Curved Air Holmfirth The Picturedrome October 30 2008
Must have seen Curved Air around 10 times in the 70s. They seemed to play all the local dances; seem to recall seeing them at Sunderland Poly, Newcastle Poly, Durham Uni, Teesside Poly as well as Newcastle Mayfair, Sunderland Locarno, the City Hall, the Reading Festival. So when I saw that they had reformed I promised myself that I would go and see them. The nearest date meant a 120 mile drive to the little Yorkshire village of Holmfirth on a freezing cold winter night but, I convinced myself that it would be worth it.
The reformed line up comprises three original members: Sonja Kristina, Darrel Way and Florian Pilkington Miksa. Support came from Claire Hammil, another name from the past. Claire was close to the end of her set when I arrived (Holmfirth isn’t easy to find; must buy a sat nav). The Picturedrome is a lovely old cinema set right in the centre of Holmfirth. The place was respectably full, not packed, I easily made my way to the front of the stage ready for the band coming on.
They started with an instrumental piece with Darrel Way leading on his violin. He then introduced Sonja who bounced on and straight into It Happened Today, which was great! The set included all the favourites that I wanted to hear: Melinda (more or less); Marie Antoinette; Stretch; Midnight Wire and (of course) Back Street Luv. Sonja left the stage and they finished with Vivaldi, which sounded just as good as it did in the field at Reading 36 years ago. For the encore they came back and gave us Back Street Luv again. Pretty awesome. Drove back up the A1 through sleet with the sound of Sonja’s voice and Darrel’s violin still in my mind.
website : http://www.curvedair.com/
Someone has loaded some great clips from the gig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KynuCpJj4I
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