Glad I made the trip down to Pylewell Park in Lymington on Friday as Phil opened his set by confirming that it was his only gig of 2015 (although he's scheduled to participate in the sold out Jack Bruce tribute in October) and concluded by joking that he'd see us all again in 10 years time!
The music took place in a tent (capacity maybe 200-300?) in the grounds of the manor house on a bright, sunny, but not terribly well attended day. Blakey had little difficulty in tracking me down by following the instruction earlier in this thread!
Mrs Smudge & I had already enjoyed music from Orlando Seale & The Swell (nice change to find two violinists in a five piece band), but were less impressed with the French indie band Singtank; things picked up again with ex-Razorlight man Johnny Borrell's band Zazou (shades of Dexy's to these ears and a bit more violin!), before Phil took to the stage at around 22.15 for his 45-50 minute set.
Introduced as "the nicest man in rock 'n roll", Phil brought along a veritable League Of Nations band: Lucas del Polo (guitar) from Spain; Andres Mesa (keyboards) from Colombia; Joao Mello (keyboards & tenor sax), who had just performed with Zazou, from Brazil; the impressive Yaron Stavi* (bass) from Israel; ex-Stereophonics man Javier Weyler (drums) who was born in Argentina, but raised in Venezuela; and Sonia Bernardo (vocals) from Portugal.
(*Phil said that Yaron is heavily featured in the forthcoming David Gilmour album, but Yaron modestly told me afterwards that he just played on a few tracks and that, as usual, Guy Pratt will handle the bass duties for DG's live dates. He seemed to think that Phil would also be in that band again. 
) Phil said he'd open with some songs from his latest Sound Of Blue CD, before moving on to some more familiar stuff, and promptly treated us to the pair of instrumentals Magdalena (learned from his mother in 1957) & High Atlas, before Ms Bernardo joined the band for 1960 Caracas and the rest of the set.
She drew some admiring comments from Mrs Smudge and others at the front for her lace-up black suede stilettos (and possibly some for the short scarlet dress too...
), although her singing seemed to polarise opinion rather more.
It was an interesting choice to take a well known song like More Than This and perform it in the sort of vocalese style once associated with Amy Winehouse (e.g. stretching each of those three words to 4 or 5 syllables) and braver still to do the same with the following Stormy Weather...
Fortunately the latter segued into a straighter version of Take A Chance With Me, before the whole band relaxed into No Church In The Wild, a song with which they were all very familiar.
I had, perhaps naively, hoped for some old favourites like Diamond Head, Impossible Guitar & Out Of The Blue, but 45 minutes isn't long to please a festival crowd of casual listeners (few of whom seemed to be diehard Roxy fans, but all of whom appeared to be enjoying it), so it was understandable that Phil concluded with Love Is The Drug & Let's Stick Together.
I've seen it reported on Facebook that Phil dedicated LST to his friend Bryan, telling him to get well soon, but I didn't hear any of that from my vantage point at the front.
On the subject of absent old friends/songs, there was no sign of the trusty red & white Firebird VII guitar either; Phil played the entire set on a blood red Gibson Les Paul (apologies to the guitar "trainspotters" out there, but I've no idea of the model number!).
Phil was looking well and sounding good, so it would be nice if we could persuade him into more frequent live appearances. Here's hoping...
