We were treated to another brace of Acoustic Sussex delights on Thursday night in the form of a Nick Harper, supported by local lad Newton Faulkner. This is the first tour for Newton, supporting Nick around the country. Although he doesn't yet have a surfeit of material to perform, what he does play makes you sit up and pay attention. His guitar playing is stupendous, full of unusual techniques producing some amazing effects, like when he allows his picking hand to stray up the fretboard initiating some wonderful effects that come flying out of the speakers. His songs are refreshingly different and contain enough idiosyncratic corners to keep the minds of audiences well transfixed. His voice sounds very mature and ranges from the soulful swampy vocal sounds of Marc Cohn through to the verbal acrobatics of Craig David although this is not the sum total of his unique talent. All that it needs now is for his public to recognise this and a bit of touring experience which will polish his already, all too apparent neon sparkle. We have a lot of promising support artists at Acoustic Sussex, but rarely are we treated to one so accomplished and so young. Newton did a short 24 minute set which went all too quickly for me, I could have listened for much longer. Songs performed were I Need Something, Full Fat, The Future, Seven, and 2 The Light. Mark my words, This Boy will go far! 

And for the main event of the evening, Nick Harper (son of the Legendary Roy Harper). Where have I been this last twenty years to have not noticed him? In fact I shamefully, was not even aware of his existence. I would seem that if we come across someone who follows in his father's musical footsteps, we rarely give him the benefit of the doubt and give him a truly objective hearing, making him work extremely hard to grab our attention, because something tells us, quite often erroneously that the prodigy cannot be as good as the original. This was a case in point, so sorry Nick! Please forgive me! I am here today, I am here tomorrow. I have been a Roy Harper fan for nigh on forty years now (Roy, I didn't want to make you sound old) and have seen him on perhaps 15 or 20 occasions. Always amazed by the quality of the music and the spell he has woven over the audience for all these years. Well Nick is truly his father's son and although there are at times, striking similarities between Roy and Nick, Nick is his own man with a virtuosity that stuns belief and thoroughly entertains, and having now seen him on stage and his father previously, many, many times. I feel I am now thoroughly… HARPERED ! 

Nick started the set with a little technical trouble and, for the first few minutes, Nick and the sound engineer, Gavin sought to capture and eject the Throckmorton* that was fouling up the sound system. Eventually, everything got going and the result was worth the wait. The sound quality was excellent, as good as some of the best music venues I have ever attended and there have been quite a few. Throughout the gig, Nick engaged with the audience with a lot of humour, paying special attention to a very pretty little eight year old girl in the front stalls who looked as if she was having a whale of a time. Mind you Nick had to be very careful what he said between numbers. 

He used lots of very clever tricks including using the tuning keys on the guitar in the middle of songs to get that more exaggerated string bending sound, at times sounding almost like a steel guitar and towards the end of the set he managed to break a string, find a replacement in his pocket, tossing the unwanted strings through the air and replacing the broken string on the guitar while hardly missing a note. A real virtuoso and force majeure. It amazed me just how much quality sound and dynamic range could be generated by just one man and his guitar. Songs performed: She Rules My World, The Verse That Time Forgot, Here Today, Janet and John, The Kiltystone, Sleeper Cell, The Blood Song, By My Rocket Comes Fire, Treasure Island, Bloom, The Galaxy Song, Headless, A Wiltshire Tale and Radio Silence. 

My Oh My, It feels like my Dad has just gave me an aeroplane!

*For those of you who are a little puzzled as to what a Throckmorton is, checkout The Meaning Of Liff, the late Douglas Adams' website and there you will find an explanation of lots of life's little puzzling happenings. For the uninitiated, I will elucidate. I have used two of Douglas' words: THROCKMORTON The soul of a departed madman known to inhabit the timing mechanisms of pop-up toasters and sound systems. And THROCKING The action of continually operating the lever on a pop-up toaster/ or rebooting the sound system in the hope that you will thereby get it to understand that you want it to toast something or play some music.

Review courtesy of Bob Preece