Jon Gomm [Live Review – Komedia, Brighton, 24/3/2015]
Some musicians are divas. The slightest backstage issue – even the delivery of the wrong brand of hairspray to their dressing room – leads to pulled gigs and a simple refusal to perform. Fans get gutted while egos get fluffed, because hey – it’s showbiz, right?
At the other end of the scale, you have the hard sloggers. Guys and girls who push themselves onstage even when everything around them is a barely perceptible blur of chaos and stress. Nobody could fault them for taking a time out – but they go do what they do regardless.
Jon Gomm is definitely the latter. Although the 250-odd people crammed into Komedia had no doubt been waiting for this show with baited breath, it could very well have been cancelled, and understandably so. A number of Gomm’s recent tour stops have had to be missed due to family emergencies – and although only the most selfish asshole could begrudge a performer the right to skip a show and prioritise those closest to them, this guy took the stage anyway.
Fair play.
At the very least, you’d expect that kind of cognitive dissonance to show through in a musician’s performance. Again, not the case with Jon Gomm. From his opening improvised guitar-and-vocal warmup through to the spellbinding performance of Passionflower that every guitar fan with an internet connection can probably visualise in HD by now, Jon Gomm was absolutely on fire at Komedia.
Gomm’s heart-under-fire set lasted for a good couple of hours, taking in ten-minute odd-meter prog epics (Everything); the dark vibes of Telepathy; an ode to forbidden mosher/chav love (Gloria); Gomm’s “…emergency disco song,” (a cover of Chaka Khan’s Ain’t Nobody); the pinkie-finger-slaughtering Wukan Motorcycle Kid; a love song for hideous deep-sea monster fish; and a full step-by-step masterclass in percussive guitar, before climaxing in a totally unplugged singalong version of Bob Marley’s classic Wait in Vain. To be honest, I suspect the tap water at the bar was spiked with hallucinogenics, none of this really happened, and we all actually spent that time slumped in front of a 4K screen running a CGI demonstration of what the T-1000’s cousins may be able to do with a guitar in the future. Exactly how one human being can do what Jon Gomm does is beyond me.
Whether you fancy seeing if you can decipher every legato line, slap, pop, body hit, and rasgueado stroke, or you just want to sit back for a while and be blown away by a hurricane of musical virtuosity, I can’t recommend Jon Gomm’s live shows enough. From the potpourri of techniques on display to the guy’s warm and personable onstage presence to the simple grit required to even get onstage under certain circumstances, rest assured that everything Komedia witnessed was faultlessly world-class.
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