CULTUURPODIUM BOERDERIJ, Zoetermeer

Een leuk initiatief van Pendragon om bij de lancering van je nieuwe album een weekend te organiseren waarin de band twee concerten geeft en de bezoekers allerhande hebbedingetjes krijgen. Tevoren was ik benieuwd en ietwat benauwd hoeveel mensen hierop af zouden komen, want je moest er toch maar liefst €70 voor neertellen en één dag bijwonen was niet mogelijk. Maar dat viel gelukkig reuze mee. Zo’n vierhonderd mensen hadden dit bedrag er toch voor over om hun favoriete band aan het werk te zien.

De eerste avond stond in het teken van het oudere werk. Nummers van Pure, Not Of This World en The World werden met veel enthousiasme door de altijd praatgrage en goedgeluimde Nick Barrett gespeeld. Voor zover ik kon horen, werd er geen werk uit de jaren tachtig gespeeld en dat zou ook misstaan hebben bij het accent op de lyrische nummers die de band al lange tijd kenmerken. Ook deze keer was het leuk om naar de fratsen van de Lambiek van de prog, drummer Scott Higham te kijken. Die man is toch echt de motor van Pendragon geworden. Het concert ging wel als een nachtkaars uit met maar twee te korte toegiften; de mannen dachten blijkbaar al aan de volgende avond.

De volgende dag werd door veel bezoekers ongetwijfeld gebruikt om het nieuwe album Passion, dat ze mee naar huis hadden gekregen, te beluisteren. Hierdoor kon de band deze plaat voor het eerst op de bühne brengen en met groot succes. Het was jammer dat de plaat niet integraal werd uitgevoerd maar doorsneden werd met oudere nummers. Dat deed toch wat afbreuk aan de speciale gebeurtenis van deze nieuwe cd-lancering. Compensatie was er in de uitvoering van Freakshow, liefst twee keer, met de winnaars van de die middag georganiseerde progidols: Marco en de dertienjarige Pipin. Als ik de balans opmaak dan zag ik een band in bloedvorm. Nick Barrett was op beide avonden goedgeluimd. De tweede avond begon men echter te vroeg, waardoor veel bezoekers een flink deel van het concert miste. De band speelde ook geen enkel nieuw nummer op de zaterdag. Ik heb weinig gemerkt van een 'fanclubgevoeloptreden', het waren beide nagenoeg reguliere optredens. De te korte show op zondag duurde nog geen twee uur. Er waren toen nog maar zo'n driehonderd bezoekers, velen waren afgehaakt en hebben als gevolg daarvan de nieuwe nummers niet live kunnen horen. Conclusie: een aardig experiment dat toch niet helemaal geslaagd is te noemen. Ik ben benieuwd wat IQ er dit najaar van maakt met een soortgelijke gebeurtenis.

Tekst: André de Waal (met dank aan Menno, Bert en Rob)

ENGLISH:

Founded in 1978, Pendragon began their career touring with the likes of Marillion. Some thirty years later, the band is still going strong and Pete Gee (bass), Clive Nolan (keyboards, vocals) and Nick Barrett (composer, leadguitar, vocals) are still working together. With their current drummer Scott Higham, who has been with band for a number of years now, they found a new 'engine' to help keeping the fire burning. A special edition of the brand new album Passion had a special release party in the Netherlands with a special event, namely Megadaze. A bit like Marillion, but instead of a whole weekend with the band, Pendragon chose 'just' to play two nights in a row. The special package for the two shows included that special edition of the new album, a T-shirt, a key chord with laminate (for what?) and support act singer Andy Sears (Twelfth Night). The first night around 400 fans turned up to see the show and collect their special package. The current front man of Twelfth Night opened for Pendragon and, accompanying himself on keyboard, with music from his iPod or on Nick Barrett's acoustic guitar, he played and sang several tunes from different eras. The Twelfth Night songs sounded pretty good, but since I didn't recognize all of the songs there might have been some of his own. A rather modern sounding pop tune seemed a bit awkward to me between all those rather proggy songs. Still Sears proved he has a remarkable voice and his rendition of Love Song was truly outstanding.

Pendragon opened with a nice song from the album The World appropriately titled Back In The Spotlight, because it had been some three years - if I'm not mistaken - that the band performed live in the Netherlands. The atmosphere was great from the beginning and Nick Barrett was obviously in a good mood. He revealed that the setlist of tonight would hold some surprises because the band would be playing material never played live before. Further on during the show, he also stated that Not Of This World was a very special album to him because of the lyrics matching his state of mind at the time so perfectly. The band played very well indeed. The ever so modest Pete Gee moving around on stage a bit, Clive Nolan in a superb form in spite of being probably one of the most 'heavy' keyboardists in the whole prog scene and Barrett grinning more than once and interacting with the audience frequently. However, the biggest 'attraction' was Scott Higham, drumming loudly and bombastically but enjoying himself tremendously behind his kit and putting himself in the spotlights more than once. The light show was nothing special in my opinion, no extras, very modest with Nolan, Gee and Barrett in the shade most of the time. A small disaster from a photographer's point of view. The sound, however, was great although up front the mix wasn't all that perfect: drums too loud, guitar not loud enough but this was probably only true for the first few rows.

On the Saturday night show most of the songs were from the nineties with the emphasis on the melodic songs. Swinging, swaying and moving around in the crowd therefore was limited. The show wasn't too long and not a single song from the new album was played that night. The songs the band picked as the encore were also not the most powerful and up-tempo songs and therefore there was no real climax. While it appeared the band seemed to come back for another encore, they or the mangement obviously decided not to. Still the band left the stage leaving most of the fans in a state of pure admiration and I heard a lot of positive comments.

On Sunday night - I wasn't there, so all photos were taken on Saturday night - Andy Sears played a shortened set compared to the Saturday night, but basically he performed the same songs. Pendragon started their show earlier than announced via the media and therefore quite a few fans will have missed the first part of the show. Most of the fans had taken the opportunity to listen to the new album before coming back to Zoetermeer, so the songs were already somewhat familiar. The band's performance of the new songs was superb, The only downside was that the band decided not to play Passion in its entirety, but to mix it with older songs instead. Again the show was not too long but the idea of having a 'prog idols' contest in the afternoon was fun. Freakshow was performed twice by the band with one winner named Marco and again with thirteen year old winner Pippin - who said Lord Of The Rings wasn't a major influence on prog music for both musicians and fans? -. About a hundred fans decided to stay at home or do different things, so looking back the band would probably would have been better off by playing just one night, performing the new album before the break, the older stuff after the break, making the crowd go wild by playing old up-tempo favourites and no support-act. Still this experiment shows courage and most of the fans enjoyed their 'special package'. It will be interesting to see how IQ will manage with the same kind of event later this year. With Passion, Pendragon proves to be still one of the major progressive bands around these days and I'm also really looking forward to the new album by Clive Nolan's band Arena!

Thanks to André de Waal for his input on this review (day 2).

Setlist Day 1:

Back In The Spotlight, Alaska, Ghosts, Not Of This World, Prayer, Comatose, If I Were The Wind, Leviathan, And We'll Go Hunting Deer, Am I Really Losing You?

Setlist Day 2:

Passion, The Voyager, Empathy, This Green And Pleasant Land, Shane, Feeding Frenzy, Nostradamus, Last Man On Earth, Indigo; Freakshow, Paintbox.