Living Colour
The Gov, Monday 17th December 2018
(Reviewed by John Glennie)
Living Colour formed in 1984 in New York City and play a blend of hard rock fused with funk, punk, jazz, reggae and rap. They fronted up to a packed Gov audience and played hard and loud from the opening couple of tracks – Middle Man and Desperate People from their 1988 debut album Vivid.
The energy was certainly high and continued with another couple of tracks from Vivid – Funny Vibe and a (slight) change of pace with Open Letter (To a Landlord) which was one of my favourite tracks for the evening. They moved away from Vivid for the next two songs with an awesome live version of Ignorance is Bliss from Stain (1993) featuring great guitar work, and a more recent track Come On.
Back to their debut album again with Memories Can’t Wait (a Talking Heads cover) and the classic, more melodic, Broken Hearts. Frontman Corey Glover has a great voice and switches from hard rock to melody so easily. They reverted back to some funk with This Is The Life from their 1990 album Time’s Up followed by Swirl (a new track for me!) featuring a bass guitar solo from Doug Wimbish. Most of the band had a rest while this was happening and was soon followed by Will Calhoun’s drum solo.
My two favourite songs were Glamour Boys from Vivid and the classic reggae-style Love Rears Its Ugly Head from Time’s Up. Type had everyone dancing (if they had space!) and singing along to the chorus in which “everything it possible but nothing is real”. The band moved seamlessly into Which Way To America then back to hard rock with Cult of Personality and yet more scintillating guitar from Vernon Reid. The evening finished up with a memorable mix of Time’s Up and What’s Your Favourite Colour.
Living Colour were on stage for over two hours and presented us with a great night of hard rock!
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