an evening with rick wakeman.

Rick Wakeman has had a long and largely un-documented or recognised (but well recorded) history in english rock music. But he is best recognised as being the rediculously talented keyboard played of prog' rock giants Yes.
He literally is a "keyboard wizard" (i'm pretty sure that term was first invented to describe him)



I am a big fan of him and his playing - for my birthday, my family got me tickets to go and see him twice, once playing in the New Life church all the way over in Lincoln and secondly doing a tour with John Anderson (the original singer from Yes), a repeat of a tour i have previously seen the two on.

The latter of the two dates isn't till November but I've just been to see his church-hall effort in Lincoln.
I knew nothing of Lincoln before hand, but on our arrival we discovered a town of two halves; a slightly chavvy, cheap nightclub bar half and a quaint, quite attractive, clean town built on the side of a ridiculously steep hill.
In the spare hour we had before the show began, my father and I walked up this, frankly, rediculous hill all the way up to the extremely impressive Lincoln cathedral - here is a picture! believe or not, this photo has no editing what so ever, just a camera phone photo, it turned out quite well.



The show was being held in the New Life Church, an unfortunately less impressive, overly "american style christianity" church. here is a slightly worse picture of the stage and it's unashamedly eighties back-lighting.



He played an eclectic mix of tunes from his seemingly endless portfolio of musical projects he has been involved with or played for; from The Strawbs to Yes to his solo efforts to session appearences for famous names in the music industry.
here are a few of his more well know, but still largely un-recognised/credited appearences:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueUOTImKp0k&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nL_yON7--N8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhdU39AV5jM

and for those of you that enjoy musical self-indulgence, here are some great videos of rick wakeman doing his own things:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuiI0kV4joQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaKhIst0WXk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05k8DgEXZXM&feature=related


so I grabbed some sheet music for some of his tracks from the "Six Wives on Henry VIII" album (easily his best solo album) for £6 so i can embark on what is going to be a monumental effort of learning it.