C. J. Walsh

Richard Lloyd

October 26, 2019

Café Nine New Haven, Connecticut, USA

View: Wobbly table near the exit.

 No less than Johnny Marr called Television’s Marquee Moon a guitar manifesto and Lloyd gave us three tracks from that album - Friction, Elevation and show-opener, See No Evil.  Misty Eyes and Alchemy show his strength doesn’t lie in his voice but he made up for the deficit with his playing, a combination of virtuosity and abandon.

A nice choice of covers included The Thirteenth Floor Elevators’ Fire Engine and The Velvet Underground’s I’m Waiting For The Man, a grim reminder of Lloyd’s own struggles with hard drugs. New-ish song Whisper, from last year’s underrated Countdown LP and Monkey from 2007 stand with his best solo work.

This show and his recent autobiography, Everything Is Combustible are a telling overview of his lengthy career. Climax came with Field Of Fire, Lloyd blazing across the bridge from classic rock to whatever they’re calling it nowadays.

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Published in Record Collector Magazine