stick around...

Flight of the Conchords @ Milton Keynes Theatre, Wednesday 14 March 2018

We went to New Zealand in March 2010 after a month spent travelling in Australia. In my head, I’d lazily imagined that they were probably pretty similar countries, but my preconceptions began to be changed the moment we came in to land in a rainy Christchurch that was significantly smaller than I’d imagined New Zealand’s third city would be. For the next four weeks, travelling around in a very basic camper van, I quickly fell in love with the self-deprecating Kiwis and their beautiful country. It’s in the little things: the homemade rugby posts in the back gardens of remote homesteads on South Island; the quiet excellence of their coffee (the Australians like to tell you that they have a coffee culture - not compared to the Kiwis, they don’t. The Kiwis just don’t like to shout about it); that wonderful accent (fush & chups?); the self-deprecating humour (on any subject except rugby); the fairy penguins.

I can’t remember now if I started watching Flight of the Conchords before I went to New Zealand or not (the TV show started in 2007), but I have found that exposure to Kiwis and their quirks has really enhanced my enjoyment of the show. Sure, it’s funny anyway, but visiting New Zealand and having a first-hand appreciation of Kiwis and the way they differ from their Australian cousins has sharpened my appreciation. I found that it’s much the same with a film like Hunt for the Wilderpeople, directed by Taika Waititi: it’s a lovely film in its own right, but I just felt like I got a little bit more out of it by having at least a little understanding of New Zealanders. Not least the “Stungray”.

Actually, Flight of the Conchords are that very rare beast where I think I actually prefer their music to the TV show. I like the show, but there’s just something about their two albums that has really connected with me. They don’t just write funny songs, they write songs that I’m happy to listen to and am still happy to listen to many years later. Take “Carol Brown”: on the face of it, this is a comic version of Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”. It certainly is that, but it's also a whole lot more than that and I actually prefer it as a song too. It’s probably true to say that their humour is right up my street: they’re clever and self-deprecating and delight in word-play.

Just my sort of thing.

Ticketmaster’s unbelievably greedy and incompetent fuckwittery aside, when they announced a UK tour, I was always going to try and get to hold of some tickets if I possibly could (and ultimately did, directly through the Milton Keynes theatre website). It this necessitated a midweek trip down the motorway and a predictably average tea in a Slug & Lettuce, then so be it.

Support was from David O’Doherty, a brilliant musical comedian in his own right. Tonight, his own set seemed to be about 20 minutes long before he introduced the main attraction onto the stage (he was back a few times during the headline set, including a lovely performance on percussion (including some hastily sourced spoons) during the encore.

With a cheery "Good evening Milk and Beans!", our heroes enter the stage. Bret and Jermaine have both certainly aged a bit since we last saw them together in the TV show, something they’re quick to acknowledge. But haven’t we all? They’re already played a few shows on this tour, and I have no idea how much work they’ve been putting in at the rehearsal room, but I think that “slightly shambolic” is probably the best way of describing them onstage. There a plenty of fluffed lyrics and onstage asides during the show, but that’s always been their schtick and is very much a part of their charm. They take great pleasure in introducing the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra onto the stage to accompany them… Nigel, who shuffles onto the stage in a tuxedo t-shirt. It’s a funny joke, but when they don’t quite get the reaction they’re hoping for from the audience, they good-naturedly grumble about it to each other and to us. They don’t like to compare audiences, they say, but weren’t Portsmouth great the other night. Actually, mild grouchy dissatisfaction with the audience reaction is something of a recurring theme for the show. I think they’re mostly doing it for a laugh, but I can’t help but quite escape from the feeling that they do mean it a little bit, because they’re a bit sensitive about being a bit ring-rusty and, dammit, they’re proud of how clever some of this stuff is. The first half of the show is mostly stuff that’s not-exactly new, but is likely new to most of the audience and doesn’t feature in the show or on the records. “Father and Son” tells the touching story of a father and son relationship where it slowly becomes clear that mum isn’t dead and dad’s life has just come off the rails; “Deana and Ian” is the thrilling tale of an office romance between Deana from HR and Ian from accounts; “Stanus” is a long, shaggy dog story of a song done in the style of the theme tune to an old Western TV show like Rawhide; “The Seagull” is a lovely song about, um… a piano-playing seagull (and Portsmouth were much better at the call-and-response seagull noises than the New City of Milton Keynes, apparently. Jermaine actually asks us how far to the sea from here.  Milton Keynes certainly isn't a port. Or even a New Port.  Although there is  Newport Pagnell just down the road...).

The pair obviously go back a long way and it shows in their comfortable relationship onstage. I’m sure they’ve told those gags about the muffin and the lift a million times already, but they have a way of making it sound fresh to me, which is all that really matters.  I mean, how many times has Keith Richards mouthed "I love this job" at the camera every time he plays the guitar solo in "Satisfaction"?  The newer songs sound pretty good (although they’re not all 100% successful. It’s easier to laugh at songs you know because you're not having to concentrate as hard to catch all of the lyrics). The older songs are, of course, rapturously received: the ones from the first series especially. It’s good that they’re not just performing a greatest hits show and that they’re trying to offer us something new, but it’s also undeniably thrilling to hear songs like “Inner City Pressure” and “Hurt Feelings” first hand.

My favourite song on the night was probably “1353 (Woo a lady)”, because really, how often do you see a duel of recorders onstage?

Were they perfect? No. Would it be better if they were? No, absolutely not! They’re treasures just as they are and should never change. Plus I now own a pin badge saying “band meeting” and another one (which I’ve put onto my lanyard at work) saying “business time”. If that isn’t the sign of a successful night, then I don’t know what is. They’re be sorry to hear that I didn’t buy a metal reusable water bottle laser-etched with their picture though. Sorry about that.

POSTSCRIPT:

Bret broke his hand a few days after this gig and they were forced to postpone the rest of the tour until the summer.  Absolutely gutting for everyone who fought so hard to get tickets, but I now feel extra specially lucky thate I got to see them.

Setlist (this might not be an exact list or exactly in the right order on the night…. but it was definitely something like this)

- Father and Son
- Deana and Ian
- The Ballad of Stana
- Carol Brown
- The Seagull
- 1353 (Woo a Lady)
- Chips and Dips
- Inner City Pressure
- Bowie
- Mutha'uckas / Hurt Feelings
- Bus Driver's Song
- Back on the Road
Encore:
- Shady Rachel
- Albi the Racist Dragon (this was a shouted request that they decided they might be able to remember. Someone also shouted “Business Time” and was just told they weren’t going to do it. In response to a “Where’s Murray?”, Jermaine just said, “fictional” and carried on.
- Foux du Fafa
- Robots

jumble sales are organised and pamphlets have been posted...

Billy Bragg @ Nottingham Rock City, Saturday 18th November 2017 (Bridges Not Walls tour)

I think, of all the people I've seen and all the gigs I've attended, Billy Bragg is the artist I've seen the most often.  Starting at Bristol on the Mermaid Avenue tour in around about 1998, I've probably seen the old boy play at least twice as many times as I've seen anyone else (probably Iron Maiden, if you're interested... but just maybe Thunder, who seemed to support everyone back in the day).  I even saw him four times at one Glastonbury, each time on a different stage and with a completely different set.  It's his Leftfield sets that I remember the most fondly: initially on a Sunday night in the smaller tent just down from the Hare Krishna and then on a Friday or a Saturday night (depending on how big the Pyramid headliners were - he always tries to play against the biggest bands so that the other acts at the Leftfield don't have to).

I remember one hot Sunday night -- 2002, I think -- when Billy played with a completely blank setlist and took requests all night. It was so hot that evening that the security (in the Leftfield, these are always Union staff) passed back so much water into the crowd that every single person in the tent had at least one plastic cup and most people had two.  Good times.

I think I can honestly say that I've enjoyed every single one of all these gigs.  Some are better than others, of course. He's not a nostalgia act and regularly releases new material (he makes a point tonight of saying that he's definitely not part of the December nostalgia touring circuit and that this tour ends on 30th November).  Not all of these newer albums have been classics.  Your mileage may vary, but I would say that my heart tends to sink a little bit when he plays some of his newer, country and western tinged material.  For me, it's just not as good as his "classic" material. That said, I really enjoyed the album of train-based songs that he released with Joe Henry last year.

