Mike Peters at the Birmingham Academy, March 2015. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The message of the night was simple, that the power of love, hope and strength is an overriding force of nature which can help overcome the widest of chasms, the tallest of mountains and can hold the attention of a sold out audience right down to the newest of fans who weren’t alive when the century started, let alone those that have been on board The Alarm train for over 30 years.
Love, hope and strength, is a set of words that for Mike Peters also means the world; it is the power of those words that drive the selfless musician to keep on going despite cancer having tried to battle him twice. For his fans, for the audiences that flock to watch him perform and join him on his pilgrimages up Mount Snowdon, it is the testimony that the music he and the original members of the band produced is as vibrant, still as accessible and still very sadly relevant as it was when first laid down on vinyl and toured with the same passion as Mike Peters showed beyond measure at the o2 Academy in Birmingham.
Strength is a wondrous beast, it doesn’t have to be brutal as many suppose it be, nor does it have to be dominant, overbearing or full of seething resentment towards one’s fellow man or woman but it still flows in each of us, it just requires the right circumstances in which to flourish and see the job done. Strength also, perhaps aptly for the evening, is the latest Alarm to get a new set of lungs, a new viewpoint in which to let the fan become immersed into. After the critical success that Mr. Peters enjoyed when the 21st re-imagining of the debut album Declaration was released onto the world, Strength takes the same flight path and for the crowd at the Academy in Birmingham it was a night in which to rediscover the love for the second studio album.
With the evening split, only briefly, in to two parts, Mike Peters treated the energetic but respectful crowd, to a music history lesson, the chance to hear some of the stories behind the songs that cemented The Alarm’s rightful place in the anger of 1980s music. By starting the evening with versions of the songs that made it onto the then B.B.C. radio presenter Kid Jensen’s radio show, Howling Wind and Unbreak the Promise and other songs that formed the backbone to the eventual release but didn’t make the album’s final tracks, Mike Peters, after a quick five minute break, took the audience back to the days when songs such as Knife Edge, Dawn Chorus, the angry determination Father To Son, the rage and fury against the lack of humanity shown the working class in Deeside and a new positive version, which raised hopes and the desire for change in Spirit of ’76, were greeted by all inside the packed room with grace, humility and the urge to fight a corrupt system.
With Mike Peters in absolute top form, and as always never giving anything less than 100 percent to the cause, he finished the entertaining and fulsome evening with an barnstorming set of songs that no doubt would have had W.H. Auden add a completely different verse to his ode to the Bristol Road, As I Walked Out One Evening in celebration to the sheer presence and fortitude of the singer. Tracks such as the blistering Marching On, 45 R.P.M., the raucous 68 Guns, We are the Light, the anthem like Where Were You Hiding When The Storm Broke and the heart stopping Blaze of Glory before signing off with the message of the evening, Love, Hope and Strength.
It is love, hope and the seismic appreciation to strength that makes The Alarm’s music still as significant today as it did when Strength was released 30 years ago, times may change, the road map of history adaptable but never unceasing, the only thing you can do is walk forever by its side and remember that for Mike Peters, strength is what he makes available to his audience.
A tremendous night of music delivered with style and intensity.
Mike Peters performs at The Cavern in Liverpool on April 16th.
Ian D. Hall