John Parr @ Olympia, Paris - June 9th, 2018

I was sitting front row at the famous Olympia, waiting to see Jeff Beck for the seventh time when I overheard someone  from the crew say there was a support act called John Parr. Surely I must've misunderstood. Surely it couldn't possibly be THAT John Parr from my childhood.

As the lights went out, an older man came out with an acoustic guitar and sat down to play and by God, it was John Parr. It seems no one in the audience knew who he was, but I did. When I was eight I heard "Man In Motion" on the radio, way before I was even old enough to watch the movie it was from, and it instantly became one of my favourite songs.

I was absolutely stoked and even though I only knew two songs out of his short set (three if you count the cover of Fleetwood Mac's Oh Well) I had an absolutely fantastic time and couldn't hope for a better artist to open for Jeff Beck. Sure, his style is miles removed from that of the headliner but that's not a bad thing. And sure, "Naughty Naughty" and the aforementioned "Man in Motion" are guilty pleasures, but they are pleasures nonetheless and when it comes to pleasure you gotta take all you can get.