Every now and again I get really into the idea of going to see a band play a gig somewhere in Europe. It always seems totally feasible to begin with, what with Airbnb and advance Eurostar tickets, but to date dithering and/or other commitments (and factoring in beer money) have put paid to any of these expeditions going ahead.
I discovered Doug Tuttle a year or so ago, I don’t know how. He’s released a few records and despite the fact it all sounds much of a muchness I favour It Calls On Me over all the others and ended up buying a copy on lovely translucent syrup coloured vinyl. After getting massively into it I looked into whether he was touring, and the answer was: not really. He was doing one gig in Europe, at the Barcelona Psych Fest, which, as it happened, was due to fall on my birthday weekend. As above I pondered for a while, but I had a couple of other things coming up that were going to cost a bomb so I cooled my jets. Both the other things have however fallen through. As indeed has the Barcelona Psych Fest. What a year, eh?
I was having a cigarette in the smoking area outside a gig a bit back* and was drawn into a conversation with my fellow smokers, the gist of which was that the band were rockin’ that night and that weren’t there a lot of good gigs at the moment. One guy, who was quite pissed, slurred that, yes, there were a lot of great bands around, but none of them were English – there are no good English bands he declared, with a dismissive wave of his arm. We stood around and you could almost hear our collective minds whirring, but after about 20 seconds we all just sort of nodded, no one had been able to come up with anything. I had thought immediately to mention Ultimate Painting, but unfortunately they’d split up a short time beforehand.
I’d first seen Ultimate Painting supporting White Fence at the 100 Club, quite often I miss support bands as the friend I go along to most gigs with has a bee in his bonnet about the price of pints in venues. In my opinion it doesn’t really make that much difference in London, but there we are. But yes, anyway, very glad we caught Ultimate Painting on this occasion - they had wisely opened up with their eponymous track and within seconds the whole crowd was bopping along. I saw them a few more times and was due to see them again when news of their split broke. They were on the verge of releasing an album which was subsequently mothballed - no doubt it will emerge at some point in the future and be hailed as a lost classic and the murkiness of the split pored over.
I got a copy of Jack Cooper’s solo album but didn’t listen to it for a few months and then only because I’d got a new car that had a functioning CD player. It’s pretty good - he did a good lagniappe session on Aquarium Drunkard too.
But anyway, that album has been, in my opinion, exceeded by his latest thing Modern Nature. The track above is probably their best so far and, in a move that quite tickles me, they’ve started both the gigs I’ve been to with it. I mention all this as I realised that they were actually the last gig I went to, before all this lock down business, on 4 March.
The last time I went into central London was on 27 February to go and see Grimm Grimm at Cafe Oto. It’s a great venue and this was a good gig, I got there about 10 minutes before he came on and blagged a rickety chair right at the front as he was sort of tuning up. The track above sounds quite gentle doesn’t it? The live version would not have been out of place on Isn’t Anything. I’m not sure where I picked up on him - I looked at his past gigs and I can’t believe I haven’t seen him before, he’s played loads of gigs at all the usual venues supporting bands I really like. Bit of a bummer.
The last time I went to the pub was Friday 13 March before travelling up to Sheffield on the following Monday for a fortnight off to see friends that was to have taken in gigs by Julian Cope and Lee Scratch Perry. Obviously those and a couple more since then have gone out the window. And I doubt very much that I’ll be seeing Acid Mothers Temple at the end of June or trundling along to Raw Power a month after that.
Other than that I’m having quite a good lock down. I’ve never been much of a one for drinking at home and if I’m not drinking I’m not smoking, so feeling pretty bright eyed and bushy tailed at the moment. I know I’m going to completely overdo it when the pubs do finally reopen, and I have pined for the pub on a couple of occasions, but it is nice to have this break imposed from above. I just hope all my favourite places are still there when it’s all over.
I went to see Holly Golightly play the other night (May 12th, to be precise). I've been meaning to get to one of her gigs for years, so I'm sure you'll be happy to hear that it was great. That at least is the fuzzy impression that I'm left with. Over the course of the evening I had rather a lot to drink and can't really remember too much about it all. (I do remember Fabienne Delsol was in the crowd. Stood right next to me for a while actually. I affected a nonchalant attitude, she seemed unmoved.)
So, I can't remember stuff like which songs got played, but I do remember being particularly pleased at two or three of the choices. And, er, Slowly But Surely may have been one of them. It's probably my most recently acquired favourite track of hers - the LP version is just immaculate (the kind of thing that might have got into the Top Ten in the eighties maybe) but I prefer the demo version on the b side of On The Fire. Both are amazing.
Anyway, I didn't know it was a cover version until about two weeks ago. Here's the original. Yet another upset for my tending to prefer whichever version you hear first theory (I may scrap that theory). I like this better. The harmonica has a more yearning quality, the vocal more forlorn.
