooooooo dangerous! I live for this stuff....ha ha.
But it was a brilliant gig, I think our new sound guy Bernard did a great job outfront, he is truly a HUGE asset to the band, he does the sound for RPWL and Blind Ego too, who I saw in fairly tough gig conditions a few years ago, and Bernard still managed to get a superb sound for them...he is very good!
So the set was:
Indigo
Babylon
Eraserhead
Last Man On Earth
Freakshow
Comatose
Nostradamus
Breaking The Spell
Masters Of Illusion
[encore] It’s Only Me
The gig went down really well and was probably the first of the day where the audience went up a notch reactionwise, with some brilliant singing along, some good response and call stuff, the Kung Foo Fighting chant was a hoot too...didn't know for sure if everyone would go for that, but in true Queen at Liveaid style....they jumped right in there with me. And did anyone spot the Jackson riff to Black and White at the beginning of Nostradamus?
We played for about one and a half hours, then dived off for a bit of dinner [the backstage catering was about the best I've ever had] and beer before I had to return for another 90 minutes of Script with Mick and the boys.....
An utterly great weekend was had by all, it was really nice to meet so many people of Friday up by the merchandise desk and chat to you all and sign things.
I'll probably go to Loreley next year, even if we're not playing, just to soak up the vibe!
See ya
Nick
For full sets of Lorely photos go here:
* Progrockfoto Lutz Diehl: www.progrockfoto.de
* Wilce pics: www.flickr.com/photos/wilcey/sets/72157621434804006
* Gianfranco: www.flickr.com/jesterino
Just back from Dream Theater gig in Lisbon [posted 26/6/09]
Nick's report :
An incredible venue, an incredible crowd, and woooooooow, what an incredible gig, the audience just went nuts! From the chanting hey-hey-hey-hey bits through to the last wailing notes of Masters Of Illusion it was a total barnstormer of a show.
The Coliseu de Lisboa is a circular standing venue with three circular balconies not unlike a standing Albert Hall, so the atmosphere is incredible in there. It was a very different kind of audience too for Pendragon, probably younger and a bit more metal, but they LOVED IT!
The show kicked off with a mind blowing Indigo, then after a short Portuguese introduction straight into a powerhouse Eraserheaed...and the band just fed off the sheer energy of that audience, Mike Portnoy said to me afterwards."So you managed to get the audience clapping in 7/8"...yup and boy they clapped, cheered, jumped. Where do you go from Eraserheard????? I mean where to next???...Freakshow of course!
I can't really explain, the place just rocked , as we only had 40 minutes we had to make it seriously count, so we ended the set with Masters of Illusion. If you can imagine 5,000 people singing along to Pendragon on this night you get the idea of how good this gig was!
There are a few dodgy You Tubes kicking around , but also a couple of really good ones from Yog, the crowd were about 8 metres away from the front of the stage [shame] so you can't really see them too well, I don't really like a big gap between the band and audience to be honest, I like to see the whites of their eyes but hey...ya can't have everything.
We had bugger all in the way of lights, all we had was a general "wash", 2 minutes of red, 2 minutes of blue, and ...2 minutes of black! the lighting tech was a local bloke, and didn't know the music at all, so expect a few weird lighting cues in the clips.
So some of the You Tubes/photos might look a bit dark.
I WANNA GO BACK TO PORTUGAL!
I drove the van all the freakin way there...and back, as we had to take all our gear [there will be a full video diary on Purely Pendragon fan area soon] which was a bit of a killer, we left Lisbon 1pm Fri 19th and arrived 48 hours later back home.....hard going but good.
Portugal was fantastic to drive though, some really beautiful countryside and hot as hell, Spain was mostly flat apart from the North East bit which has some fantastic scenery, straight out of the film Gladiator I thought. We were gonna stop off for the night in Spain, and I went in to book in at a "hostal".....but after a quick look around decided that Hotel Bastardos was not for us,...and having just seen Hostel 2, decided to press on with the drive, I drove another 200 miles to get to France.....yesssssss bring it on!!
Thanks to everyone, all the DT fans and band of course, who made this show such a pleasure to perform at!
Peter Gee Heart Of David [posted 06/5/09]
Peter's first solo album Heart Of David is now back in stock, it's a great album and features many well known musicians in the genre, available
from the store.