Tonight... well, he plays a good, 2-hour long set and plays loads of his absolute classics - some on the same guitar he recorded them on, even if "the green monster" is doing his back in.  Is it the best I've ever seen him?  No.  Is he good?  Yes, he is. Rock City is packed and you can tell that we're in the mood, right from the off, when we sing along to every word of opener "Sexuality".  Most people just do the backing vocals, apparently ("Sweden!").  Hmm.  I don't know about that, but we're definitely in good voice and keen to hear what he's got. He's playing pretty much alone, which is how it should be for Billy Bragg... backed occasionally by CJ Hillman on pedal steel and once (on "Shirley") on the Rickenbacker. "If he's Johnny Marr, then I'm afraid that must make me Craig Gannon".  Oh, I do love a nice, obscure Smiths reference.

We have some new songs too: "Saffiyah Smiles" is dedicated to Saffiyah Kahn, the lady who confronted a neanderthal on a recent EDL march in Birmingham with a smile and was captured in a brilliant photograph that shows pretty clearly where he real power lies here.

"King Tide and the Sunny Day Flood" refers to the floods that happen in Florida when the water table rises, causing surges of water even when there hasn't been a storm.  It's a fairly obvious warning about global warming.

Both of these are more successful than "Full English Brexit", an attempt to try and understand the fears of the people who voted Brexit... which means well (something that is often said about BB himself and his political interventions) but mostly just sounds patronising.

There are covers: "I Ain't Got No Home in this World Anymore" (originally by Woody Guthrie), "Why we build the wall" (originally by Anais Mitchell) - both of which I've heard him play before, as well as older BB standards, "The World Turned Upside Down" (originally by Leon Rosselson) and "Power in a Union" (Joe Hill).  Bragg's been changing lyrics around as long as I've been watching him play: he messes about with "Sexuality" and "Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards" is a joy tonight as he chops it around to make it even more relevant.  I'm not at all sure about taking on Bob Dylan's "Times They Are a'Changing" though.  Some things are better left well alone, I think.

But, you know what?  At least he's trying to keep things interesting... for himself and for his audience.  If he just came out and played "Life's a Riot", "Talking with the Taxman about Poetry" and "Brewing Up with Billy Bragg", I'd be delighted... but would I keep buying tickets to see him play?  No, I don't think I would.

Have I seen him play better? Yes, I have.  But tonight was still a pretty good way to spend a Saturday night.

To be honest, I'd come and listen to him just talking for two hours.  I don't agree with everything he says, and just occasionally he can sound like a well-worn record repeating the same well-rehearsed rants.... but it's becoming increasingly rare to hear a humane voice of reason like this in a world of spouting idiots.  Still, as he'll freely tell you himself (and has the merchandise to prove it), he's like marmite: some love him, some hate him.

Let's cherish him whilst we've still got him and he's still touring, eh? Roll on the next time.

VERDICT: 7  / 10

David Belbin also reviewed this gig for the Post, and you can read the extended version of that review here.

SETLIST: sexuality - the warmest room - I ain't got no home in this world anymore - accident waiting to happen - the man in the iron mask - saffiyah smiles - must I paint you a picture? - Levi Stubbs' tears - king tide and the sunny day flood - shirley (greetings to the new brunette) - why we build the wall - milkman of human kindness - I keep faith - power in a union - full english brexit - the times they are a'changin' (back) - waiting for the great leap forward - a new england
(he played 'the world turned upside down' and "st swithin's day" towards the front of the set too, neither of which appear on the setlist... )

* I was reminded of Billy by the character Korg in the recent Thor film.  Not physically, you understand (Korg is huge and made of rock), but because he's kind and softly spoken and because, as he says,  "I tried to start a revolution... but I didn't print enough pamphlets". 

data date...

Kraftwerk 3-D @ Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham - 18th June 2017

Why on earth would you want to see Kraftwerk live? Surely all they do is stand behind their computers and press play as you then lap-up an entirely pre-recorded show.  There's only one of the original band left anyway, so what's the point.   Right?

Wrong.  Completely wrong.

On a stiflingly hot evening, the air-conditioned luxury of the interior of the Royal Concert Hall was privileged to witness a remarkable show by a remarkable band.

It wasn't a particularly promising start, to be honest: queuing up politely outside the venue as we waited to get through a security check and to pick up our distinctly old-school 3-D glasses.  I felt as though perhaps I was here to watch Jaws 3-D ("the third dimension is terror!") rather than one of the most influential bands ever.  They threatened that they would be starting at 19:45 promptly too, but presumably were forced to delay because much of their audience had not yet made it into the venue.

We were so close to the stage that I was also a touch worried that we might not be in the best possible position to enjoy the 3-D effects... but actually I needn't have worried and was able to enjoy both my up-close view of Ralf Hutter and the splendid effects played on the huge screen behind the band.  As you would expect, the visuals were distinctly old-school, with a touch of the ZX Spectrum about them, but they were cunningly deployed and staggeringly effective: at one point, the aerial on the front of an orbiting satellite coming straight out of the screen had loads of people around me ducking out of the way.  We were also able to enjoy the sight of a UFO buzzing past the Council House on Old Market Square before landing right outside the Concert Hall.  

I joked before going in that we would probably have to get beered-up and then chuck lager around bellowing along to Man-Machine... and indeed, I think it's fair to say that the average age of the audience was well above 40. But, then again, the band was formed in 1969, and since when have the kids been reliable arbiters of good taste? It wasn't so very long ago that I walked past a crowd of youth queuing up outside of Rock City whilst I joined an audience of a similar vintage to watch Brian Wilson performing Pet Sounds. (Although, to be fair, ticket prices for both of those gigs is probably beyond the budget of most students, even if they would have stronger bladders that would have meant less standing up and down as people shuffled out during Kraftwerk's set for a quick pee).

One thing that strikes you immediately about watching Krafwerk live, once you've got over the 3-D effects, is quite how much they are actually playing this stuff.  I know that sounds obvious, but you can't see what they've got on their podiums as they stand their in their identical jumpsuits.  I'd imagined that it would probably just be laptops or something, but clearly each of those four guys up there has a keyboard as well, and they're clearly physically really involved in what they're playing, as they inter-weave their music together to create the most wonderful harmonies, with Hutter adding vocals over the top.  The tunes are mostly familiar, of course, not least because I've got most of the records, but because they have also been sampled many, many times over and are very distinctive cultural markers.  The band themselves are mostly impassive, but you do get some foot-tapping and Hutter himself flashes the occasional half-smile as they expertly mesh this music together.

My highlights are predictable: Computer World, Computer Love, The Man-Machine, The Model, Radioactivity (actually the first Kraftwerk album I owned, picked up on an Our Price bargain bin without a cover for the grand price of £1 - it was chilling then and it's even more chilling now as Fukishimi is added to the list of nuclear disasters) and a splendid run of songs from Tour de France.  For the Encore, the band are actually replaced by robots for The Robots (do you see what they did there?) before the band return for their final blast, each taking a solo turn before departing, Hutter departign the stage with a smile and an "auf wiedersehen", leaving us to stagger back out into the clammy night to catch our breath.

An amazing gig.  The word 'legendary' is thrown around far too much, but I think it's fair to say that, when it comes to Kraftwerk, it's entirely justified.  Lots of people have tried to copy them, but no one has come close. I'm not going to Glastonbury this year, but at least I've seen one amazing gig this summer.

Verdict: 9 / 10

Setlist:
Numbers
Computer World
It's More Fun to Compute / Home Computer
Computer Love
The Man-Machine
Spacelab
The Model
Neon Lights
Autobahn
Airwaves
Intermission / News
Geiger Counter / Radioactivity
Electric Café
Tour De France / Prologue / Etape 1 / Chrono / Etape 2
Trans Europe Express / Metal on Metal / Abzug
Encore 1:
The Robots
Encore 2:
Aéro Dynamik
Planet of Visions
Boing Boom Tschak / Techno Pop / Musique Non Stop

settling like crows...

Elbow @ de Montfort Hall, 16th March 2017

You have to wonder why some people bother going to gigs at all.

