what matters...

"Health is largely an obsession, what matters is can you still sing." George Melly, RIP


technorati tag: george melly

editors

OK, OK, I’ll admit it. We really wanted to go to Saturday’s The Best Disco in Town Live 2007… But somehow M and I found ourselves standing in the spring sunshine of a Warrington Tuesday evening waiting to see these blokes called Editors instead - and no, Sec C, it’s nothing to do with books! ;-)

Last night, two years on from The Back Room, those nearly-Brum boys made their comeback appearance at the Parr Hall in Warrington. Yes you read that right – one of the UK’s bands of the decade playing in a municipal hall in a small northern town sandwiched between the urban corridor of Liverpool and Manchester. You may well ask why…

Tom Smith was on fire – the comparisons with Ian Curtis are fair, but he’s much much more as well. It’s like he’s got an electric pulse running through his veins, making him convulse and twitch. His guitar’s more like a piece of armour AND a weapon, than an instrument. Chris Urbanowicz wouldn’t be out of place playing guitar with Franz Ferdinand or Placebo, and Russell Leetch as part of Robbie’s backing band (sorry – it was the jeans and suit jacket). And Ed Lay just sits out there at the back, getting on with the real business of bashing your heart into the rhythm of his drumming…



But as ever when you're trying to convey something no-one else experienced, all of that completely undersells them. This unstyled, rag bag of slightly geeky musicians played above, beyond, out of themselves, giving us way more than everything they had, whilst still checking we were ok, they weren’t losing us, it was going ok?…

My gig of the year by far – subtle, electric, buoyant, and yes (that awful muso journo short-hand) anthemic. The new stuff from the upcoming album An End Has A Start sounds just as good as The Back Room – maybe even better, but it was hard to tell on one listen… Time will of course tell.

And thankfully all this – a neat hour and twenty of short, sharp rocks - without the swagger of the Kaiser Chief’s pitiful attempt at a second album (everything is average nowadays – you bet).

technorati tag: editors

in the middle of the room...

Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to present...
a man whose musical and comedic talents stretch to clowning about whilst singing about funerals
the smaller-in-real-life-but-still-somehow-larger-than-life
vaudeville-esque
tragi-comic musician
and Huckleberry-Finn-The-Musical-wannabe (better they never make a reality find-a-star show about that!)
...Duke Special!



At the end of last night’s rapturously received Manchester Academy gig, for the last encore, he and the band leapt off stage, walked through the crowd, busked an improv number about being in the middle of the room, someone playing the spoons, etc. And then ended with a fantastic necessarily-unplugged version of John Lennon Love. And all about two feet from where we were standing!! I always say that M picks the best spot to stand at a gig… ;-)



Catch him now while you can still see him in some intimate venues – or at Greenbelt. Do it – or have another boring bank holiday weekend.


technorati tag: duke special

some friendly post-gig advice to the young knives...

You rock! Just don't do what you threatened - and come back with the quintessential sh*t second album. Please.

technorati tag: the young knives

some friendly post-gig advice to The Hours...

Some friendly advice to The Hours following last night’s Academy 3 gig (aka best venue in Manc):

We came to the gig already loving the songs. But please learn a bit of patter to keep us with you between numbers.

To Antony Genn - lose the guitar more often. When you played People Say you looked really free, it came alive more. Do it more often, hire someone else to play your parts if you have to.

Try not to play venues the same night as a sold-out The Rifles gig – you’ll end up getting the disappointed dregs of people who couldn’t get in to see them. This will only pain and annoy your real fans.

Consider not playing a song about your dead dad as the first number after the encore. You’d just got us jumping when you went off stage and then it was a hard change of tempo to pull off (hence the aforementioned Rifles dregs talking through it – unforgivable but…)

Never, ever let your drummer wear a short-sleeved button-up black shirt. He looks like a hotel bellboy.

To Martin Slattery – try not to look like a rabbit caught in the headlights from the moment you come on stage. Maybe close your eyes once in a while or look at your keys if you can’t stop staring at us in a slightly off-yer-head way.

Finally - don’t try so hard. You ARE rock stars. So stop *trying* to be one and just be. You’ve seen how Pulp, Elastica, Joe Strummer and Black Grape did it, and now you’re having to work your way up again on your own terms. That must be tough. But try to enjoy it – during People Say and Ali in the Jungle last night it finally came across that you were.

