Category: Live Music

3rd July 2025 (early show) at Pryzm, Kingston

Now it’s time for a trip back in time, not to the 90s, but the heady days of 2005…

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the release of debut album Stars of CCTV, Hard-Fi played the album in full. 

We heard hit after hit after fantastic album track. There were five singles released from this album of 11 tracks and many of the tracks in between sound like they could have been, like Unnecessary Trouble sandwiched between Tied Up Too Tight and Better Do Better.

Sharing fond memories of Kingston, singer Richard Archer regaled us with stories of his time here while at Kingston University.

Hard To Beat is one of my favourite songs from the 2000s and sounded fantastic in the middle of the set. 

Hard-Fi sounded fresh and exciting and I forgot for a while which decade we are in!

29th May 2025 at Pryzm, Kingston

The last time I saw Skunk Anansie was when they headlined the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury festival 1999, the last headliners of the 20th century. And it was a nice surprise to run into my 1999 festival friend  at this show!

The band just released their seventh studio album The Painful Truth, though I must confess that I wasn’t familiar with any of their material since the 90s. Despite this, the energy, the sound, the songs were recognisable as  typical Skunk Anansie. Playing a handful of new songs, Skin sounded powerful and fierce.

The set ended with a couple of much welcomed oldies. Skin related the origin story of Hedonism, about how it was about raw feelings for an ex but how the passage of time has given her strength. “I hope you’re feeling happy now” she said, shaking her head and making it clear that she didn’t really mean it. 90s Grrrl Power is all grown up now.

The last song was Weak, from their very first album Paranoid and Sunburnt from 1995. I think I was actually a bit scared when I first saw the video on TV!

Skunk Anansie are a fireball of energy and incredible live!

14th May 2025 at Pryzm, Kingston

To celebrate the release of their new album Butter Miracle The Complete Sweets!, vocalist Adam Duritz and guitarist David Immerglück (Immy) visited Kingston to play a short acoustic set at Pryzm.

23rd April 2025 at Pryzm, Kingston

I rarely turn down an opportunity to see live music so when I was offered a ticket to this, I barely paid attention to what I had agreed to. I did not realise that Jeff Goldblum, the actor, makes music. In fact, he was promoting his third jazz album, Still Blooming, with the Jeff Goldblum & the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra. Jeff talked about his recent role in Wicked. His co-stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo featured on the album, though sadly they didn’t make an appearance on this night in Kingston.

24th January 2025 at Pryzm, Kingston

Shed Seven announced a tour to celebrate the 30 year anniversary of their debut album Change Giver, released in 1994. Their two nights at Pryzm were postponed from October last year to January 2025.

Listening to the album before the show, it turns out that I’d probably not heard Change Giver in full back in the day. It was released just a bit before I discovered indie music and was quickly followed by A Maximum High in 1996, which contains the ‘early’ hits that I remember, like Getting Better, Going for Gold and On Standby. 

The band played Change Giver in full, with Speakeasy and Dolphin as particular highlights. Great energy in the room, with frontman Rick Witter chatting to the crowd.

The second part of the show was billed as a ‘greatest hits’. These included the aforementioned songs from A Maximum High, plus hits from later in the 90s, including Disco Down and Chasing Rainbows. There were only a couple that I didn’t recognise and it seems likely that these were newer songs, but they also sounded great.

I bumped into some acquaintances who told me that Change Giver was the soundtrack to their university years and they had even been to the show at the same venue the night before. Great to see Shed Seven inspire such passion. I enjoyed the trip back to the 90s sound and hearing Change Giver in full. If there’s an anniversary tour of A Maximum High in 2026, I might just have to check them out again.