{"id":126,"date":"2008-10-02T12:04:55","date_gmt":"2008-10-02T11:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mcrrview.web.its.manchester.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=126"},"modified":"2008-10-02T12:04:55","modified_gmt":"2008-10-02T11:04:55","slug":"6-minutes-robert-forster-manchester-sept-21-08","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=126","title":{"rendered":"\u20186 minutes\u2019: Robert Forster, Manchester Sept 21 &#8217;08"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"none;\"><span style=\"&quot;Courier New&quot;;\">At the Royal Northern College for Music, a small crowd gathers at around 7:30. <span style=\"yes;\">\u00a0<\/span>Mostly men, many of them look like they are meeting up for the first time in years, or the first time since the last Go-Betweens concert. With their lattes and bottled beers, they talk animatedly about, from what I hear, Man City and their 6-0 thrashing of Portsmouth. <span style=\"yes;\">\u00a0<\/span>There\u2019s an announcement that Robert Forster\u2019s show will start at 7:45, without a support act. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"none;\"><span style=\"&quot;Courier New&quot;;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"none;\"><span style=\"&quot;Courier New&quot;;\">In the half-empty Haden Freeman Concert Hall, a kind of hexagonal lecture theatre, Forster appears, on time, and solo at first under the hall\u2019s huge organ. He begins with quiet acoustic numbers from the new album: low-tempo and underpowered, they bring home again how his songs can be ill-served by unconfident arrangements. Slowly the band assembles, and the show builds real momentum thanks to his Rochdale-born bass-player, 21-year-old drummer and comedian keyboardist. <span style=\"yes;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"none;\"><span style=\"&quot;Courier New&quot;;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"none;\"><span style=\"&quot;Courier New&quot;;\">The sound in the concert hall is weirdly bouncy, though, so that the guitar or bass or drum take turns dominating the vocal. In spite of this, or maybe because of this, they play loud throwaway songs like \u2018Surfing Magazines\u2019 and \u2018German Farmhouse\u2019 from <em>Warm Nights, <\/em>with great riffing abandon. Forster\u2019s an engaging performer, fiddling with plugs and slowly finding his way around and out of the hall\u2019s makeshift stage, introducing the band and, at one point, telling a long, obscurely pointed story about trying to get in to see Patti Smith play in the Serpentine: the moral of the story is that he watches \u2018famous rock journalists\u2019 cheat the queue until he, his wife and a couple of hippies are the only people left outside. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"none;\"><span style=\"&quot;Courier New&quot;;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"none;\"><span style=\"&quot;Courier New&quot;;\">Go-betweens\u2019 songs like \u2018Spring Rain\u2019, \u2018Quiet Heart\u2019, \u2018Clouds\u2019 and \u2018Head Full of Steam\u2019 are terrific and \u2018Demon Days\u2019 from the new album holds its ground alongside them. The show closes with an encore of \u2018Heart out to Tender\u2019, the only song from Forster\u2019s outstanding solo debut, <em>Danger in the Past<\/em>, and a stomping run through \u2018People Say\u2019. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"none;\"><span style=\"&quot;Courier New&quot;;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"none;\"><span style=\"&quot;Courier New&quot;;\">As we file out towards the car parks, there\u2019s a concessions stall selling t-shirts, cds and, incredibly, cassettes. A sign says that Robert will be there for a signing \u20186 minutes\u2019 post-show.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the Royal Northern College for Music, a small crowd gathers at around 7:30. \u00a0Mostly men, many of them look like they are meeting up for the first time in years, or the first time since the last Go-Betweens concert. With their lattes and bottled beers, they talk animatedly about, from what I hear, Man [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>\u20186 minutes\u2019: Robert Forster, Manchester Sept 21 &#039;08 - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=126\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u20186 minutes\u2019: Robert Forster, Manchester Sept 21 &#039;08 - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"At the Royal Northern College for Music, a small crowd gathers at around 7:30. \u00a0Mostly men, many of them look like they are meeting up for the first time in years, or the first time since the last Go-Betweens concert. 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