Neal Morse // Fuzz Club, Athens, Greece // 26.09.13
Fifteen years ago exactly in September 26th 1998, I had the luck and privilege to witness live and get to know in person one of my biggest heroes in life, Chuck Schuldiner from Death. This day had always a special place in my heart, especially after Chuck’s passing. Luck brought it this way so that I would witness another gig this special day and it’s another great reason to remember it through the years to come. Neal Morse came to Greece to give a headline show, with a great line-up consisting of young guitarist Eric Gillette, veterans Randy George on bass, Bill Kubauer on keyboards and of course, last but definitely not least the legendary Mike Portnoy on drums. It may look like an awful cliché to you who read this text, but you should have been there to really appreciate all I’m going to describe below.
Rumor had it that we’d see a gig close to three hours of duration, that’s half the truth, as the finale counted two hours and twenty four minutes, not bad at all of course, regarding the fact that the band members were really tired, something that Morse stated in the beginning of the show (‘’We had a proposal to play in Greece but without getting any sleep and we accepted). The atmosphere was rather positive from the beginning, as we all knew what we were about to see, and of course Portnoy couldn’t help but stealing much of the impressions once again, though he tried to leave as much space for Morse as he could. When Morse stated the tireness, Portnoy pretended he could sleep on his cymbals, saying ‘’Talk a little more, I could take a nap here’’ with Morse answering ‘’Well, if there’s one guy that could sleep and play together, that would be definitely Mike’’.
Seeing Morse bursting into tears somewhere after the first half hour of the set, really touched by the crowd’s response, made us give an extra boost to the great polyorganist, who just stated ‘’that’s what happens when you sing the truth, I love singing the truth’’, to get a great applause from the crowd. Portnoy said he missed us a lot, ‘’It’s been way too long since I’ve been here, and it’s even greater to be here, playing this great music of Neal’s’’. To try and explain how much of a high level of musicianship each member possesses would be naïve the least, as they could play or jam for endless hours with such ease that we could only think of. Morse showed that he can do a great work both as a guitarist (with a great Fender Stratocaster model, like the ones known by Yngwie Malmsteen) and a keyboardist, and many were the times that he and Kubauer would produce a keyboard orgy made from out of space.
George was steady on his bass, the total opposite to Portnoy who tried to keep himself distanced from showing how much of a true star he is, but when chance was given, he showed everyone inside Fuzz Club how much of what we call a ‘’brain drummer’’ he is, playing the essentials at parts but also beating the shit out of the skins in many parts. Believe me, he evolves so much in his playing each time I see him (and it’s nine times, no bullshit) that you just can’t have enough of him. Gillette is a young but most capable guitarist and showed with his minimal style why he accompanies all these collective gentlemen, soloing really when needed and providing great feedback with his seven string guitar to the riffs and compositions of Morse. The mainman of the band showed so happy from the whole course of the gig that you could see his face shining, even when lights weren’t upon him all the time.
In overall, we witnessed a gig we will remember for years, listening stuff from his personal albums, as well from Transatlantic (sorry guys, but if you wanted to listen to Dream Theater stuff, you entered the wrong gig), with a mostly satisfying duration (144 minutes are double than what other bands play with the same ticket price) and after making about three or four comebacks in the end, they finally waved goodbye to us all, without forgetting to thank the promoter for the excellent organisation (really important, as especially Portnoy was rather stressed on the soundcheck as I happened to learn before the show started) and I’d like to believe that they could come again in the future, it was only the second time for Morse to play here, after playing in 1997 with Eric Burdon. It’s times when you don’t have such attendings in your schedule and that’s when they become even better than you imagined. I feel very lucky I got to be a part of this gig and in about twenty days follows a storm of gigs with Orphaned Land, Spiritual Beggars, Shadow Gallery and Evile from the same promoter at first and many other great bands following after October. Get prepared because the end of 2013 looks (and hopefully will sound) promising.
Aggelos “Redneck” Katsouras.