spearhead

Zurich Kaufleuten

18th March 1997

Strange venue this one, in more ways than one! The clientele here are normally very "Swiss-German".(i.e. suit and tie), which was apparent from the crowd, who obviously normally come here for it's "trendy" atmosphere. These people must have got a bit of a shock to see "their" normally respectable wine-bar/dance-hall (usually more traditional jazz bands play here) invaded by scruffy gits like myself! It was very strange to walk through the doors into a lounge area with sofas, a proper cloak room, and through some more doors to the dance hall, surrounded by tables and chairs, with a stage at one end (no barriers round it!!!) and 2 bars(serving beer in glass bottles?!?!?!?).(I guess that sums up pretty accurately the sort of behaviour they are used to here!)

After an hour wait, Spearhead came on stage. For the first half an hour or so I was pretty disappointed, as I remembered how good Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy had been at the first Phoenix festival, and how good Spearhead had been at the Reading festival(or was it Phoenix?) a couple of years ago.

Anyway after a very brief pause they came back on stage and did a brilliant version of "TV, the Drug of the Nation", and everything suddenly got a lot better.(How ironic that it was a DHoH song that got them going!). All the songs they did after that seemed to have a lot more energy and feeling to them. Both Michael Franti, and the female vocalist showed what powerful voices they have, what a variety of styles they can switch between, and how well they can contrast them. Songs such as Positive (another DHoH cover) and Payroll, were so full of emotion it was incredible. Other songs, got the Spearhead, stop in the middle, start singing a song by a different band, then go back to the original song, but sing it in a totally different style treatment, which I've only seen Spearhead do, and they pull it off very well! Some of the songs they include are classic R&B, reggae,hip hop and soul songs, often with improvised lyrics.

Spearhead have also got to be credited for their ability to get the audience participating. Instead of giving up when the audience didn't understand, the band kept demanding (or showing us what they wanted us to do) that we clapped, sung, shouted, waved our arms, etc, until it was done! At one point they even got a member of the audience to get up on the stage to dance with the female vocalist reggae style! I wasn't sure whether to go to this gig, after hearing the new album. But the 2 hour performance was 37SwF(about 16 GBP) was money well spent, and I would recommend that anyone, even if they only find the CDs average, should see them live, especially if you fancy seeing a different slant on hip-hop music.


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