Joan Armatrading

Joan Armatrading
30th July 2000

Joan Armatrading was a performance I was looking forward to. I love her music and I've seen her on stage before and think she's great live. However, it must have been difficult to see her and her two accompanying musicians from the back of the field as they all wore black against a black stage and the stage lighting was minimal in the daylight.I was near the front though and could see how much she was enjoying herself even if she wasn't leaping about the stage in pink tights.

Her first song was Drop The Pilot, but she sang a gentle version with minimal keyboard accompaniment. The assembled crowd were fairly quiet, wanting to watch and listen to her rather than join in, but she got her guitar out and got us singing along early to All The Way To America. This is a festival after all and its so much better when the audience are part of it which Joan obviously agrees with. The sun was now blazing down on a happy, if sweaty crowd - she had warmed things up considerably.

She sang a new song about cherishing friendships which was sung with great emotion and may have been called ' More Than One Kind Of Love'. It was a beautiful song with beautiful lyrics.

A bit of a reggae style was brought in for a few tracks including Rosie and Me Myself I and Joan clearly loved the crowd joining in with these well loved tracks.

I was thrilled when she played Willow (as the encore) - my personal favourite - and she had the whole crowd singing the chorus without backing - its a special festival feeling when that happens. She had flown in specially from America to play at Guildford Live 2000 and later that day she was off to Germany - I'm glad she stopped by.