Silver Apples

Silver Apples over the last forty something years have been an on and off psychedelic and experimental group made up of Simeon Coxe III who plays some of his home made synthesizers when he plays live. “Velvet Cave” is his opening song that has a very interesting and gradual build to the verse that he comes in on.

Trying to focus on the positives is a difficult one in all sincerity. When he performs, he looks like the scientist from Back to the Future with the amount of gear in front of him. It’s fantastic that he is up there on stage at all, playing music that went out of date about thirty years ago. Despite his huge helm of synthesizers and what not, I could probably make all the noises that he is making on a crappy Yamaha keyboard from the 90’s. Rant over, this audience loves what he does, he plays through songs such as “Oscillations” and “Lovefingers”, which really set off the vibe in this room tonight, with the semi interested audience sort of having a good time.

I love Silver Apples and I think they have had vastly underrated impact on modern music. However I think Simeon needs to think about getting a supporting band, because at the moment it's basically him, a deck and some synthesizers, and it reminded both myself and my friend of karaoke. There was a strong performance of "You and I" and some people were dancing to "I Don't Care What The People Say", but generally the audience were pretty subdued. There was a nice moment when Simeon said the drums he was using were samples taken in the studio from his ex-bandmate, the late Danny Taylor, to warm applause. But generally the energy and inventiveness of the original music failed to come across, and although it was lovely to see Simeon sing some classic songs, I really feel a drummer or another musician might enhance the live performance.

The old man was really cool, loved him. But sadly, the supporting acts were just noise...and since the actual show was less than an hour long so supporting bands took half of the whole time.