Michael's Coming Home

Mike live in Edinburgh 20^th August 1996

I packed my passport, phrase book and made my way to Kings Cross to board the 10am Flying Scotsman from London to Edinburgh. One of the hottest days of the year coincided with the air conditioning breaking-down on 40% of the Inter-city trains on the East Coast main line. However, after I emerged from the four-hour sauna things got steadily better. Edinburgh was buzzing with its annual festival and the streets were packed.

Café Graffiti is a venue on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It is a converted church and well-suited as a music venue. Mike came on stage shortly after 8pm to a small but very appreciative crowd- I think the gig could have been better promoted at the festival. Mike played two sets with a ten-minute interval. He featured most of the Incredible Acoustic Band, i.e. John Rutherford on guitar and vocals and Dave Haswell on percussion. The first set contained mostly songs off the new album starting with Tom and Alexei. Two Incredible String Band songs were included. 1968 was the last song Mike wrote with the String Band and is featured on the On Air CD as well as his new solo album. Red Hair from Liquid Acrobat sounded great.

The second set started with Jack of Hearts and continued with more songs from the new album. Song for Robert Johnson is one of my favourites. Two more ISB songs followed: Everything's Fine Right Now - on which John Rutherford played mandolin - and Log Cabin Home in the Sky. The set finished with the excellent Feast of Stephen from Smiling Men. Baby Goodnight was the encore.

This was the best I've heard Mike yet and this was partly due to the excellent sound in the venue.

Martin Payne