UK

Blues'n'Trouble

01 Oct 2007

John Neil Munro
Scotland on Sunday

BACK in 1977, when everyone who had any musical nous was pledging their allegiance to punk and ska bands, I used to spend days on end staring at the smoke-stained walls of a shabby one-bedroom flat in Lyne Street, Edinburgh, with a few close friends. The soundtrack for those long sessions was invariably John Martyn's gentle, beguiling music. Young and naïve, we thought that any man who wrote classic dope-fuelled anthems like Solid Air, One World and Bless The Weather must be a "really, really nice guy".

BBC Live In Concert (2CD) - Island 984 898-1

1 Jun 2007
Enfield Independent
Kevin Nash

John Martyn: BBC Live In Concert

(Island) * * * *

FANS will know that the only predictable thing about John Martyn is his unpredictability. His live performances can touch the heights, and sometimes just bumble along.

Although his voice occasionally isn't at its best on a couple of songs in these sessions, recorded in Paris and London over a 10-year period 1, there are plenty of good (and now and then great) moments that more than compensate.

Related to: 
BBC Live In Concert

London, Roundhouse, 3 Feb 2007

7 Feb 2007
The Independent
Alasdair Lees

John Martyn, Roundhouse, London

John Martyn's singing style and innovations with echo-effects and fuzz-box guitar pedals in the early 1970s were influenced by the free-jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. On the albums Bless The Weather, Solid Air and Inside Out, he set out to replicate Sanders's incredibly long sustains with his voice and guitar playing.

Related to: 
Solid Air | Live At The Roundhouse (DVD)

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