Concerto Maximo the new DVD [posted 18/1/09 - updated 28/1/09]
Nick Barrett comments: "So, 2008 was the 30th Anniversary of Pendragon....they said we wouldn't make it....they were wrong! Not only have we made it but it seems we have made a most relevant album this year, namely Pure. This DVD was filmed at the Teatr Slaski in Katowice Poland, which was part of a 30 date European jaunt to promote the new album Pure, even though there are only 3 songs which is about 20 minutes of material from the Pure album on this DVD.....yes we did want to play Indigo as well, but with 4 hours of material to learn for our Megadaze [UK convention] and Peel To The Power of 2 shows, we never got to rehearse it. We also had to work out all the parts for Pure as we were finishing the recording and mixing off in July. However we did want to film and record material that hadn't appeared on the other DVDs, but when we tried the proposed set list for the DVD in Bielsko, it didn't quite gel together and we felt missed a few classics, so we decided to make this a really huge 3 hour DVD, and add some of the crowd favourites as well, like Spell and Masters, besides you have never heard these songs with Scotty on......I don't think you're going to be disappointed!"
"Concerto Maximo" DVD features 150 minutes of the band’s performance recorded on the 13th October 2008 in Wyspiańki Theatre, an exclusive bonus video featuring interviews with the band members and behind the scenes footage, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, photo gallery and more!
DVD is also available in two other formats: limited edition DVD+2CD and 2 CD digipak (limited to 1000 copies).
Tracklist:
1. Walls of Babylon
2. A Man of Nomadic Traits
3. Wishing Well
4. Eraserhead
5. Total Recall
6. Nostradamus
7. Learning Curve
8. Breaking the Spell
9. Sister Bluebird
10. Shadow
11. The Freak Show
12. The Voyager
13. It’s Only Me
14. Masters of Illusion
15. King of the Castle
16. And We’ll Go Hunting Deer
17. Queen of Hearts
+ bonus features.
Metal Mind Productions set the release date for 23rd February 2009 in Europe and 10th March 2009 in USA (via MVD).
Order it now!
The Spiritual World: Peter's new solo album [posted 14/9/08]
After a long wait, Peter Gee's 3rd Solo Album is now available to order!
Track Listing:
Eternity, Polish Beauty, Gloria In Excelsis, You Gave Me Life, Canaletto, When The Flood Comes, The Lady In My Life, Overwhelmed By Mercy, Return To Life, Angel Falls, One Summer's Day, Sunset Boulevard, Falling Snow, A Matter Of The Heart, Fly To Paradise, Alison, My Angel.
The musicians on "The Spiritual World" are:
Steve Thorne - Vocals and Backing Vocals.
Simon Clew - Vocals (on Track 16).
Steve Christey – Drums.
Peter Gee - Guitars, Basses and Keyboards.
Produced and Engineered by Peter Gee, Rob Aubrey and Karl Groom.
Mixed by Rob Aubrey and Peter Gee.
Recorded at Bourne Lane Studios, Thin Ice Studios and Aubitt Studios.
Buy this album!
Please do let me know your comments on the album, either positive or negative, to:
peter@pendragonuk.net.
NEW ALBUM - PURE order now! [posted 11/8/08 - updated 07/10/08]
PURE is now ready to order!
Release date Oct 1st 2008.
The Special Edition PURE (CD & progumentary NTSC DVD together in a case bound book) is now ready to order.
1. Indigo
2. Eraserhead
3. Comatose
i] View From The Seashore
ii] Space Cadet
iii] Home And Dry
4. The Freakshow
5. It's Only Me
You can hear an edit from Eraserhead (mastered edit version) HERE.
You can hear an edit from The Freakshow (mastered edit version) HERE.
You can watch the PURE advert HERE.
Merchandise combo deals, also available to order! HERE.
New Pendragon fan area: "Purely Pendragon" [posted 21/7/08 - updated 21/01/10]
The Pendragon fan area
Purely Pendragon is now open!
It's
FREE to join, you need to email your name to
wilcey@hotmail.co.uk and she will send you the registration details. Easy!
On there right now is some live video [Marquee 1989], studio diary videos, all of Once Upon A Time Vol 1 archive tracks and plenty more coming soon!
