I like going to see live music.  Whether this be an O2 filling big name or a local guy in the corner of a cafe.  I don’t play an instrument and I definitely can’t sing, but time and again a gig is what I head to when looking to escape for a while.  

I’m not a drug user, I’m often driving and I hate crowds so you might assume this is a peculiar choice of relaxation on my part.  But I think you’re wrong.  I don’t need to be flame-broiled in a sweaty mosh-pit clutching a pint of £6 Carling to be taken away from the daily drudgery.  I just need an artist with talent to burn in perfect control of their art.  It’s as simple as that.  For a couple of hours, I forget everything and soak-up what they’ve got to offer.  Therapy by aural osmosis, if you like.  Sure, there have been the odd disappointment over the years, but far more numerous are the near pitch-perfect spectacles.  And Friday 20 December’s affair in our premier university town (no, the other one) was just that.

In what has seemingly become a regular pre-Christmas fixture dating back a handful of years, Steve Hogarth (affectionately known as H), frontman of evergreen prog maestros Marillion, sits at a piano in St John the Evangelist Church and gently tinkles through favourites, covers and surprises to a packed congregation.

Having been last year, I know what to expect but as H casually enters the stage – or more accurately lower altar – and kicks-off with an expertly judged rendition of Cohen’s ‘Favourite Blue Raincoat’, I know the evening isn’t going to disappoint.  Oft covered but rarely owned, Hogarth successfully captures the hurt and longing of this love song to both people and place.  His voice, uniquely delicate and yet authoritative, accentuates both the quality of Cohen’s lyrics and the cadence of the ‘Jane came’ part of the refrain.  It’s a splendid start.

From where I was sat, just under the XI Station of the Cross, near the back left, I couldn’t see much of H due to the pillared nature of the building.  This would normally be an issue but, after the opening song, I realized it may actually enhance the experience.  If one sense is impaired, you tend to sharpen the others and with my eyes needing to do no more than enjoy the surroundings of SJE, my ears became better attuned to its acoustics.

‘Downtown Lights’, originally by Blue Nile, was next up and ‘The Answering Machine’ then followed as the first Marillion song.  The latter responding particularly well to being shorn of the rest of the band’s input and assuming a new, softer identity.

By this point, I felt calm and perfectly at home in the pews.  Some of this, I’m sure, was down to my Catholic upbringing and regular church attendance – now long-lapsed – but it was also brought on by watching H engage with and enrapture an attentive crowd with voice and piano alone.

The words of The Waterboys’ ‘The Whole of the Moon’, H’s fourth number, provided a timely prod  that it’s often what we don’t know or understand that shapes us.  This thought wasn’t wasted on me – and I’m sure numerous others – when gazing at the surrounding religious imagery.

‘Living in FEAR’, taken from Marillion’s highly-acclaimed most recent album, received rapturous applause.  It was a great rendition even if some of the admittedly laudable words – ‘We have decided to start melting our guns as a show of strength’ and ‘What a waste of time / The Great Wall of China / What a waste of time the Maginot Line’ – are a little heavy handed.

The first-half was brought to a close with crowd favourite ‘Easter’.  If not explicitly a religious song it’s certainly a spiritual one and, with audience involvement, it felt almost hymnal.

After returning from the sacristy and inviting those in possession of a bauble to come and hang it on the tree, H upped the tempo with ‘All the Young Dudes’.  An anthem to youth and the 60s it still seems to kick in the right places.  What followed I could have barely hoped for.

I’ve been a huge Al Stewart fan since I was a child (something I’ll save for a separate piece), but he’s not massively well-known – certainly beyond the moderate 70s hit ‘Year of the Cat’.  So when Hogarth began ‘Roads to Moscow’, an 8 minute historical war epic, I was enthralled. 

On a particularly damp evening, during a biblically wet month, the line of, ‘Winter brought with her the rains, oceans of mud filled the roads’ had me stealing a glance outside to check that the bloated Cherwell hadn’t spewed over its banks.  And then breathe a mighty sigh of relief that I never saw the horrors of Russia in the 1940s.

Thankfully the whole evening seemed free of video-by-iPhone douches, so I suspect this rare cover may not exist beyond the nave of SJE and the people within it.  This seems appropriate – music that flickered its soul to the wind – but I do hope Stewart somehow gets to hear Hogarth’s tribute.

Paul Simon’s ‘The Boy in the Bubble’, delivered starkly and deliberately, was much darker than the original and reminded me of Peter Gabriel’s version on Scratch my Back.  H then rounded-off with ‘You’re Gone’, ‘Fantastic Place’ and ‘Afraid of Sunlight’ from his own back catalogue.  All three arguably more intense and stirring than in their original studio format.

And that was it.  Two hours or so and sixteen songs later, it was time to return to reality.  My escape was over.  As we filed out, I wondered if the evening had actually been music as religious experience.  If it wasn’t, it’ll sure do until that moment arrives…

AZS