Weekly > Reviews
Johnathan Rice - The Faversham, Leeds
After enjoying the individuality and freshness of Mr Rice’s debut album, I was looking forward to seeing how he performed live at the Faversham in Leeds. Getting there late wasn’t a good start (in my defence, the chaps at the Fav had told me he was on a 10pm …. my friend and I raced through the doors at 9.30, chucking our tickets at the nice chap who was collecting them, who kindly said, “don’t worry this is the first song”). And because we were late, we missed the support (Ali sorry I don’t remember your surname) and I didn’t catch the name of the first song. I think it must be a newey, but suffice to say it was one of Johnathan’s more meloncholic ballads, and didn’t really strike a chord with me.
Luckily, he then launched straight into something a bit rockier with
Salvation Day followed by So Sweet which seemed to engage the sometimes restless audience. The next track, “to cash in on the war” as Johnathan put it jokingly (I’m hoping), was Stay At Home, followed by one of the bewitching ballads I spoke of in my Trouble Is Real review, My Mother’s Son.
I liked the rauchiness of the next track, which was “a song about f*ckin” in Mr Rice’s own words …. it must have had an effect on the singer and his band as they were forced to stop for a retune, but ever the polite one, Johnathan apologised profusely to the crowd, then launched into I Wouldn’t Miss it for the World.
Things then started getting a bit embarrassing. I actually commented to my friend that I couldn’t hear anything above the crowd. The unfortunate thing was that they weren’t ranting and cheering at the band, they were just talking very loudly between themselves, ignoring the person they had paid to see.
- Johnathan Rice
- The Faversham, Leeds (6th November 2005)
- Category: Live
- Label: One Little Indian
- Reviewed by: Rachel
- Published on: 12 Nov 2005
- Comments: 0
- Beat Surrender Rating:
Weblinks
Add to favouritesThis was the point at which Mr Rice must have decided “no more Mr Nice Guy” (and rightly so). He’d started some solo ballads without the accompaniment of his eclectic looking band, and actually stopped to say “I didn’t come all this way from California to have a bunch of assholes talk over me”. Luckily, the band then rejoined him, the crowd quietened down a bit and the tempo was upped with my favourite JR track which is Kiss Me Goodbye. The gig concluded with a couple of Neil Rice covers (who I believe was influential whilst he was growing up if my other review’s owt to go by), a new song called Further North and a song which the crowd were encouraged to “f*ukin sing” called We’re all stuck out in the desert and we’re gonna die.
Fair play to Johnathan Rice – he really tried to engage the crowd (although his hardcore fans at the front didn’t need encouragement), but to me, the majority of this crowd were downright rude. Nearing the end of his tour now, I hope Johnathan doesn’t go home thinking of us English Northerners as a bunch of ignorant assholes, because we’re not. Apart from his warranted outburst against us “assholes”, he was polite, friendly and commented that he was pleased to be there and having a good time. I’m not a connoiseur of live music, but I really do think this was the wrong venue. The acoustics were only okay (sound man great), although this didn’t detract from Johnathan’s stupendous vocals. But this enigmatic, treacle-voiced, versatile handsome young singer needs somewhere bigger. NME raved about him, he’s playing a young Roy Orbison in forthcoming film “Walk the Line”, was specifically chosen by REM, Dido and Starsailor as support on their tours, and has a top-selling album.
When I see a live band or singer, I’m accustomed to seeing a large stage, filled with lights and equipment. From what I could see (not a great deal I must say as I’m not that tall and we were at the back), the small velvet-curtained stage looked like something from my primary school hall, ready for a nativity play performance, not a performance from Johnathan Rice. Having said that, he did perform well, he IS worth seeing and listening to …. The Fav was just not big enough for this, it has to said, big star.
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