If these teenyboppers don't get what they want and fast, we could be facing a riot on a scale unseen in Manchester since the nearby Peterloo Massacre of 1819.Finally, at 9.55pm, darkness falls, to a decidedly mixed "about bloody time" reception and, in the circumstances, the introductory "Beyonc?adio" skit falls somewhat flat. Suddenly the curtains rise (properly this time), and Ms Knowles is lowered on a pulley from the roof, hanging upside down from those expensive legs, and lands on a chaise longue to sing "Baby Boy" (featuring the bovine grunts of the mercifully-absent Sean Paul). I can't be the only one who's secretly hoping that she's been hanging there for the last two hours, the blood running from her expensive ass to her expensive head, while engineers laboured to loosen a wheel.Midway through "Naughty Girl" (incorporating Donna Summer's "Love To Love You Baby"), she has the temerity to stop the song and scold us for being too quiet Well, there's a reason for that, Bouncy. A veteran of such things, I arrive at a leisurely 9pm to find that the support act, Abs out of 5ive, hasn't played due to unspecified "technical reasons".
As a result, several thousand young Mancunians have been sitting obediently and quietly inside the enormodome with the house lights on, as though in some massive school detention, for some two and a half hours, placated by the soft soma sound of boy band ballads emanating from the speakers. This surreal situation continues for another 20 minutes, when suddenly the huge ruched curtains rise up, like a Victorian hooker's skirt showing a teasing glimpse of ankle, only to fall immediately back down again.A further half hour passes, and still no sign of Beyonc?nowles, the Destiny's Child diva for whom the masses have forked out £30 each to see We are, it has to be said, more than ready for that jelly. 'Doors: 6.30pm Show: 8pm." That's what it says on the tickets. With typical wit and freshness, he is planning to call it Four-Letter Word. And you really should give a folk about it.s.richman independent.co.ukMedicine Bar, Birmingham, (0121 693 6333), Tue; Electric Theatre, Guildford (01483 444789), Thur; Zodiac, Oxford (01865 420042), Fri; Village Hall, Priddy (01749 675562), Sat; tours. It was only when he couldn't keep the bands together and found himself on his own, that he took a step back and listened to the voices in his head. Space cleared, the songs that emerged were those songs that, as he says, "you know, but you never knew you knew" Moray now plays with the zeal of the converted.
After this "Smoke and Mirrors" tour, he is planning to go back to his adopted home town of Birmingham to start up his own folk music club. As Moray bangs at his guitar and prances like a Billy Bragg who can actually sing (and man can he sing), it's worth remembering that before he found his calling, Moray played drums, bass and guitar in a variety of run-of-the-mill student "indie" bands. As he samples his own guitar, loops the sound live and then plays over the top, he gives the impression of the shambling new waver. The songs skip by: "Poverty Knock" from his debut album I Am Jim Moray; "Two Sisters" and "Lord Bateman" from Sweet England, which even the grumpy old Daily Telegraph proclaimed had brought folk music forwards by 30 years.The punk ethic is hardly surprising. It is the sound of our past, and while practically every other nation on earth still feels their folk music as a living, breathing thing, we have been made to feel somehow ashamed of our flag, our collective soul and our musical heritage.Weaving tales of squires, beautiful young maidens and raggle-taggle gypsies, Moray is a nervous but mesmerising performer.