PS Antony – nice teeth. ;-)

PPS We loved it, really we did. Monday night rocks! It’s the new Saturday you know…


technorati tag: the hours

sorry, I must have misheard you... you said climate-change gigs where?

'Johannesburg, London, Shanghai and Sydney are among the host cities [for the Live Earth gigs]. Three other concerts will take place in the US, Brazil and Japan, with the cities still to be decided. There will also be a concert in Antarctica.

At the press conference, organisers said Live Earth "will become the model for carbon neutral concerts and other live events in the future".' (BBC News report)

(Insert your own polar-bear-under-palm-tree punchline/ despairing head shake here)


technorati tag: live earth, climate change

...in black...

Some days, without knowing why, you get up and feel like wearing black, yeah? (OK so I have an inkling...)

Today was one of the days. And it was justified it turns out - I heard two personal, terrible, tragic pieces of news this morning.

The Man in Black (who wore it for "the poor, the broken down, the prisoner, the sick, the lonely, the old, the mourning ones") himself sang:

What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way...


Sadly, very fitting.


technorati tag: johnny cash, hurt, the man in black

0 degrees...

It was with a sense of anticipation that we trudged through Manchester’s cold and windy streets to the 0 degrees of separation gig at The Bridgewater Hall. I’d been offered a free ticket through work, and we decided it was an interesting enough bill - four folk/ acoustic artists including Vetiver, Juana Molina, Adem and Vashti Bunyan - to spend the £15 to get M in too.

I’d heard of Vashti Bunyan because of her 60s renown, and subsequent thirty year absence from the music scene. On that basis alone, we decided the others were surely worth the punt – they were after all on the same bill as the English Joni Mitchell. In the end, Bunyan seemed to be the one holding the night back, whilst the young ‘uns jammed their way to a memorable gig. Sure, it was nice that they all collaborated on each other’s numbers but I left thinking that Bunyan might have good reason to have shunned recording and performing for three decades… Her intros to each song were whispered comments on this track that she’d written nearly forty years ago and was now dedicating to her children. Hmmm.



But the others – where to start! Juana Molina was like the bastard step-child of Imogen Heap and KT Tunstall’s foster parents (yes she is that weird!), with her red velvet party dress and click-your-heels-together red sequin pumps. Vetiver were so laid back they were horizontal, but ticking over just enough to demonstrate their Americana roots. And Adem launched us into another world…

The Guardian last week gave it a four star review. I’d give Juana, Vetiver and Adem a solid four stars, and (you guessed it), only one for Bunyan. A five star gig then, but not quite in the way that I was expecting…


technorati tag: 0 degrees of separation

well, who am I?

I'm the darkness in the light
I'm the leftness in the right
I'm the rightness in the wrong
I'm the shortness in the long
I'm the goodness in the bad
I'm the saneness in the mad
I'm the sadness in the joy
I'm the gin in the gin-soaked boy

I'm the ghost in the machine
I'm the genius in the gene
I'm the beauty in the beast
I'm the sunset in the east
I'm the ruby in the dust
I'm the trust in the mistrust
I'm the Trojan horse in Troy
I'm the gin in the gin-soaked boy

I'm the tiger's empty cage
I'm the mystery's final page
I'm the stranger's lonely glance
I'm the hero's only chance
I'm the undiscovered land
I'm the single grain of sand
I'm the Christmas morning toy
I'm the gin in the gin-soaked boy

I'm the world you'll never see
I'm the slave you'll never free
I'm the truth you'll never know
I'm the place you'll never go
I'm the sound you'll never hear
I'm the course you'll never steer
I'm the will you'll not destroy
I'm the gin in the gin-soaked boy

I'm the half-truth in the lie
I'm the why not in the why
I'm the last roll of the die
I'm the old school in the tie
I'm the spirit in the sky
I'm the catcher in the rye
I'm the twinkle in her eye
I'm the Jeff Goldblum in The Fly

Well, who am I?


[Divine Comedy's 'Gin-Soaked Boy']


technorati tag: divine comedy, gin-soaked boy