WIZARDS OF TWIDDLY REUNION REVIEWED

The Wizards of Twiddly

Zanzibar Club, Liverpool. December 9 2004

I've almost just left this first paragraph blank because the words won't come to express how I felt about this reunion. The place to start eludes me and, the harder I look, the darkness of my indecision grows deeper. This was a night where the memories of so much history and so many dreams - Wizards, Kevin Ayers, Liverpool - were colliding. The Wizards last played together seven years ago but the way markers of time have no significance when the last notes never actually fade in our minds.

This was almost a private event, publicised only by word of mouth; the Zanzibar Club a doorway in a cleft down a darkened side street. Inside, the gentle darkness mercifully softened furniture that could have fuelled another David Attenborough docu-drama on evolution. A selection of ultraviolet lighting lent a seasonal hint that it was snowing inside as cruelly exposed dust and scurf settled on every surface. It was wonderful.

It took the Wizards about twenty seconds to pick up where they had left off. Only the smiles were wider, stretched across band and audience like a signature that seals a bond. Hearing these songs again was like opening a box of photos lost in the bottom of a drawer; joining in the rapt applause that greeted and ended each one made you realise that everyone in the room had lived, loved, breathed and rediscovered those same photos. The musicianship and artifice of the Wizards remains breathtaking, their magnificence undiminished - no band has a right to be this good. They can roar with immense delicacy, whisper like thunder, visit places only an X-ray should access.

Maybe the passage of time has rose-glowed my ears but there was a discernible sense of brotherhood about the 2004 Wizards. They played this night simply for each other and for their songs - the tensions of a decade ago, when the elusive shadow of the music business still held up an empty paper bag labelled 'success', have been rightfully buried beneath the careers and lives each one of them has built. The musical integrity in the fingertips of this band has built an everlasting and unassailable fortress in hearts and minds. I know they will have been delighted beyond measure with the warmth of reception they received.

Miss them at your peril.

MW December 04

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