By BRUCE DENNILL
Ed Kowalczyk: Throwing Copper Unplugged 20th Anniversary Tour / Big Top Arena, Carnival City, Johannesburg
On the same stage that hosted Rodriguez, another artist who had an album (Cold Fact, in that case) that somehow defined an era, Ed Kowalczyk, former frontman of Live, played the whole of the band’s 1994 album Throwing Copper. Judging by the responses to the songs, the Johannesburg audience feel as strongly about those songs, including Lightning Crashes, Selling The Drama, I Alone, All Over You and Pillar Of Davidson now as they did then, and Kowalczyk himself has always been noted for his intensity as a performer, so this set makes for a happy match.
The gig is sold as an unplugged performance, but there’s some blurring of that line, with Kowalczyk and sideman Zac Loy playing a range of (very impressive) Godin guitars capable of a spectrum of sounds far beyond the strummed dreadnought definition of the concept. Arrangements are kept relatively simple, but the pair create emphatic backing for Kowalczyk’s vocals, which remain the focus.
The other major component of the show is the video content projected behind the pair as they play. Some of it is from the music videos used when the songs were originally releases, but a good deal of it features Ramy Antoun, the drummer from Kowalczyk’s solo band. These segments threaten to overshadow the musicians at the front of the stage, as Antoun’s inventiveness, creating rhythms using an assortment of unexpected items – including a painting (he taps the canvas, which, being taut, has a certain resonance)! – to maintain the beat underpinning each tune.
Playing through Throwing Copper from beginning to end takes about an hour and 20 minutes, a reasonable length for a (more or less) solo concert, but Kowalczyk does emerge from the wings for an encore that turns into a second act. This second set includes Live hits from other albums (Lakini’s Juice, Dolphin’s Cry) and songs from his latest solo collection, The Flood And The Mercy, including Seven and Angels On A Razor. South African label mate Tailor joins him on vocals for the latter, but, oddly, sings the same melody line rather than a harmony, meaning that there’s just an amplified sound on those words rather than any sort of really meaningful contribution.
Kowalczyk’s greeting to the crowd at the end of the show suggests a genuine will to return and play in South Africa again. That’s the regular rock star line, but the buzz in the Big Top Arena, a sizable room in which it’s possible to enjoy some level of intimacy with the artist on stage, suggested that there would certainly be sufficient demand to encourage promoter Andy Mac to begin planning a new Kowalczyk tour in the not too distant future.