I realise that not everyone wants to stand watching a band in rapt silence as they perform, applauding politely at the end of each song. Some people like to sing along; some like to air guitar; others like to gaze lovingly into their partners eyes…. They might be your favourite act in the whole world or you might just be there because a mate had a spare ticket and you reckoned you had nothing better to do. You get all sorts of people at a gig with all sorts of different levels of interest in the bands performing. And yes: some people will have a bit of a chat with their mates or mess about with their phones. It’s all good.

…there are some basic rules though, aren’t there? I’m a firm believer that the only thing you really need to remember as you bumble your way through life is to try not to be too much of a dick. If we all lived with that simple guideline in mind, then I reckon the world would be a much nicer place. As far as a gig goes, this means that you might like to give a moment’s thought to the people around you and to think that they might actually quite like to enjoy watching the band play and not to listen to you chatting to your mates, raising your voice so that they can hear you when the band start playing; this means that perhaps you shouldn’t stand with your phone up, flash on, trying to film you and your mates sending a message to a friend… it’s not hard, is it?

Clearly, because we’re English, nobody does the sensible thing of asking them nicely to shut up. Instead, we all just stood there glaring at them. As the show wore on, a space started to form around them as people just started to move away from them. But why should I move? I have a right to be here and to try and enjoy the band, don’t I? At one point, someone clearly told a steward about them, but after watching them for a song – during which they were relatively well behaved, naturally – she quickly disappeared.

They’d clearly been drinking, although they weren’t paralytic by any stretch of the imagination, they were just utterly oblivious to anyone else around them. I think they would have actually been pretty annoying if you happened to be in the same pub as them, never mind a gig.

I just don’t get it. Why would you pay £30 a head to attend a concert when the music is clearly an inconvenience to your night out with your mates?

Up until the moment these bozos caught my attention when the house lights went down and the band came onstage, I’d been quite enjoying my evening: Elbow are a really good band that I have seen many times before, and de Montfort Hall is a pretty nice venue… infinitely better than the Arena the band played the last time they were in Nottingham. In fact, the last time I was at this venue, it was to watch the same band perform a sold-out gig that took place just after their Mercury Prize win in 2008 and turned into a huge celebration. I felt at the time that this might be my last chance to see them before their audience began to change as a result of the success. Perhaps this was a bit snobby of me, but I certainly enjoyed walking into the venue last night and having the all-too-rare sensation of being one of the younger members of the audience. I spent a fair bit of time marvelling at quite how many people were wearing primary coloured anoraks. There were lots of beards too, not that there’s anything wrong with that (and I was wearing my tan brogues, so far be it from me to criticise).

I tried not to let the idiots ruin my night, but about three-quarters of the way through their set, I realised that I should really just move. So I did. Because I’m tall, I made my way from where I was standing to the very back of the hall. Just as I was settling down to enjoy the rest of the show, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked behind me and saw a late middle-aged couple slouching on the wall behind me. Not directly behind me, but to one side. The woman glared at me and gestured angrily, the guy just said “We’ve been here all show”. I stared at them. I’m sensitive to standing in people’s way, but equally, if you set yourself up right at the back, leaning on a wall, don’t be surprised if your view is slightly obscured. Feel fucking free to let me stand behind you or perhaps think about buying a ticket for the seated area next time.

I moved, obviously. I understand, but equally I was really angry at the entitlement radiating of these people. You can ask me to move, but you don’t have to be a dick about it. The gig was dead for me. Even the sight of the same guy doing the most amazingly awkward, stiff dad dancing and out-of-time clapping with his arse sticking out to “One Day Like This” didn’t cheer me up very much.

Were Elbow any good? They sounded all right. The new stuff sounds good, although I think they paced their set very badly, and they played a range of other stuff from across their whole career. Lovely Guy was lovely, naturally.  I’ve been lucky enough to see them many times, often at Rock City in the week before they release a new album, and also at Glastonbury…which is in many ways their natural home. I’ve seen them better, but they were fine. Let’s leave it at that, eh? It wasn’t the band’s fault that gig twats ruined my night, but ruin it they did.

Luckily, we had a great sing-song in the car on the way home to my choir backing tracks, which cheered me up immeasurably.

L'enfer, c'est les autres.

VERDICT: 6/10 for the band, 2/10 for the overall experience.

Setlist:
Gentle Storm
The Bones of You
Fly Boy Blue / Lunette
All Disco
Mirrorball
New York Morning
Scattered Black and Whites
Little Fictions
Kindling
My Sad Captains
The Birds
Magnificent (She Says)
One Day Like This
Encore:
Lippy Kids
Grounds for Divorce

you lit a torch in the empty night...

Ash @ Rock City, Nottingham – 12th December 2016

When I bought my copy of Ash’s debut album, 1977, in the glorious early summer of 1996, it came with a promotional frisbee. It was bright green and had the band logo printed on it. As far as I know, it’s still in the TV room of that post-graduate hall of residence in York where I left it. If you had the right kind of CD player – and I did – you could wind back past the beginning of the first track and hear “Jack Names the Planets” and it’s b-side in the pre-gap before the album proper began. You don’t get that kind of thing with an MP3 download, eh? Nevermind a frisbee. The band are the same age as my younger brother and I’d been buying their singles through the last couple of years of my undergraduate degree when they seemed ridiculously young (I’ve still got “Kung Fu”, “Angel Interceptor” and “Girl From Mars” on CD single at home). A couple of years later, in 1999, the “A Life Less Ordinary” soundtrack was one of the first pieces of music that my wife ever bought me (I bought her “Scott Sings Jacques Brel”, because I’m highbrow like that. CULTURAL ELITE, Steve…)

Twenty years later and these kids are now pushing 40 and are taking this classic album out on the road to play it in full. My younger brother spotted the gig in the listings and asked if I minded if he made the trip up from Bristol to watch the gig and to stay the night, and did I fancy coming with him? Of course I did. As well as having the chance to watch a band I’ve enjoyed live many times before, it was a chance to spend some time with my little brother and to off-load all the Christmas presents onto him to take down to our parents and our other brother and his family. At this time of year, that’s ideal. My team at work were out for a meal in town too, so they got the chance to have a look at my brother and for me to buy them all a Christmas pint.

Rock City was what you expect: filled with people about my age. A slightly younger crowd than when I saw Therapy? touring Troublegum a little while back, but not by too much. It wasn’t quite sold out, but seemed full enough and had leaking toilets and crap beer, so it was still the Rock City that we know and love. It’s a great venue to watch a band.

The gig was pretty much what you expect too: the band ripped through 1977 from start to finish without too much messing around and without too much chatter with the audience. They sound good and the majority of the material stands up really well too (they started the set with the sound of a screaming TIE-fighter flyby, obviously). I saw an interview with Tim Wheeler the other day where he was talking about how “Goldfinger” is the song he’s most proud of writing, and that he’s not sure that he would be able to write something as sophisticated as that now, all these years later. It sounds great – and given that he must have written it when he was a teenager, the fact that it still sounds so good is a real tribute to how good a song it is. The singles definitely stand out, but they always did… so it’s hardly surprising when “Girl From Mars” and “Angel Interceptor” bring the house down.

With 1977 out of the way, the band settle in to play us out with a set that is mainly made up of their earlier songs – with a “Life Less Ordinary” sounding as good as it always does. It’s one of those songs that feels loose and lacking in production polish, but Tim Wheeler has such a keen ear for a melody that it just soars. They’re back for an encore, of course, but any encore that includes “Orpheus”, “Shining Light” and “Burn Baby Burn” is just fine with me. They’re three very different songs, but each in their own way showcase Wheeler’s enduring talent. take “Burn Baby Burn”: in the harum-scarum of the guitar riff, it’s perhaps easy to lose sight of just how good those lyrics are:

“Tumbling like the leaves
We are spiralling on the breeze…”

Not for nothing was this the first song ever played on BBC 6 Music.  And “Shining Light” won an Ivor Novello songwriting award, for goodness sake.
As for“Orpheus”… well, that just appeals to the heavy metal fan in me, I think.

They’re a good band. Apparently they’ll be back next year with a new album… nostalgia bands are all very well, but it’s even better if they’re trying to keep pushing forwards creatively*

VERDICT: 7 / 10

* the exception to this rule is when Shakin Stevens announced in the middle of his Glastonbury Set that he was going to be playing songs from his new album. There were audible groans. NO Shakey. NO. And he didn’t play Green Door, which must have disappointed the guys who had lugged a full-size wooden door into the festival JUST FOR THAT SONG.

