Venue: Menza pri koritu, Metelkova, Ljubljana
Concert date: 16.05.2007
Attendance: 50
Ticket price: /
Neil Leyton is a young guy, born in Lisbon and currently living in London, who performs with a Scandinavian backing band, The Ghosts, and on Thursday, May 17, he paid Ljubljana another visit. It was a close call, though, and he almost didn’t make it, at least not that day. Somewhere between Germany and Slovenia their van broke down, and it took quite a bit of effort for the guys to make it to Metelkova’s Menza pri koritu, where only about forty listeners were waiting for them. A few more trickled in after the show had already started, almost two hours behind schedule, but that handful was all the more fired up.
Without throwing in the towel, Neil Leyton & The Ghosts sailed straight into their mix of a slightly more mainstream-leaning punk rock, with practically no soundcheck. They sorted out all the glitches over the first few songs, so by the third one, when Neil grabbed a guitar himself, they were already almost completely ‘dialed in’. There were still a few minor issues with the monitors and with the mic of Micke, the lead guitarist and backing vocalist, but nothing really worth mentioning, and nobody lost a single hair over it.
In fact, all the musicians were in genuinely great spirits, and the trouble on the road clearly hadn’t gotten to them one bit. Even though The Ghosts, made up of the aforementioned Micke Ghost on guitar, Jan-Eric Olsson on bass and Tommie Riot on drums, were a bit more reserved, Neil was chatty the whole time, though you couldn’t catch all his jokes, since some were clearly meant mostly for himself. He also took a moment to voice his disapproval of Bush’s politics, which, he said, shouldn’t be met with aggression, because that only puts you in the same or an even worse position. On the other hand, he stood up for Rage Against The Machine and backed their way of settling scores with injustice, even though the band has split up and its members today don’t seem quite as convincing in the fight against the capitalist order of the world, and Neil himself isn’t exactly carrying on their tradition either. In many ways, Neil’s take on Rock & Roll is the complete opposite, since with songs like “Drop Dead Gorgeous” he doesn’t hint at any excessive, or even mildly pronounced, revolutionary spirit or any other kind of rebellion, except the MTV kind, the one based on style and image. And although he says his roots lie in the music (and image) created by Nick Cave, Bob Dylan, MC5, Serge Gainsbourg and so on, he comes across as much closer to the stage presence of Axl Rose, especially back in the day, or, when he plays guitar, to Dave Pirner.
The show was a bit of a two-parter, in that for the first three quarters of an hour or so The Ghosts played with Neil, and then they left him and Neil stayed on stage alone. He swapped the electric guitar for an acoustic and cooled things down a bit. After the second song, a special guest from the audience joined him on stage. As we found out later, it was a good friend of Neil’s from Slovenia. Neil handed him the guitar and focused on singing. They played one song together, and then The Ghosts joined them again and things got more electric and playful once more. And the most playful of all was undoubtedly drummer Tommie, who was positively bursting with energy on his stool, to the point that he ‘pounded out’ the climax of one song standing up! Of course he earned a roaring ovation, from the crowd and from the rest of the ‘ghosts’ alike. Well deserved, no doubt.
“Sweden, Finland and Slovenia are the countries with the most talented musicians… I don’t come from any of them,” Neil said with a grin toward the end of the show, half joking, half serious. Apart from the guitar work, Leyton could definitely make more use of Micke’s voice, too. During the encore the crowd won with chants of “we want more!”, to which Neil replied “more of what?”, Micke showed he’s an accomplished singer as well, and his vocal color could add a lot of variety to the songs, which sometimes feel a bit monotone, even though Neil darts from the middle vocal register up to a very high one, which more than once brings to mind the distinctive singing of Cedric Bixler-Zavala of The Mars Volta. Then again, that might well upend the whole concept of the band.
Anyway, as Neil mentioned, there were several options for the encore, and we got Micke Ghost’s Boogie Woogie, meaning just The Ghosts on their own, while Neil listened to his band mingling with the rest of the audience. After that they played two more songs together and called it a night, that lucky Thursday, or rather Friday already, since they played until almost one in the morning.
The Betrayal Of The Self, the title of Leyton’s latest album, certainly didn’t happen on this evening. If anything, the musicians proved precisely that, despite some shortcomings, they stay true to themselves, and that’s exactly how it should be.
Photo: Jani Lah
Setlist
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Lineup:
Neil Leyton: Vocals, guitar
Micke Ghost: Guitar
Jan-Eric Olsson: Bass
Tommie Riot: Drums
