| Author | Message | ||
     Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10254 Registered: 05-2005 |
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-11/t he-saints-chris-bailey-dies/100981356 I'm so glad I got to see him and Ed Kuepper play together in a tiny venue in Sydney in 2009. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4741 Registered: 03-2005 |
Wow, that's a big unwelcome surprise. Bailey was born the year after me. Pádraig, did you do a write-up on that show? | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10255 Registered: 05-2005 |
Hopefully this link works. http://go-betweens.org.uk/chatroom/messa ges/353/11762.html?1275430721 | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10256 Registered: 05-2005 |
In case it doesn't work for everyone, here is what I wrote at the time, which was May 2010, not 2009 as I said above. Ed played electric guitar throughout. Chris switched between acoustic and bass. They both sang, but generally on separate songs. They did not play any Saints songs from when they were both in the band. Almost all of the songs Chris Bailey sang were from the post-Ed Saints era (a friend told me this. I don't have any of the post-Ed Saints albums). The songs Ed sang were from his solo career. The Way I Made You Feel from Honey Steel’s Gold was a highlight for me. The cover of The Kinks’ Last Of The Steam Powered Trains was great. So was their take on Send In The Clowns, which was the last song before the encore. I wondered if Ed insisted on Chris singing this as some kind of joke. They mostly played very well together, but they were occasionally let down by Chris Bailey's Whitney tendencies. He has a great voice. He doesn't need to do that. Ed has a very limited voice but always makes the most of it. They fought on stage. At first I thought they were hamming it up (like Bailey's vocals), but then realised that no, they meant it. After one early, florid, Bailey rant about Kuepper which got a laugh, Ed responded calmly in his low rumble: "He practises these lines in the dressing room before the show you know... Notes flying everywhere..." It was hilarious. I can't imagine them ever doing this again so I'm very glad I saw it. I just wonder why they did it. It surely can't have been the money? The Vanguard only holds 150 people and the tickets weren't that expensive. The venues they played in Melbourne and Brisbane were almost certainly bigger, but probably not by that much. A great and entertaining night overall. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4742 Registered: 03-2005 |
Thanks for that, Pádraig. I like the fact that they played material from later stages of their careers. Oddly, the first album I bought by the Saints was a post-Ed album. I bought "Out in the Jungle." For a post-Ed album it's not a bad one. I later got "Prehistoric Sounds." Your account of them squabbling is the real explanation for Ed's exit from the band. Honestly, I've never seen all that great a divergence between later Saints and Ed Kuepper solo except that Ed is beyond argument the better songwriter. There was Ed's Laughing Clowns foray into punk jazz though. I guess he had to get that out of his system first. Maybe it's Ed's superior songwriting that created the friction between the two of them? | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10259 Registered: 05-2005 |
John Willsteed on Chris Bailey https://theconversation.com/amp/a-gentle man-with-the-mad-soul-of-an-irish-convic t-poet-remembering-chris-bailey-and-the- blazing-comet-that-was-the-saints-181059 | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 702 Registered: 08-2005 |
Pádraig, many thanks for posting that - lovely piece. I lived in Sydney in 1988 when Ed Kuepper released Everybody's Got To, and saw him play live a few times - the Hordern Pavilion, Kardomah Cafe - and discovered the Saints then. Kuepper's set list included Everything's Fine. Prehistoric Sounds is a great album. I've seen Ed Kuepper a few times since that time in the UK, but never did get to see him and Chris or the Saints. |