From: borella@cs.ucdavis.edu (Mike Borella)
Newsgroups: alt.music.progressive
Subject: Review : Richard Sinclair in San Francisco
Date: 15 Dec 1992 18:22:55 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu



Since I haven't seen any other articles on last weekend's Richard
Sinclair show in San Francisco, I'll try to sum things up the best I
could.

The venue was the Red Victorian Bed & Breakfast on Haight St.  It is a
colorful place in a colorful neighborhood, which I recommend visiting
if you're in the SF area.  Upon entering the Red Vic, I was a bit
surprised - rumor had it that over 100 people were going to show up,
but there were only 30 chairs in the place.  The stage was at the back
of a large dining room.  Oh well.  We got there early and snatched a
table in the front.  

The Red Vic hosts a fair amount of environmental activities and
activists, so between bands there were speakers from Earth First, The
Green Party, The Warrior Poet's Society, and the Unshorn Women of the
Apocalypse (ok, I'm kidding about the last one... ;-])  While I have
little to say about these groups (other that none of the speakers were
comfortable in front of an audience) it did add some atmosphere to the
show.  However, by the time Sinclair got on, most of us at my table
were more than a bit bored with it all.

After two opening acts, Sinclair hit the stage at 9:30.  A one man
band, he switched from electric to acoustic guitar, then to bass, and
then back again.  He covered the more popular tracks from the early
Caravan albums, Hatfield and the North, and Matching Mole, as well as
the new CD, Caravan of Dreams.  Usually the songs were performed
together in medley form, with long instrumental pieces in between.  

It was pretty obvious that this was a laid back warm-up sort of
performance for Richard.  He seemed to spend as much time adjusting
the knobs on his amp as he did playing.  However I was quite impressed
by his proficiency on the guitar.  As a bassist in the aforementioned
bands, he was an excellent musician, but his guitar work that night
was brilliant.  Sure he made mistakes, but with the free-form
compositions of a largely improvised show, they were easy to ignore.
His voice is the same as ever, that distinct British accent delivering
lyrics or nonsense words over guitar chording.  I'll have to admit a lack 
of knowledge of early Caravan so I can't give an accurate track list.  
Nor did he announce songs, other than the few off of Caravan of Dreams.  

Overall it was a good (but not great) show.  Sinclair was in fine
form, and his playing is as good if not better, than ever.  But after
two hours, it did get tiresome as the improvs became repetitive and
the nonsense lyrics got old.  Many people were reading flyers or
sitting (on the floor due to the lack of chairs) with their heads in 
their hands by the end.  

I had a good time.  I didn't talk to too many other people after the
show, so I didn't get a decent consensus of opinions.  I wish that they
had skipped the environmentalism for this evening because there were
many prog heads from the net at the show that I would have liked
chatting with, as well as prog rock newbies Episode (they've finally
finished recording for their CD, soon to be out on Syn-phonic).

In a nutshell, Sinclair is back, in very good form.  If the rest of
CoD is working as hard as him, we'll be in for a good show when they
tour the US.

-Mike

PS: I did get the Caravan of Dreams CD which they were selling for $16
at the show.  I haven't had a chance for a serious listen though, but
I'll probably include it in my next set of reviews.