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A review from 5D Music & Theatre writer Maria Robertson.
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When the “Cantona sings Eric” tour was announced, my Manchester United loving son immediately asked to go. This is one of the team’s legendary players coming to our town. The fact it was a concert was intriguing – can he sing? What does he play? Rumours that he is actually a very talented musician and plays lots of instruments were heard, someone said he had been on television but mumbled and his diction was not great. We decided to go along with an open mind and see what happened.
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This concert is the first which has been held in Conference Suite 2 of the P&J Live, which is a smaller room upstairs. We calculated there were about 300 seats laid out and were thrilled to find we were really not far from where the instruments were all sitting on the stage. It is always nice to get up close and personal with musicians.
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The support was a man, with headphones and an antenna, called Concrete Kid. He told us we could call him Joe and that his antenna brings the band to the speakers so we could hear it too. There was him, a guitar and lots of pedals he played with his feet. He did some very enjoyable songs including Summer Pearl, The Colour Green (the lighting changed to green for this one) and The Rebirth. Song For The Lonely is about when you are a parent and get to enjoy one of those rare moments when you are in the house alone in the evening and everyone is asleep and no one is asking questions. We got to sing along with Glorious Sun, he taught us the lyric “set sail to the glorious sun” and trusted us to do it twice in each chorus. He does swear a lot in person, and even in some of the songs, but his Glaswegian accent does not come through in his singing. He has some gorgeous lyrics, I totally recommend you looking him up on streaming platforms and giving him a follow on Instagram, where he describes himself as a psychedelic cowboy.
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Julien Perraudeau the pianist, and Jeff Assy, a cellist, take to the stage to start with and play some atmospheric music before the man himself takes to the microphone. The stage set up is simple, the grand piano to the left, the cello to the right with Eric in the middle spotlight. He comes on in a casual black suit, then adds a hat, and soon removes the jacket. I wonder if the red Cat boots are a nod to his past team. Certainly some of the audience are football fans with shouts of “ooh aah Cantona”, “Cantona is God” and “we love you Eric”. There was a very happy lady in the second row when he replied “I love you too”.
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There is a playlist on Spotify of “Cantona sings Eric – First Tour Ever (Live)” if you would like to have a taste of what we heard. There was very little chat between songs and usually it was some of the lyrics of the upcoming song, or telling us about a song, such as the one in Spanish being about leaving a lady he loved. One song was written a few months ago but unfortunately the situation is the same, or worse, in Palestine. This invoked some chanting of “free Palestine”. His songs about love did not sound very different to those about war, they mostly have a “tortured soul” vibe: atmospheric and sung with so much feeling and emotion. Eric’s hands moved with the lyrics, fist punching the air on occasion, totally living his lyrics.
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The set list for the evening includes 19 songs, but we did not get the encore. It did seem fitting to finish after You’ll Never See Me Again, and my son was thrilled to get pointed at as he filmed Eric singing I Want To See You. That was sent to his Dad and Grandda straight away! The Friends We Lost brought a lump to my throat, as who has not lost friends recently. The lyric that jumped out at me was “Laugh and drink with the vampires, The friends we lost”. Eric Cantona’s lyrics are thought provoking and obviously he has always had his own way of articulating things. Anyone who heard his UEFA Champions League draw speech in 2019 will be aware of this already. Widely labelled “bizarre”, the speech finished with: “Only accidents, crimes, wars, will still kill us but unfortunately, crimes and wars, will multiply. I love football.”
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I can confirm that Eric did not play any instruments himself, although he did whistle during Of The Sun. Some of his lyrics were hard to hear properly, partly due to the lovely French accent and partly due to singing in three different languages, sometimes it was the sheer emotion smothering the words. However, even if this had not been a football god singing to us, we agreed that it was a unique and enjoyable experience. Obviously some people were only there to be in the same room as Cantona, but looking at it as a musical performance, it was really good. Julian and Jeff are very talented musicians and the trio work well together, totally coordinated and complementing each other. We would have been disappointed if this great man had come out and covered some pop songs, this was the creative side of Eric Cantona.
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There are still many dates ahead of them in this tour, and I hope everyone enjoys it as much as we did.
Future tickets: https://cantonasingseric.club/en/tournee/
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Maria Robertson is the Chief Music & Theatre Writer for the 5D Pop Culture Website and provides reviews & coverage of local Aberdeen music & theatre gigs. She’s an experienced writer for numerous sources and is a self-confessed live gig addict ever since seeing The Counting Crows at the Barrowlands in 1994.
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