Setlist:

1977:
Lose Control
Goldfinger
Girl From Mars
I'd Give You Anything
Gone the Dream
Kung Fu
Oh Yeah
Let It Flow
Innocent Smile
Angel Interceptor
Lost in You
Darkside Lightside
-
Petrol
Cantina Band (John Williams cover)
Jack Names the Planets
Does Your Mother Know (ABBA cover)
A Life Less Ordinary

Encore:
Orpheus
Let's Ride
Uncle Pat
Shining Light
Burn Baby Burn

...and my course is marked by stars...

James @ Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham 
- 6th December 2016

I think I first watched James play live on a Thursday night at Oxford Poly. I’d been working in Wellingborough, drove across to Oxford to the gig and drove home to Nottingham again afterwards. I was knackered and, at one point on the drive home, I had to stop and get some fresh air lest I fell asleep at the wheel. It was totally worth it though: the band were on a high after the success of their "Whiplash" and their Greatest Hits album, and were playing their last warm-up before a big set at Glastonbury the following night. They were electric: so good that Tim Booth actually wondered aloud to the audience whether they should have kept some of their powder dry for the bigger gig on Friday.

I’ve seen them many times since then: at festivals, at Wembley Arena in a sold out Christmas show, playing “Pleased to Meet You” to a half-full Rock City when it looked like the bubble might have burst, and again at a sold out theatre in Oxford when touring their comeback album,“Hey Ma”, some eight years later…. they were the festival openers at Glastonbury this year, too. Slightly delayed by the weather, they were playing to a massive crowd and did that entirely typically James thing of refusing to just perform as the nostalgia act that their sozzled and damp festival audience might well have expected. It’s not that they don’t play their hits, because they do… and they clearly really relished playing the Festival too and were introduced onstage by Michael Eavis himself… it’s just that they don’t always play the hits you might expect to hear, and they will insist on performing songs from their more recent albums.

Here’s the thing though: James might be best known for “Sit Down”, a song they released in 1990 and for albums like “Seven” (1992) and “Laid” (1992), but the very reason that they are still together as a band today is because they have kept creating new material and haven’t just given up and taken the cash that must surely have been on offer to them to be a nostalgia band cranking out songs that are well over 20 years old.

The simple truth is that they are still recording material now that is every bit as good as anything they’ve done. This show is part of the tour for their most recent (excellent) album, this year’s “Girl at the End of the World”, but “La Petite Morte” (2014) is also brilliant and, in “Moving On”, contains a song that I think might just be my favourite of anything they’ve ever recorded. The band took a hiatus after the relatively poor sales of 2001s “Pleased to Meet You”, but since they got back together in 2008, they’ve been absolutely storming it. Interestingly, “Getting Away with It (All Messed Up)” from “Pleased To Meet You” is played early in the set and sounds absolutely brilliant. Still, it always seemed that this band has a special knack of missing out. That massive selling, double-platinum greatest hits was followed by “Millionaires”, which was brilliant but never seemed to get the recognition it deserved at a time when a band of chancers like Oasis were selling absolute tosh (“Be Here Now”)by the truck load.

The band were actually due to play this gig in May, but were forced to cancel because of Tim Booth’s illness. When he takes to the stage tonight, Tim makes a point of telling us how sorry he is to have inconvenienced everyone and that the band felt they owed us… so get ready and settle in, because this was going to be a long one.

Two hours, as it turns out… but in that time, the band manage to work their way through songs from almost every part of their career. They don’t play “Laid” and they don’t play “Sit Down”, but why would anyone care about that when they’re as good as they are tonight? I’ve never heard them play “Just Like Fred Astaire” before, for starters, or “Vervaceous”, and when they play “Sometimes”, the crowd sings the refrain back at them for so long after they’ve finished playing, that they pick their instruments up again and join back in. “You don’t forget these moments”, Booth tells us, when we finally finish the song (which will always remind me of my friend Oliver and the time we spent together studying in Venice).

As I watch the show, I’m struck by what an interesting band they are: they mostly shun rock posturing and lyrical cliché, and are instead something fairly unique. Tim Booth is, of course, a mesmerising front man with his own absolutely unique way of dancing and – tonight, anyway – a magnificent pair of trousers. They’re interesting; upbeat; thoughtful and engaging; they demand your attention and wrestle with the big, unanswerable questions of love and life and death, usually in a questioning and upbeat, optimistic way. I can’t listen to “Moving On” without welling up because it manages to be so upbeat about a topic as potentially grim as death itself. Tim tells us tonight that he wrote this about his experience of watching his mother dying over a couple of days in a hospital bed in Sheffield. Far from being depressing, he told us, it was beautiful and uplifting and a joy to watch because she was in her 90s, had her children around her and was ready to go. Watch the video, and I think you’ll understand exactly what he’s talking about.

It was a Tuesday night and I’m tired and full of cold as I fight off the dog-end of this bronchitis and it’s a band I’ve seen dozens of times before… but it was just what I needed. I’m not sure they actually make bands like this any more, if they ever really did. James are a one-off and we should cherish them.

VERDICT: 9 / 10

Setlist: To My Surprise, Waking, Getting Away With It (All Messed Up), Moving On, Five-O, I Wanna Go Home, Interrogation, Move Down South, Tomorrow, Vervaceous, Feet Of Clay, She's a Star, Dear John, Surfer's Song, Curse Curse, Come Home, Attention

Encore: Just Like Fred Astaire, Sometimes, Nothing But Love, Sound

rolled and rumbled past my door...

Billy Bragg & Joe Henry @ Nottingham Playhouse, 
17th November 2016

So slack has my gig reviewing become that I’ve left it nearly a whole week before getting round to writing up this one. Well, better late than never. If you want to read a proper review of this gig, then you should head over to David Belbin and read the extended version of the write-up he did for the Evening Post (I have Dave to thank for the setlists too).

I’ve been a Billy Bragg fan now for 29 years. That’s a pretty long stretch by almost anyone’s standard, and can only really be matched by the likes of Iron Maiden in my record collection. The somewhat straightforward pleasures of Iron Maiden, bless them, haven’t quite provided the intellectual and emotional stimulation of the Bard of Barking over the years. Tonight, he’s performing with an old friend, Joe Henry, who, as an American abroad, immediately tells us that he feels he needs to say something about the result of the US Election: “It’s where we are. It isn’t who we are”. They’re touring “Shine a Light”, a concept album of railroad songs in the great American tradition. They recorded the songs in waiting rooms and hotel rooms as they travelled the 65 hours and 3000 miles of railroad between Chicago and Los Angeles. The railway, so they told us, is so much more evocative a form of transport than any other; it symbolises dreams and escape in a way that aeroplanes and cars (unless driven by Bruce Springsteen, Bragg quips) never quite have. Trains, of course, played a fundamental part in opening up the USA, but it seems that they are barely used as a means of passenger transportation at all these days, with some of the trains they caught in the South only leaving once per day, or even every other day. It’s all about freight nowadays, and apparently the USA ships more cargo by rail than any other nation in the world.

Of course, the songbook they’ve chosen is deep and rich and resonant. At one point, Joe tells us how these songs are the language of American culture; every bit as rich and relevant as the works of Shakespeare. He grew up with this stuff in his blood, and Bragg is no recent convert. “We’re making Americana great again” he says, to groans of “Too soon” from his American friend.

The Playhouse is a good venue to see a band. I think I’ve only seen one other band perform here (The Duckworth Lewis Method) and Billy Bragg’s more normal habitat in these parts would be Rock City… but there’s something about the packed and attentive audience seated in the auditorium that suits these songs. The two men perform together, then we get a solo set from Joe, an interval, a solo set by Bill and then some more songs from the pair of them. An obvious highlight in the first section is their cover of Leadbelly’s justly famous “In The Pines”, familiar to most people in my generation as the “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” so memorably covered by Nirvana on their Unplugged album. I’m less taken with Joe Henry’s solo stuff. It was my first listen to most of this, so perhaps it’s unfair to judge, but it felt to me as though he didn’t have a very light touch with his lyrics. He’s probably most famous for the work he did as producer to Allen Toussaint, and it’s no coincidence that I thought the best of the songs he performed in his set was his cover of Toussaint’s “Freedom for the Stallion”.

