IT'S become quite a popular trend in recent times for long-established groups/artists to perform their classic albums live in their entirety.

To date its been done with great success by, amongst others, The Who, Steely Dan, Yes, Roddy Frame, Echo & The Bunnymen, Roger Waters and Steve Harley.
 

It's now forty one years since Steve Harley and his band Cockney Rebel first burst onto the music scene with their adventurous and avant-garde brand of pop/rock.
 

Those who love to categorise were initially quick to lump Harley and his band in with the other bands/singers that were part of the Glam Rock movement that was sweeping the nation back then but they all soon realised there was so much more to Harley and Cockney Rebel than merely flamboyant clothes and liberal doses of eyeliner.
 

For a long time Steve Harley had harboured a dream of revisiting his first two classic albums, 1973's The Human Menagerie and 1974's follow-up The Psychomodo, and playing them, live backed by a full orchestra and choir.

That dream finally became a reality at the tail end of 2012 when Harley performed the two albums back to back at Birmingham's Symphony Hall and, such was the success of show, which also garnered much critical acclaim, the singer vowed to do it all again real soon.
 

Well seventeen months on from that show, Harley proved true to his word as Manchester's prestigious Bridgewater Hall was the recent setting  for the reprise of this lavish performance.

Taking the stage to a rapturous standing ovation from the sell-out crowd, Harley and his band, with the  twenty-five piece Orchestra Of The Swan and Chamber Choir right behind them, quickly launched into 'Hideaway', the first track off The Human Menagerie, an album that has long since come to be regarded as groundbreaking and in many respects, ahead of its time.
 

Occupying the whole of the first half of the show, The Human Menagerie was played, note perfect, from start to finish by Harley and his band, together with fine contributions from orchestra  and choir, with the highlights being the renditions of tracks Loretta's Tale, the epic Sebastian and the album's final song, Death Trip which was brought to a glorious crescendo.
 

Following a twenty minute interval, Harley returned  to perform The Psychomodo, Cockney Rebel's equally superb second album, again replicated in its glorious complete form that showcased the diverse and inventive nature of the record that still sounds as fresh and as relevant in 2014 as it did back at the time of its initial release.

By now Harley was in full flow and completely at ease playing the album's cool and edgy songs, full of interesting wordplay and quirky lyrical couplings.

Songs such as Mr. Soft, Bed In The Corner and Sling It had everyone singing along but it was the audience's vocal contribution on Tumbling Down, the last track on The Psychomodo, that seemed to visibly touch Harley the most, with the songs final refrain of "oh dear, look what they've done to the blues, blues, blues" still being raucously repeated over and over by the crowd even after Harley, his band, orchestra and choir had exited the stage. 


Harley returned for one encore, and having already completed his show's contractual obligation of performing everything off both The Human Menagerie and The Psychomodo, he gave his loyal fans the song they always demand to hear as a concert finale, his signature tune(and no doubt his healthy pension plan too), the infectious pop gem (Come Up And See Me) Make Me Smile, a perfect end to a fabulous occasion.