Frequent fliers can’t stay away
Two formidable foreign acts, both frequent visitors here in recent years, the English blues guitar hero, Peter Green, and the intelligent American rock balladeers, The Walkabouts, will be performing shows in Greece this week. Possibly the most frequent foreign touring artists in Greece over the past decade, the Seattle-based group The Walkabouts have established an avid following here as in other parts of Europe. The band will be returning to present a new album, «Ended Up a Stranger,» with two shows: at the capital’s Club 22 venue this Friday and Thessaloniki’s Mylos Club on Sunday. The group’s fragile sound and often troubling lyrical insight, which captures the humbler side of modern American culture, has attracted a sturdy following around Europe but attracted a limited fan base back home. Possibly reflecting the group’s fate, its frontman, Chris Eckman, has spent considerable time living in Portugal in recent years, an experience during which he recorded a commendable solo album last year. Eckman, along with the group’s co-leader, Carla Torgerson, have also released excellent work as Chris and Carla. This week’s other touring act set to pass through, Green, a founding member of Fleetwood Mac, will play a one-man show in Athens at Club 22 on Saturday. After abandoning Fleetwood Mac, prior to its stylistic shift from blues to pop-rock in the mid-1970s, Green released several superb blues albums before eventually disappearing from the public eye, crushed by drug abuse and paranoia. His former band went on to become one of the biggest selling acts of the 1970s, thanks to the pop appeal injected by two new recruits at the time, Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham. After a lengthy absence, Green, who received psychiatric treatment in the early 1990s, resumed sporadic recordings in the decade’s latter half. They led to the release of 1998’s «The Robert Johnson Songbook,» Green’s tribute to the early 20th-century blues artist. He will be returning in support of a brand- new album, «A Fool No More.» Directed by Stratos Tzitzis, starring Maria Zorba, Vassiliki Deliou, Alekos Syssovitis. An incisive look at the life crisis of a 30-something woman who tries to keep work, emotions, the present and the future in a tenuous balance. (In Greek)
