At very short notice – like 3 hours – we went to see Paul Weller at Southend’s Cliffs Pavilion last night. Needless to say he was brilliant. Going was extra special as the tickets made an extra birthday present for my missus for Tuesday who last saw Mr P at the Cliffs on the farewell tour of the Jam many years ago.
For some reason we missed out when the tickets were released originally and the show had been sold out for weeks but – having been getting twitter notifications all week from Southend Theatres (@SouthendTheatre) – I finally saw the status update I’d been waiting for announcing that some extra tickets had been released and I snapped up 2 in the standing area.
We ambled down around 8 and the man himself appeared on stage somewhat unexpectedly at 8.45 or so. This was after I bumped into a friend – which is a highly likely occurrence at events at The Cliffs – and had an exchange of tweets with a a twitter acquaintance who must have been stood almost next to me!
A brilliant set followed made up exclusively of tracks from Paul’s solo career with a number of encores. This did mean that most of the tracks were unfamiliar but that did not detract as every song was an instant classic.
There were a few tracks I did recongnise from his single releases including the closing song Changing Man. He played a fair number from his upcoming album Saturn’s Pattern due out 11th May which were excellent. We will be pre-ordering the CD.
I managed to snap a few photos from the gig and even made a half decent recording of Changing Man which I have included below. If you get the chance to see Paul and the band live then I would definitely recommend it.
A few more photos on my Google+ photos site here
And the Changing Man video
andrew kenyon photography 