Music > Live Reviews

Mike Peters @ the Waterfront

07/05/16

OK, I should have read the small print. This was Mike Peters presents The Alarm. It was not The Alarm or Mike Peters & The Alarm. So, I turned up expecting a full band performance and I get Mike Peters solo with guitar, bass drum, snare, harmonica and backing tape. Initially, I can't help feeling slightly short-changed.

Once I put that initial surprise and disappointment behind me, leaving aside the questionable merits of a backing tape, Peters delivers a bloody good night. The first set consists of old songs and new, one so fresh that this is only its second outing. This shows that Peters is a great – and greatly under-rated – songwriter. Having survived cancer three times, he is in fine voice and puts more energy into the show than many performers a third of his age.

Back in the mists of time, on 12th April 1986, The Alarm played a set at UCLA. Nothing particularly noteworthy about that but for the fact it was beamed live around the world and watched by literally millions. The second set of the night replicates that show, song for song, which is a very good thing as The Alarm were then at both the height of their power and the height of their success.

Maybe it is a sign of The Alarm’s relevance to the youth of today but the audience is on the mature side and there are few, if any, bright young things here. It is their loss. The audience may not be the youngest but the mass singalongs on Blaze of Glory and Absolute Reality are among best I've heard at the Waterfront. Where Were You Hiding When The Storm Broke sees a genuinely moving moment when Peters is joined on stage by Bobby, The Alarm's lighting guy from back in April '86, who first saw the band in a scout hut in Cambridge in 1983.

Following that, 68 Guns is as rousing as ever. And then it is the highlight. Spirit Of 76 is a song that had a significant effect on my formative years and a profound influence on my musical tastes. By God, it still sounds bloody great.

I can never understand why some bands achieve nothing but become legends, whilst others achieve huge success and then are written out of the musical history books. The Alarm are in the latter camp and that is plain wrong. With that band, Peter took punk and gave it a folk twist. The lyrics are as relevant now as they were then.

Yeah, this wasn’t the show I was expecting but it was still great. Do yourselves a favour, go on. Check out Peters. Whether solo, with The Alarm or Dead Men Walking, you will get a damned fine evening’s entertainment.