I last saw Billy Bragg at Glastonbury the day after the results of the Referendum. His set that night was electric as we like-minded souls gathered together in the hope that he would make us all feel better. It’s only been a day since Trump’s victory in the Presidential election, and I find myself again looking to Billy for some comfort. He opens with “Between the Wars”, cutting the song short before the line “Sweet moderation, heart of this nation” and seguing straight into “Help Save the Youth of America”. He also plays a cover of Anais Mitchell’s "Why We Build the Wall"... which of course has particular relevance now.

It’s a really good gig. The album is good and the two men are clearly comfortable with each other onstage and their voices dovetail together well. As ever with Billy, it’s the bits between the songs that stand out nearly as much as the songs themselves, and there’s a good story to tell about every one of these songs, both in their history and in where Bragg and Henry were when they recorded them.

It might be an increasingly crazy world, but Billy Bragg continues to provide me with the same anchor of stability that he has since I was thirteen years old and just starting to see beyond a musical world of heavy metal. Long may it continue.

Verdict: 7.5 / 10

Setlist:

Billy Bragg & Joe Henry
Railroad Bill
The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore
John Henry
In the Pines
Waitin’ for a Train
Early Morning Rain

Joe Henry
Trampoline
After The War
God Only Knows
Our Song
Freedom for the Stallion

Billy Bragg
Between the Wars
Help Save the Youth of America
Accident Waiting to Happen
Why We Build the Wall
There Is Power in a Union

Billy Bragg & Joe Henry
Railroading on the Great Divide
Lonesome Whistle
Rock Island Line
Hobo’s Lullaby
Midnight Special

Encore:
Gentle on My Mind
Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You
Ramblin’ Round

took a sip from my devil's cup...

ReSoNaTe @ The Angel Micro Brewery, 14th July 2016

[review to appear on the Leftlion website at some point....]

The Old Angel in the Lace Market was always a reassuringly grungy presence amongst all the trendy bars of Hockley; a real pub and an excellent live music venue. When it closed earlier this year, with news that it was to re-open as a micro-brewery, it felt a bit like another landmark venue in Nottingham’s cultural life was disappearing forever and that the hipsters were taking over the world. Tonight’s gig is the first to be held in the venue since the renovation and provided a good opportunity to have a look around to see what they’ve done with the place. First impressions are good: the place looks broadly the same, only with really good beer (I recommend the Snake Eyes). A few things have even changed for the better: the toilets are equipped with Original Source coconut and shea butter soap. Imagine!

Tonight’s gig is promoted by Full Focus Events – a relatively new operation, set up at the start of this year and master-minded by Brad and Jack. They’ve been running regular events around Nottingham, and ReSoNaTe represents the cream of the crop from those nights. This is the second such showcase, shifted at short-notice to the Angel due to the closure of The Loom. The upstairs room here isn’t quite ready yet, so we’re forced to improvise downstairs with one speaker and more limited space. It doesn’t matter: the atmosphere is good and the sound is fine. This being the future, we even have a live stream provided by the Colour Hits Channel.

There’s a good varied bill on tonight too: opening the bill is Paul Walker, a veteran singer-songwriter with a gravel throated delivery and a nice line in bluesy slide guitar. The set consists a few original songs mixed in with the odd well-chosen cover, like a very Tom Waits-y version of “After Midnight”. It’s a good start. Next up are some South American vibes from Hugo Ivo, by the sound of it supported by a good slice of Nottingham’s Brazilian community. He looks a initially a touch shy behind his keyboard, but he’s got a sweet voice and mixes his own songs with covers of “Ain’t No Sunshine”, Vance Joy’s “Riptide” (on the guitar) and Keane’s “Everybody’s Changing”. He’s got a sweet voice and is clearly a real talent. He’s apparently off back to Brazil next month, but if you get the chance to see him, then I would heartily recommend you make the effort. Next up is Holly Taylor Gamble (pictured above) -. She looks small and fragile behind her enormous guitar, but looks can be deceiving and, after a bit of fussing over her tuning, she proceeds to rock our socks off with a kicking cover of Britney’s “Toxic” and a handful of her own songs. She reminds me very much of “Rid of Me” era PJ Harvey and is clearly something of a force of nature and an artist very much to be reckoned with. Well worth checking out. Last up tonight is Daniel Ison. Daniel is a veteran of the Nottingham scene and wryly tells us that he started out gigging on the same bill as a young singer-songwriter called Jake Bugg. Whatever happened to him? I’ve seen Jake Bugg perform, and I think it’s fair to say that he has nowhere near the onstage charisma of this guy. He even pulls off that old trick where he pulls a pretty girl out of the audience and asks her to hold his harmonica for him as he plays…shameless (and he asks a couple of lads to help him later on too). He plays a good set of his own songs (“psychosluts” is a particular highlight) and some fun covers like X-Press 2 and David Byrne’s “Lazy”, “The Clapping Song” and a slightly unlikely fusion of the theme tune to the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and “I Wanna Be Like You” from the Jungle Book. It’s a great way to end the night.

ReSoNaTe Is going to be a monthly fixture at the Angel, with the next one scheduled to take place on 18th August. Do yourself a favour: get down there and check them out.

--

[full disclosure: Jack and Brad work in my office...I needed a favour from Brad last week and when he agreed, I felt it was only fair to offer him something in return.  A review on the Leftlion website seems a relatively small thing to do.  And Jack bought me a pint.  It was a good night though and I'll be back!)

love and mercy tonight..

Brian Wilson @ Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham - 1st June 2016

I saw Brian Wilson performing in the “legends” slot at Glastonbury in 2005. It had been a wet year, but the sun came out and the site dried up in time for everyone to put their sunglasses on and listen to a dose of pure Californian sunshine. Wilson sometimes didn’t look much like he knew what was going on, waving his hands about behind the piano rather than actually playing, but his band were great and, when you’ve got a back catalogue that good, frankly what does it matter. He even played “Little Saint Nick”.

In June.

I turned down the chance to see him performing Pet Sounds in Nottingham a decade ago because it just seemed so expensive, but after ten more years of growing appreciation of the size of the man’s talent, I wasn’t about to miss out again this time around. Not least because this is apparently the last time he will be performing “Pet Sounds” in full, and because it might well be the 73 year old’s last tour full stop.

It’s only a few months since I saw “Love & Mercy”, the film of Wilson’s life starring Paul Dano as a young Brian and John Cusack as the older version. Perhaps unexpectedly, it’s brilliant: not only are we reminded of the genius of Wilson’s songwriting, but we also see the toll that trying to catch the lightning of his inspiration on tape ultimately took on his life. Dano is outstanding, but Cusack – who doesn’t much look like Brian Wilson at all – really captures the shuffling man that we see onstage tonight.

It’s hard to know how much Wilson really takes in. Does he know what city he’s in? Is he really all that aware of what’s going on around him? A couple of times in the set, he basically just stands up and shuffles off-stage as songs are still finishing. His mental health problems are well-documented, and he cuts a frail, sometimes distracted figure on the stage. At 73-years old, he also needs quite a lot of help from his band to pull off those beautiful songs: there are sometimes 11 musicians onstage here, with instruments ranging from the theramin, flute, vibes, saxophone, bongos all the way back to three guitars, two drummers and a bassist. They sound great… when they launch into the introduction to “California Girls” early in the set, it’s almost impossible not to be transported back to a more innocent time. Original Beach Boy, Al Jardine is there, but perhaps the most important member of the backing band is Al’s son Matt, who handles all of the higher vocals with confidence and with a beautifully strong and clear falsetto. “Don’t Worry Baby” in particular is a delight, but he seamlessly picks up those notes that Wilson himself used to sing but can no longer reach. Wilson’s voice is still good: it wobbles around a bit, but then he’ll suddenly take you by surprise with the power and clarity of his vocal.

But it’s those songs…. Ah. I can’t hear early Beach Boys music without almost being moved to tears by the beauty and the innocence. Better than almost any other songwriter, Wilson has an uncanny knack of transporting me back to a more innocent time. His songs are guileless and naive in the most charming way. In many ways, the progression from those early surf hits to those more fragile and delicate songs on “Pet Sounds” mirrors both Wilson’s development as a songwriter and his own apparent inability to deal with the complexities of the modern world. If there’s a more beautiful song than “God Only Knows”, then I’m not sure I’ve heard it, and it predictably brings the tears to my eyes when the band play it. That on its own might be enough, but Brian Wilson has written literally dozens of songs (nearly) as good as that: Good Vibrations, for starters….

