Featuring the Mission Express and support from Danny & The Champions of the World and a special guest appearence by Dave Kusworth.
I decided to review Chuck Prophet's new Album Temple Beautiful together with the live show to promote it at Dingwalls mainly because having heard it several times, I still hadn't nailed what was blocking my review and hoped the gig would provide the answer. And it did.
First though I got into Dingwalls near the end of Danny & The Champions of the World's support set and considering how many friends rave and rave over them I have to say the one song I saw all of (Just Trying to Get Back, I think) it just seemed like some very well played and rather slow 70's soft rock like they were trying to be the new Eagles meets mid 70's Fleetwood Mac. bland yet faultlessly played. I really wanted to join the hype but can't on this showing. I know some of you will try to convince me I needed to see more of the set and that is quite possibly so.
Still Dingwalls was packed with loads of familiar faces from over the years, including several of us who saw Chuck the first time he played here in 1985 with Green On Red back when it was a very different place. In those days, you'd have been lucky to have seen the first support act by the time this gig finished. Anyway, the band came out looking good and Chuck announced that the first song would be in the Key of G and opened with a song I'm almost certain I have wrongly listed as Like a Stone Across the Sea. Whatever, it's a beautiful song and they sounded rich and an lush much like Chuck's voice these days.
After an effusive welcome to us all, Chuck emphasised the bands love of the Key Of G once more and they played Let Freedom Ring! the title track of his previous album. This version had some good keyboards from Stephanie Finch to give us the ringing sound.
Chuck then took us all they way back to his first solo album with a really nice version of his song called Look Both Ways (I know at least two others songs of the same name). Great to hear this song live again and to see Chuck had CDS of Brother Aldo for sale too. They then went almost straight into Castro Halloween from Temple Beautiful and hearing it live brought it into widescreen for me as I could picture the madness of spending Halloween in the Castro in San Francisco, the only one I did over there. But then we spent a lot of time in some very funny tranny bars. Also we didn't witness any murders like the one at the centre of this song. While the band sounded nothing like the music you'd hear in the Castro, they still evoked the spirit of the madness of the parties in that particular corner of Chuck's home town.
This was followed by The Left Hand and the Right Hand from the new album. It has a cool groove that almost makes you want to move side to side but live I just had to move as the song built and built to what seemed like an uneasy climax.
Chuck gave a rambling intro to Willie Mays is Up at the Bar which is one of the stand out tunes on the new album. It's a nice sideways tribute to Willie and live the repeating lines about wondering who is going to make it home tonight seemed to have added bite as Chuck peppers his in-between song banter with notes about how down and out he once was.
Still as Chuck would have, it You Could Make A Doubter out of Jesus: a song that has become a real favourite of mine in recent years. It's a superb tune and it was really well played tonight and I think was one of the tunes that saw James De Prato put the twin neck guitar to good use. Chuck then urged Stephanie Finch upfront to sing Tina Goodbye off of her album with the Company Men and it sounded fantastic live.
Keeping it a bit more acoustic for White Night Big City really worked well as Chuck weaved his sad tale about breaking the law in the big city and trying to get away with it and while it's the penultimate track on the album, it almost felt more like a closing track than the one that follows it. Live, they followed it with what I have down (almost certainly wrongly) as A Man of Few Words which Chuck and The Mission Express certainly weren't with the guitars chiming and battling it out through most of the song.
Chuck then announced we were to have a sing along for the title track of the new record, Temple Beautiful, and once we all got the hang of it that sort of treatment really brings out the anthemic qualities in the song. I also have to say I want to go to the Temple Beautiful as the song makes it sound like a place that you'd want to spend time in on a very regular basis indeed. In fact you'd probably want to be thrown out at the end of the night. Would You Love Me, meanwhile, has such great and poingnant lyrics and the band nailed it tonight making you just want the song to go on forever.
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I Felt Like Jesus continues Chuck's long line of songs with a redemptive or almost punk gospel feel to them but then this song is about Harvey Milk and his bravery in being an openly gay politican. Little Girl, Little Boy brings Stephanie back to the front to remind the loud member of the audience who didn't remember her from twenty minutes ago as she traded parts with Chuck and the story in the middle of the song is brought home to us.
They lightened the mood with Summertime Thing which has been a staple of Chuck's live set for a good while now and with good reason as he lets loose a great solo during it while the band just cook along ready to bring us an unlikely Springsteen cover of I came For You. I have to admit I'm not familiar with the original so don't know how Chuck improved it, but if the original sounds half as good as this it's worth a listen.
They closed the set with one of the cleverest songs Chuck has in his canon (You Did (Bomp Shooby Dooby Bomp)) and it was also a call and response singalong as Chuck twisted his tongue around the words and we all shouted "You Did" back at him and the band built up a great end to a great set.
The place erupted and soon enough they were back for a well earned encore that they opened with (what I have down as) Don't Call Me I'll Call You. It was a good bitter song with a bit of a redemptive feel to it but it was just the prelude to the show stopping might of the band's version of Shake Some Action that was dedicated to Roy Loney who Chuck has been hanging out with and recently performed with in San Francisco. This version had plenty of bite to it as well as some great guitar solos: just a great version.
Chuck then asked for the house lights to be put on and he then located Dave Kusworth in the crowd and invited him up. While Dave was shambling through the crowd to the stage, the band gave us a great version of Pipeline that used the Heartbreakers arrangement of the tune and it would have been perfect intro music for Dave Kusworth if he was in any state to be onstage.
As he lurched up there and managed to pull a woman from the audience up with him the band launched into Jean Genie only Dave started to sing Rebel Rebel instead! Well I say sing, but he forgot more than half the words and could barely get the chorus right much less the verses. Still the band gamely shifted the music to be more Rebel Rebel than Jean Genie and as this mess continued quite a few people made a swift exit to avoid the embarrassment that was this guest spot: the only low point in an otherwise great gig.
I lost count of how many people I had to explain Dave Kusworth to afterwards and not that many were aware of his legendary status in the Jacobites and Bounty Hunter. Perhaps it would have been better to let Dave sing something he remembers like Princess Thousand Beauty or Shame For The Angels.
Of the songs on Temple Beautiful they didn't play live the one I would really have liked to hear is Who Shot John: a great song about a guy whose life has left the rails and is crashing and burning and going down in a hail of bullets.
As a whole the album for me is a good Chuck Prophet album just not quite as good as either Age of Miracles or Let Freedom Ring! But then it does sound like an old friend from start to finish and apart from closing track (Emperor Norton in the last year of his life (1880)) doesn't put a foot wrong.
That last song seems to not quite fit with the rest of the album for me. Maybe in time it will grow on me but for now I could end the album a song earlier and it would have been so much stronger.
Yep Roc Records online
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