SPOCK’S BEARD

VENUE 229, LONDON DATE 01/02/2024 A few songs into tonight’s show, keyboardist Ryo Okumoto takes the microphone. Alongside his consummate musical skills, Okumoto is equally known for his showmanship and zaniness. Indeed, tonight he has already unleashed a couple of dazzling solos and been air drumming enthusiastically when otherwise unoccupied. The audience await Okumoto’s announcement, perhaps expecting a quip. But when he speaks, he does so somewhat wistfully, introducing his stage manager son Sage and recalling Spock’s Beard’s June 2001 show at London’s celebrated and long since demolished Astoria venue. That night Spock’s seemed on the cusp of a significant commercial breakthrough. But, of course, within months Neal Morse departed and what had previously resembled an inexorable upwards trajectory came to an abrupt halt. That Spock’s endure almost 23 years later…