With a thin, reedy voice somewhere between Neil Young's and Nils Lofgren's, a voice perfect for swooping down and carrying you away while singing sad songs, Freedy Johnston was once big news. His 1992 album, We Can Fly, was voted one of the best records of that year by Musician, Spin and Billboard magazines.
His 1994 major label debut, This Perfect World, generated a US hit single. The same year Rolling Stone named him songwriter of the year. Five years later Freedy is playing to a less-than-packed pub venue. Something somewhere has gone horribly wrong, and you have to wonder why. If there is a problem, it certainly isn't in the songs. Despite Johnston's incredibly irritating and overly rambling musings between material, most of his songs shine. Abrasive, ruminative and eloquent, Johnston's songs might be par for the course in the singer/songwriter genre, but a gem such as The Lucky One - about losers of every variety in Las Vegas - makes it easier to understand why he has been marked out as one to watch.
Unfortunately, the fabric of the show is shot to ribbons by his continual guitar tuning and patter, making the performance as a whole difficult to tolerate. A cover of one-hit wonder Owen Paul's My Favourite Waste Of Time is thrown into the mix. The choice is irony writ large, but just when you think Johnston is going to save the gig he starts talking again.
