CRIKEY! STEVE 'Interesting' Davis presents...Mag"Interesting"ma! And so they proved to be, for the first hour or so. With individual songs longer than most bands' sets, the Magma experience can be viewed as either incredible value for money or a war of attrition.
The night set off on the former track, with some hypnotically monotonous rhythms produced by the conventional 12-piece line-up (two drummers, percussionist, three pianos etc). This sounded something like the band of '70s legend.
But with the extraordinary falsetto voice of the squat-figured Christian Vander leading his football squad into a seemingly interminable Latin American workout, spiked with a curious stab at gospel, attention began to waver and the bloke next to me fell asleep (true).
Well into the third hour came the moment I'd been hoping would never arrive
- the drum solo. Some people have a fear of licking stamps; me, I'm a drumphobic.
Vander is a bit of a whiz, but it's like those nice strips on the Wembley
turf - very admirable but I wouldn't want to watch a guy mow the lawn for
a quarter of an hour.
Still, it was an experience.