The set itself is some two-and-a-half hours long, and could probably do with a bit of trimming. Apart from anything else, I’m mildly confused by the presence of former-Beach Boy and touring member of the Rolling stones, Blondie Chaplain, who appears midset for three songs, disappears and then comes back to shake a tambourine during the encore. To be fair, he’s a compelling stage presence, I just didn’t know why he was there.

All in all? A wonderful evening with some of the most beautiful songs ever written, well-performed and with some added poignancy from the fragile state of Brian Wilson and the fact that I will probably never get to see him perform these songs again.

The setlist was something like:

Our Prayer
Heroes and Villains
California Girls
Dance, Dance, Dance
I Get Around
Shut Down
Little Deuce Coupe
Little Honda
Girl Don't Tell Me
In My Room
Surfer Girl
Don't Worry Baby
Wake the World
Add Some Music to Your Day
Then I Kissed Her
Proud Mary
One Kind of Love
Marcella
Wild Honey (Blondie Chaplin on lead vocals)
Funky Pretty (Blondie Chaplin on lead vocals)
Sail On, Sailor (Blondie Chaplin on lead vocals)

Pet Sounds
Wouldn't It Be Nice
You Still Believe in Me
That's Not Me
Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)
I'm Waiting for the Day
Let's Go Away for Awhile
Sloop John B
God Only Knows
I Know There's an Answer
Here Today
I Just Wasn't Made for These Times
Pet Sounds
Caroline, No

Encore:
Good Vibrations
All Summer Long
Help Me, Rhonda
Barbara Ann
Surfin' U.S.A.
Fun, Fun, Fun
Love and Mercy

I know, right?

The way he finished with "Love and Mercy" was just so touching.  He's a gentle soul and he really wasn't made for these times.

I was also, for a change, one of the youngest people in the audience. Now that doesn’t happen very often any more, I can tell you. I was a lot more limber than most of them too... On the way out, we saw the band's tour buses pulling up to take them on the next leg of the tour - they're playing in Barcelona next.  We were delighted to see that the lead bus had a fresh bunch of flowers, a kettle and a toaster.

Well, he's earned them, hasn't he?

Verdict: A night to cherish.  9 / 10

Bittersweet Strawberry, Marshmallow, Butterscotch Polar Bear....

John Grant @ Sheffield Octagon, Thurs 11th February 2016.

The last time I was in the Octagon, I was in the band. Well, I was in the choir, anyway. This was the venue of my first big concert with my choir this time last year, where we sang some rock classics, supported by an actual live band. I have to say that it was a little strange to be walking back into the same venue to watch a proper concert, because I’ve never before had the experience of watching a gig somewhere that I’ve actually performed before. I imagine Elton gets this all the time....

A midweek gig in Sheffield is clearly a bit of an adventure for someone who is increasingly tucked up in bed by 10pm after an evening of snoozing on the sofa, but it turned out to be pretty easy. I’ve never used a tram in Nottingham before, but hopping on the Supertram at one of Sheffield’s park and ride stops was simplicity itself, and the stop at the university was barely a 2 minute walk from the venue. There was even a convenient pub to have tea. A pub called the University Arms on the edge of the University site sounds deeply unpromising, but it turned out to be a little gem. Being a student has changed a bit since I was there, I have to say. Craft ale is lovely, but it’s not cheap….

Anyway. I digress. John Grant.

A few curious people asked me who I was going to Sheffield to see, but most had never heard of John Grant. When they subsequently enquired what he was like, I was stumped almost every time. How do you describe John Grant’s music? The first thing that comes to mind is his wonderful, but incredibly personal and sometimes graphically descriptive lyrics…. But that doesn’t tell you what he sounds like. Well, sometimes it’s just him and a piano, sometimes it’s a full band, sometimes a bit country and western and increasingly it’s sort-of disco. Does that help? Not really. Describing him physically clearly doesn’t help either, but I often also found myself carefully explaining how he was bearded and had what I would describe as a corn-fed midwestern kind of a physique. I never once explained his HIV status. I guess that my difficulty in putting him into a convenient pigeon-hole just goes to show what a versatile musician John Grant is.

Support was an engagingly dotty Icelandic girl called Sóley. She has more than a touch of Bjork about her, but she is clearly a talented musician, either on guitar, keyboard or making clever use layering to repeat various parts as she built a song onstage. She got a tattoo in Newcastle, she told us shyly, but sadly never showed us what it was. I started her set feeling disengaged, but she had my attention by the end.

John Grant’s music might lead you to believe that he’s an intense man. Perhaps he is. It’s dangerous to speculate, but it’s pretty likely, I would guess, that when he wrote some of these songs, he wasn’t in the best place. Looking at the guy who bounces onto stage tonight with a broad grin to acknowledge the rapturous welcome from the audience, he seems to be happier now. He’s charmingly awkward, addressing the crowd with shy looks and sweet little smiles… but he seems to be genuinely enjoying himself: enjoying the energy and love from an enthusiastic crowd and from his sparky band, featuring Budgie on drums. He has us eating from the palm of his hands from the moment he walks to the front of the stage and tells us that he’s delighted to be in the centre of the universe. Yeah, yeah. I bet you say that to all your crowds…before he then reels off a list of musicians from Sheffield: Richard Hawley, the Human League…. And you think that he might actually mean it. In fact, he’s so eager to please, that he actually wheels out Richard Hawley to join his band for the last song of his main set and the first song of his encore. I can’t work out if Hawley is delighted or just bemused to be there at all. Probably both.

It was a bit of an odd crowd: quite 6 music, as you would expect, and I saw at least one big, bearded man wearing a t-shirt with the slogan “BEAR” emblazoned across the front. I found them often slightly irritating, but only mildly so…little rudenesses, but nothing more than that (I can forgive the girl who was waving her hands around and touched my face, even though she was mortified.  I would have preferred her not to sing-along, mind you...). Fortunately, John Grant is so transcendently good that all these things are quickly forgotten. It always helps when the main act actually looks like they are pleased to be there, and John Grant can hardly stop himself from beaming. He’s not a big or particularly good dancer, but he does make lots of little subtle movements to show how much he’s enjoying himself; he conducts his band; he taps a foot; he tosses out little moves and throws sidelong glances and smiles at the crowd, engaging us with mildly flirtatious smalltalk. He’s captivating. The band are good, but it's hard to take your eyes off the main man.  And the songs….oh, the songs. His magnificent bass-baritone voice soars, and those intensely personal lyrics spring to life. Surely you can’t ever perform songs that intimate without reliving them a little each time, can you? Can you ever really detach yourself emotionally from them? Only John Grant can answer that. The lyrics are sad, bitchy, potty-mouthed and often intensely funny.... but he sings them with a smile.  It's mesmerising.

I'm not even going to try and talk you through the songs he played as there's just no way I could do them justice.  Suffice it to say that Grant was sublime. My personal preference is for the songs off his first album, "Queen Of Denmark"; they're almost country and western tinged in places and are quite different from some of the more disco numbers that he's been recording on his later albums (which are also excellent).  His most recent album, "Grey Tickles, Black Pressure", well represented in the setlist here, is something of a blend of the styles from his first album and the more beat-orientated songs on "Pale Green Ghosts". It also has some proper, laugh-out-loud lyrics too.  In Sheffield, Grant plays a pretty decent mix from all three of his albums, even throwing in a Czars song for good measure.  He's onstage for maybe 90 minutes, but I'm captivated.  His voice is an extraordinary instrument, and it's mesmerising to watch him perform.  And as if I wasn't enjoying the evening already, Grant also confirmed onstage that he will be playing Glastonbury.  Well, hurray for that.

Grant's bass baritone is pretty much my singing register, and it's fun to imagine which of his songs I could audition at choir.  None of them, is the simple answer.  I just can't find one where the lyrics wouldn't be problematic when sung in a church; or in front of an audience including children; or people of a sensitive disposition....  He's a genius. There are thousands of musicians in the world, and many of them sound the same and not many of them are telling you anything new.  Well, John Grant is different. If you aren't familiar with his music, then don't just take my word for it... do yourself a favour and give him a listen.

