Peter Hammill with Stuart Gordon
Pescara
Auditorium Flaiano
28 November 2001




The Siren Song
A Better Time
Wendy and the Lost Boy
Nothing Comes
Unrehearsed

Confortable
Shingle Song
Lunatic in Knots
Like Veronica
Time for a Change
Patience



Bubble
Edge of the Road
Still life

(encore)
If I Could


Thanks to Paolo for review and Pierluigi and Paolo for set list!

You know how it goes when it's the first date of the tour: we got a long set, but not a brilliant show. The most noticeable fact was the world premiere of two songs from the "What, now ?" album, namely "Edge of the Road" and "Lunatic in Knots".

We also got "Wendy and the lost boy" as a duo version world premiere. Surely the new tunes will get better with the proceed of the tour: Peter experienced some serious problems with the main Lunatic riff, Stuart yet not adding much to them. They also tried "Here come the Talkies" during a long soundcheck but it didn't make it in the set, or maybe was dropped during the show.

The place was a wonderful auditorium, with a big stage. The audience (around 150 units) was 80% newbies. There wasn't much interaction with the crowd... unfortunately I saw many people leaving during the set.

We had some beautiful sparks anyway: the intrumental part of "Patient", for instance, after the second chorus, was a real battle between Peter and Stuart, I thought the violin was about to go off. Also the closing section of "Still Life" sent shivers down my spines, probably the best "in... still... life" part I've ever listened to. "Lunatic" faded gently into "Veronica". Overall the guitar part was better than the piano part. The voice was good but oddly much more falsetto than any of the recent gigs.

No chance to see the Man after the show, as we had to drive back to Rome. Last note about clothes: Peter wore a grey suit, Stuart a white shirt. I was really glad to meet Jan from Belgium and Chris from England.

Photos from Marco taken at Verona on Thursday 28 November 20001