It’s almost 50 years to the day that I last saw Man play live. That was at the Liverpool Stadium venue sometime in 1973 – I suspected the line-up had changed in between!

Before Man hit the stage it’s Tri-City Fanfare, a band out of Cardiff headed by Shane Dixon and Martin Whittaker. Shane is down to be a busy chap tonight as he’s guitarist/vocalist for Tri-City Fanfare as well as drummer for Man!

The band describe themselves as playing ‘brutalist psychedelia’: Brutalism: a style with an emphasis on materials, textures and construction, producing highly expressive forms | Psychedelia: music, culture, or art based on the experiences produced by psychedelic drugs. English lesson over. OK, so this is a new one on me I have to admit (yeah, right) but after listening to them they have that late 1960’s, rather ethereal, sound to them. Nothing particularly heavy, or prog, but I can now understand where the psychedelia tag comes from. The band swing effortlessly between 60’s pop to noughties post-rock and having been around and seen both I know where my preferences lie!

The band kick off with Rewind, a track released a couple of years ago as a single, with a video to go with it, and this typifies the band’s psychedelia sound nicely, sitting firmly in 1960’s musical culture.

They followed Rewind with Desert and Paradise, more slices of 60’s pop before taking on what turned out to be my favourite tune of the night, Dreams. This was pure post-rock infused with some space rock infused with spoken word vocals typical of post-pock exponents Nordic Giants, the Winchester Club and Show me a Dinosaur. No keyboard player on stage tonight so the keys were supplied via a synth played by Martin and, for this tune in particular, that worked extremely well.

Time to sit back again for the gentle Whirlwind, played nothing like the title suggests, this one is fairly genteel!

The band finish their short set with a 3-song medley of Release my Mind, Mosquito Pt1 and Mosquito Pt2. I didn’t see very much of this mash-up but what I did hear reminded me of the late 70’s band Orange Juice, particularly the vocals which brought back visions of Edwyn Collins!

The band certainly jump between musical eras; a very interesting listen and one you should take up should the opportunity arise.

As I mentioned at the top of this review, I last saw Man almost 50 years ago and none of the current band members were there, most probably not even born! I missed seeing Martin Ace by a few months and he frequented the band in between other projects. The band have a history of extending songs ad-lib especially in the early days touring Germany. The band also had a habit of revisiting songs on different albums so the discography can a bit confusing, but bear with me!

Tonight there were 13 songs in 2 hours, so the extended song jams were well in evidence. The set gets underway with what is probably the most recent of the songs on the setlist; Stuck Behind the Popemobile! A sort of nonsensical song that makes mention of the Popemobile, a Snowmobile, the Batmobile and a Dormobile. A slice of Americana came next with The Ride & the View and this  followed by We Know. A somewhat spacy opening for the next song, Spunk Rock, and much of the body of this reminded me a lot of Camel during their Snow Goose era, foot-tappingly musical, flowing nicely. This was one of the longer songs in the set and the band have been known to extend this beyond 20 minutes!. Possibly my favourite song of the night . . . apart from perhaps Sudden Life.

Next up we had Manillo and, compared to the songs earlier in the set, this was a little bit tame for me; that’s not to say that the audience as a whole didn’t love it– because they did!

Mad on Her, then C’mon were followed by Romain, a real oldie with more than a tinge of Southern Blues. Here we are, 90 minutes or so into the set and we reach the last number, Many are Called But Few Get Up, quite a mouthful for a song title. It starts with what I’ll call ‘twinkly’ guitars, sounding a bit like the Yes of old. This is another long one to close the set.

Throughout the set so far the interplay of the guitars played by James Beck and Martin Ace’s son Josh lead the way with Martin’s bass ever present without being overbearing. Nothing spectacular or particularly energetic going on at any stage, just some find 1970’s style rock music.

Time for an encore . . . or three. The iconic Sudden Life thrust its way on to the stage. Probably the earliest of the songs played tonight but the opening riff inspired so many other songs by so many other bands. This was followed by Long Holiday, a song that never appeared on any of the Man albums before the 2 hour program was brought to a close with some Bananas, possibly the most rock’n’roll (for ‘rock’n’roll’ you can read ‘mental’) number played tonight.

Wales has never really had the credit due to it for spawning bands such as Man and Budgie in the 1970’s (and, yes, I’ll say it again . . . I hired Budgie for twenty five quid to play at a school dance in Liverpool in the early 1970’s) but with modern day bands like Magenta, Funeral for a Friend, Bullet for my Valentine and Those Damn Crows that perception has changed significantly.

This was a brilliant night full of nostalgia (or is that, after more than 3 hours on my feet, neuralgia?) and one I hope can be done again next time Man come to town.

Words & images: Reg Richardson

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