I can sense I'm starting to gush, so I'll just leave it there.  A fantastic gig, and well worth a little schlep up the motorway on a schoolnight.

Verdict: 9 / 10

Setlist: Geraldine, Down Here, Grey Tickles, Black Pressure, Marz, It Doesn't Matter to Him, Pale Green Ghosts, Snug Slacks, Guess How I Know, Glacier, Queen of Denmark, GMF (with Richard Hawley). Encore: Voodoo Doll (with Richard Hawley), You and Him, No More Tangles, Drug, Caramel

you’re the first and last of your kind...

Alt-J @ Nottingham Arena, 8th December 2015

As I’ve said many times before, I’m not the biggest fan of Nottingham Arena. Well, actually I suppose the arena itself is fine, and from an abstract point of view it’s handy to have a venue like this so close to home… it’s just that it’s a fairly rubbish place to watch a band. It’s a combination of factors really: it’s not very nice standing in a massive barn with lots of people who seem only passingly interested in a band who sound crap anyway. I’ve seen a few bands here over the years, and there’s only been one act who have been able to overcome the dodgy sound. As that was Metallica, I like to think that it’s because they are simply loud enough to blast their way through such things. Still, if a band I want to see announces they’re playing there, then the choice is simple: if I want to see them, then I have just put up with it. Including the £7.50 booking fee. Bloody thieves.

Anyway.

My main order of business was to miss the backing band. I took an instant dlslike to the Horrors when I first read about them. It was a dislike that deepened when I actually heard them and had my suspicions confirmed that they were a bunch of chancers who hung around in the right places and didn’t actually have any musical ideas worth listening to because they were much more interested in how cool they thought they looked. The write-ups for their second album actually tried to convince me that they had come up with some ideas and were now musically interesting. I was sufficiently curious to stick around at the John Peel stage at Glastonbury after a band I really liked to hear what they sounded like. They drew a bit of a crowd, but they were unutterably shite. I’m afraid that Faris Badwan strikes me as a pretentious twat of the highest order, and there was no damn way that I was going to stand in a chilly barnyard of a venue and give those talentless idiots another chance whilst drinking a warm pint of Stella. So I had a nice curry instead and a pint of Santa Paws at Brew Dog, and timed my arrival at the arena nearly to perfection when the main act took to the stage about 5 minutes after we turned up.

Alt-J are a funny sort of band, aren’t they? They sound strange enough to only have a relatively small following, but following the Mercury Prize in 2012, they seem to have become quite big almost by accident. Are Alt-J an arena band? Well, they’ve played Madison Square Garden, so it seems that they absolutely are. They haven’t sold the arena out tonight, and large swathes of the seating areas are actually covered off, but there are still substantially more people here than you could fit into Rock City (capacity 2,100 but a much, much better place to be watching a band you love). It’s a classic arena crowd too: quite mixed with quite a big age-range and nearly as many girls as boys. Many look like they’ve been there since the doors opened and a good few are clutching programmes. Honestly, who buys the programme at a gig? It’s probably unfair of me, but I tend to think of audiences like this at arena gigs as the kind of people who don’t go to gigs very often. I don’t mean to sound like a snob, and it’s not that I go to all that many anymore, but these guys have a real air of “making a night of it”. Naturally, I settle on a spot right behind three guys who then spend all night having a conversation, speaking slightly more loudly when the band inconvenience them by playing their most famous song. I don’t know why these people come to gigs at all, never mind to ones that cost £30-odd. Why don’t you just go to the pub or invite your mates round to yours to listen to the record?

I really like this band. I prefer the first album to the second, but I think they’re really interesting and angular and not at all like the meat-and-two-veg rock offered up by people like Kasabian and Stereophonics. But tonight, there’s something missing. It’s the last night of the tour, and they sound very, very good (even in an arena with people chatting just in front of me)…. But they sound clinical to me. It’s maybe a bit harsh to be criticising a band for sounding like their records, but it makes for a sterile live experience if that’s all we get. They sound good, but there’s very little movement on the stage, and only one member of the band really talks to the audience, and he doesn’t do that very often. It’s bloodless. In some ways, that suits their music…. When they tried to tell me in an interview I read that “Tessellate” was a really sexy song, it’s a bit of a struggle to believe them. I love that song to bits, but sexy it isn’t. They also pace their set badly – at least for me – with a definite sag towards the end and even a massive change of pace in the encore. They sound efficient, but I’m looking for something a little more from my live experience. Maybe the venue doesn’t suit them: an arena like this needs a band with a real force of personality to punch through the smothering sterility of the environment around them. Alt-J, for all that they are an excellent, interesting band, just don’t have that. At least not yet. Not that they should feel too sad about that: one of the worst gigs I’ve ever seen here was a disinterested Radiohead touring “Hail to the Thief”. They’re an interesting band too, but they were shocking that night and it nearly put me off going to see them live ever again. Alt-J weren’t that bad, and I’d probably see them again (definitely if they’re playing Glastonbury and I’m not doing anything else, anyway!) but I came away thinking that I might have been better served staying in Brew Dog for another pint of Santa Paws and then putting the record on when I got home.

Disappointing, even if the band themselves sounded great. They’ve got some great songs too.

Verdict: 5/10

Setlist:- Intro, Every Other Freckle, Something Good, Left Hand Free, Bloodflood, Bloodflood Pt. 2, Dissolve Me, Matilda, (Ripe & Ruin), Tessellate, The Gospel of John Hurt, Lovely Day, Nara, Leaving Nara, Fitzpleasure. Encore: Hunger of the Pine, Warm Foothills, Taro, Breezeblocks

I'm gonna keep my plunder underground...

Everything Everything @ Rock City, 11th November 2015

The last time I saw Everything Everything at Rock City, in October 2013, I can see that I was preoccupied by the sight of the town centre filled with drunk students in fancy dress being shepherded from venue to venue before ending up at Rock City at about 10:30. That was on a Monday night, but two years later, on a Wednesday night, I can see that things haven’t changed. I didn’t see any sober people with red clipboards ushering people around on an organised pub crawl this time around, but I did see lots of drunk students in fancy dress: from cowboys on the bus passing around a big bottle of Smirnoff (branded vodka please, darling) to a bunch of idiots in the cheapest looking lederhosen costumes you can imagine. The girls, to be fair, didn’t seem to so much be wearing a specific, bought-for-the-purpose costume as much as just wearing the shortest, tightest hot pants they could find and a vest. I know I’m getting old, but I felt cold just looking at them, even on a mild night. All of this leads me to the slightly uncomfortable realisation that students don’t just have one night of the week where they get into costume and go drinking, and that they just get into costume to go drinking every night.

I didn’t spot any fancy dress inside Rock City, but the venue was certainly packed full of the youth. Last time around, it was fairly clear that being on the 6 Music playlist had brought a small but significant portion of the audience. This time around, not so much and I was amongst the oldest people there. Damnit! People watching is always a pleasure, but tonight it was a beautiful thing to watch the youth at play. Rock City has started selling beer in two pint cups, and even the biggest guy is rendered a tiny hobbit as he clutches this ridiculous bucket full of piss-weak warm lager in both hands. I actually ordered two pints at the bar, and had to carefully explain by means of a dumb show that I meant “one pint and one pint. Two pints”.

Rock City wasn’t sold out, but it was pretty full, and the crowd was really pretty excited indeed to see the main event… which made it all the more baffling when most of them then spent the vast majority of the evening chatting to each other as the band played. To be fair, I felt the band paced their set appallingly badly, and that it sagged for a good twenty minutes in the middle, but even so…. They’re a good band and all of their albums are pretty strong, including the latest one, so I’m not quite sure why they dropped the pace so much halfway through the set. Still, the youth didn’t seem to mind, and often paused their conversations to pull out their phones to film 30 seconds of footage to load on the “My Story” bit of snapchat. Does anyone, anywhere spend their time looking through these crap video snippets of a gig? I probably sound about 100 years old, but I just don’t get it. Can’t you just enjoy what you’re watching with your eyes and ears? Be present in the room in the moment? I guess not.

The band sounded good. One of my friends has a problem with Jonathan Higgs’ falsetto live, but I think he makes it all sound pretty effortless (even if his peroxide flick hair-do is a tragic, tragic mistake). He also looks like he’s enjoying himself, which counts for a lot too. We’ve all been to too many gigs were the band look like they wish they were somewhere – anywhere – else….I’m looking at you Radiohead….. And, just as he did in 2013, Higgs told us as sincerely as he could manage that we were a great crowd, best on the tour so far… and I think he might actually have believed it to. The new album is good, and they played a lot of it, as you would expect. I’m not quite sure then why that meant the set was so uneven: the songs are good and the band sounded good, so what’s the problem? In a word: Pacing. They played the wrong songs at the wrong time and momentum gradually drifted away. They do have some glorious songs though: they tossed “Kemosabe” out early, but “Schoolin’”, “Regret”, “Don’t Try”, “Cough Cough”, “Photoshop Handsome”, “Distant Past”….. A good start and a good finish, I suppose, but the focus on the newer stuff meant that they have inevitably dropped a few of the quieter, slower-burning gems from their older albums. The new material is good, but apparently not quite as deep.

(incidentally, I want to have a dedicated button – as the keyboardist did here – that plays the phrase “distant past” every time it is pressed. Ideally accompanied by the sound of a classic Star Trek tricorder. Can you imagine how useful that would be in everyday conversation?)

So, in summary, a curate’s egg of an evening: a fascinating crowd and a band that I really like who sounded pretty good on the night, but a bumpy set. Oh, and I’ll leave you with some fashion thoughts: I’ve seen band’s wearing uniforms before, but the jackets that Everything Everything wore for the whole of the main set (grey with black trim , sort of like a Star Trek: the Next Generation jacket) just looked ill-fitting and a bit cheap. They then produced a coloured set of the same for the encore and looked even worse. Have a word with yourselves, lads! Either commit to wearing a band uniform like Django Django’s shirts and commit to it, or don’t bother! It doesn’t have to be expensive, but it shouldn’t look like it’s made from cheap fuzzy felt. They looked like they might have made them themselves, which I suppose would be charming….

Oh, hark at me. Coming on here and talking about almost anything but the actual band and generally sounding like I’m the oldest man alive. Oh wait…. I’ve always sounded like that, even when I wasn’t old. If you haven’t worked that out by now, then you’re probably in the wrong place.

Swisslet: hunting badgers by owl-light since 2004.

VERDICT: 6 / 10.
(If someone wants to explain snapchatting to me, they’ll find me somewhere in the mid-1990s....)

Setlist:

To The Blade
Blast Doors
Kemosabe
Get To Heaven
MY KZ, UR BF
Schoolin'
Regret
Fortune 500
The Wheel (Is Turning Now)
Riot on the Ward
Warm Healer
Radiant
Zero Pharaoh
Don't Try
Cough Cough
Photoshop Handsome
Spring / Sun / Winter / Dread

Encore:
No Reptiles
Distant Past

childhood pictures redeem, clean and so serene.....

Manic Street Preachers performing “The Holy Bible” @ The Roundhouse - 16th December 2014

I go a long way back with Manic Street Preachers. Although I owned both of their first albums, I think the very first time that I saw them performing live was at the Reading Festival in 1994. They played on the Saturday afternoon of the festival with their third album, “The Holy Bible” due to be released the following week. They’d been in the headlines a bit in the run-up to the gig, partly because of the imminent release of the new album, but also because their guitarist, Richie James Edwards had entered a clinic for treatment for his alcohol problems and the band were forced to play as a three-piece as he recovered.

The big draw for me at Reading that year, and the main reason I was there in the first place after attending Glastonbury for the first time the year before, was because the Red Hot Chilli Peppers were the main stage headliners on the Saturday night. As things turned out, they were pretty good that night, in the middle of their “One Hot Minute” tour and performing with those flaming hats and suchlike. When I think back to that festival, there were three other bands that made significantly more impact on me that day than the headliners: I saw Pulp performing “Common People” a year or so before the release of “A Different Class”, I saw an electrifying Jeff Buckley perform in the Melody Maker tent (by accident really – I was only there to watch Gene, who were on next) and I saw the Manic Street Preachers playing songs from “The Holy Bible”. I’ve seen the band many times since, but that was to become a landmark album for me, and it was always a source of frustration that they didn’t play songs from it live very often. I don’t remember much about their actual performance, although I do remember them doing a cover of “Pennyroyal Tea” and I’m sure they were wearing all their combat gear. What I do remember is that I stopped in Milton Keynes shopping centre on the way home on Monday afternoon to try and buy a copy of the album. In theory it was released that morning, but in practice it was an August Bank Holiday, and in 1994 that meant that all of the shops were shut. Imagine!

I did manage to get a copy of the album on CD, but in September that year, I went to study in Venice and didn’t have access to a CD player, so made a copy of the album on cassette. I played that tape to death. I have very clear memories of walking over the Academia bridge on my way back across town to our flat at around 2am , with fog sweeping off the lagoon and across St Mark’s Square. I had the whole place to myself and was listening to songs like “Yes” and “4st7lb”. It was a special time and that album holds a special place in my heart.

Obviously, when the band announced that they would be playing the whole album, in full, I was very keen to get myself a ticket, even if it meant travelling to the Roundhouse in Camden to do it. This was Richie’s album, and after his disappearance in 1995, understandably the remaining members of the band seemed reluctant to play material that probably brought up difficult memories for them. I never thought I would see the day, but here it was. How could I miss this?

I’m not sure that a detailed review is going to adequately explain how this gig made me feel. I’ve waited twenty years to hear this, and here it was, complete with a stage set draped in camouflage netting and the band in combat gear. When the intro to “yes” played across the PA, I thought I was going to burst into tears. I have a powerful connection with this music and this might just be my favourite album by any band. The band played the album straight, in tracklist order with very little talking and with no nonsense. They sounded brilliant. I’d read reviews from earlier gigs on this tour where people were saying that the whole crowd was shouting along with every lyric. Well, that wasn’t true here – perhaps they were too busy queuing for the craft beer you could buy in the venue. At one point, I even had to turn to some guys standing next to me and ask them to stop chatting during the songs, so we weren’t at that kind of level of mass participation by any means. As I watched, two things really struck me. Firstly, that these lyrics are quite extraordinary; there’s really nothing else quite like them. They’re ferociously bleak and incredibly dense. Richie was clearly on a downward spiral when he was writing these words, but the spark of his genius was burning brightly. He’s not throwing in those references to make himself sound clever, I really think he was 4REAL. This observation leads straight into the next… that James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore did an amazing job putting these songs to music and really making them work. Furthermore, JDB performs like a superhero tonight to sing these songs live with barely a mis-step. This is true on the record, of course, but it’s really something to see it work live. It really is a towering achievement.

My friend Mark has seen the Manics hundreds of times, and he’s written that this was the first time he has ever seen them looking backwards in their whole career, and it made him a little sad to witness it. I know what he means: the Manic Street Preachers as a band have resolutely looked forwards in their career, and it’s perhaps because of this that they are still making music as good now as they’ve ever made at any point in their career. Performing like this, no matter how good the material you are working with, inevitably forces you to look backwards and to dwell on your own past, no matter how glorious that past might be. It’s an interesting point, and a good one: at this gig, the Manics of 2014 are pretending to be the same band that they were in 1994. Of course, there’s one very simple reason why they never can be: the disappearance and presumed death of Richie Edwards. He was never much of a musician, but he’s so conspicuously missing when they play these songs because, above everything else in their back catalogue, his fingerprints are unmistakeable. It’s interesting that for their second set, playing other songs, the band supplement their sound with an extra guitar and a keyboard. For the Holy Bible, they honour their missing comrade.

I could take or leave that second set: for me, it was oddly paced, and although it contained some bona fide classics like “Motorcycle Emptiness” , “If You Tolerate This” and “A Design For Life”, it’s very much after the Lord Mayor’s Show. The crowd noticeably thins too: perhaps the back ends of Camden are no place to be caught out late on a Tuesday night in December. Who knows. It’s good, but the intensity of the first act is entirely missing. How could it not be?

For the hour when the band are playing “The Holy Bible”, though, I am captivated. It’s an astonishing album, and I’m so pleased that I got the chance to see the band play it again. That record is twenty years old now, and my appreciation of it is broadening and deepening with every listen. It’s their towering achievement as a band and it’s my favourite ever record.

Verdict: 10 / 10