I went to see Pete Molinari about a month ago and, as is the way these days, snippets of the gig have been posted on youtube. I won't lie, the main reason I'm posting this particular song is because you can actually see me on it. My luxuriant hair and chiselled cheekbone (and itchy nose) can be seen obscuring the bass drum from time to time. It was during this tune also that I nearly heckled. (At the 51 second mark I was going to shout "Judas!" but I bottled it. It would have been funny. It's a shame.) I enjoyed this at the time and the first few songs from what I remember, but as the evening wore on I found the electrified set a bit muddy for my liking and I left during the last track in search of more drink.
It should be one of the hundred things you do before you die - see a Hawkwind gig. And, the other night, that is what I did.
I wasn't sure what to expect really. I've got a few of their albums and obviously I had enough faith to shell out the twenty pounds for a ticket. Chatting to one of my friends the next day he said he'd been worried we were in for a big cloud of dry ice with strange noises coming out of it. And I think that was lurking in the back of my mind.
Anyway, it wasn't like that at all. Instead it was surprisingly full on rock, a decent light show of course and, the first time I've ever seen this at a gig, a couple of gyrating dancing girls. Aside from the inevitable Silver Machine I didn't recognise any of the tunes (my request for Orgone Accumulator went unheeded). But so what. It was great. I think I'll go every year.
I was disappointed by the Spiritualized concert. The performance was, in a word, turgid. Great venue, great back catalogue but on the night the presence of a choir and string section seemed to drag the whole thing down, "Messy", was the wife's conclusion.
After about an hour and a half everyone shuffled off stage and ten minutes later I was relieved when just the band and three backing singers returned. The remaining thirty minutes or so were an improvement but I was still far from blown away. At times I looked around and a few people were slowly nodding along, those whose heads were still were not (judging by their expressions) caught up in ecstasy, just a bit bored.
I don't mind the whole repetitive thing - if it's built right I can listen to the same guitar sound going round and around, with minimal variations, for however long. But as another tune ploughed towards its end in a crescendo of feedback I was thinking "What is the fucking point in this?". And then, to be fair, there was one immense moment - in what can only be described as a blink of the ears the maelstrom of sound ceased and we were listening to the beautifully gentle Shine a Light. The change in sound was matched by as sudden a change from blazing strobes to a still deep purple light. That bit was great, but I'd expected a whole evening of such quality. A final consolation prize was a decent enough run through of Take Me to the Other Side, allowing me to tick off another Spacemen 3 track heard live.
Yesterday I killed two birds with one stone and saw the impossibly svelte Fabienne Delsol at the 100 Club. I'd never been to this legendary venue and apparently sky high rents are forcing it to close by Christmas - which, now that I've been, I can say would be a great shame - it's exactly the kind of club that I love. It's just the right size and last night it was reasonably full of blokes in snazzy cardigans and aging retro beauties.
The first support act, an instrumental three piece, efficiently cranked it out and I missed most of the second band as I went for a wander down Wardour Street in search of cigarettes. When I got back in I walked over to the stage and positioned myself near where the microphone had been set up and that was that - I'm so used to hardly being able to see bands it was weird to be standing two yards away, I didn't know quite where to look half the time.
The show was to promote her new album which I haven't heard but according to the blurb is meant to be a bit mellower than her previous output, but everything sounded pretty crunchy last night. The highlights for me, not very adventurously, were the ones I'd heard before, the best being the closer - a cover of early Quo tune When My Mind Is Not Live. After this they left the stage and someone (the club owner?) jumped up and tried to cajole them into an encore - Fabienne returned to the stage and said she'd sing if the band were up for it. They weren't. At least I think that's what happened - I was a bit drunk. I was hoping that they'd play My Love Is Like A Spaceship.
I was surprised at how low key the event was, I clearly have a tendency to assume that bands I like are bigger than they are - I was amazed when I saw Fabienne walk around the stage placing out the set lists and just generally hanging around throughout the evening. I'm fairly sure that kind of thing didn't happen at even the crummiest gigs I attended as a teenager. Someone's posted a tune from the very night on youtube already. My bowlcut makes an appearance from 1' 03" onwards.
Years ago I was walking along the Embankment with my dad and looking across the river I commented on the ugliness of the South Bank. My dad, with a faint smile, said that the war had just finished and they'd all needed cheering up at the time. Since then I've taken a great liking to the place and when I saw that Broadcast were playing the Queen Elizabeth Hall I bought up some tickets (after a bit of dithering that meant we ended up sitting on the very back row).
I only got into Broadcast through their most recent album "Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age". It topped Wire magazine's 2009 run down and it's got a really cool cover and that was good enough for me. I've listened to it a lot during my commute. The extremely varied tracks come and go so quickly - there are some I'm not mad on but mainly I wish a lot of them lasted longer, ones like "One million Years Ago"and "Let It Begin".
While I can think of half a dozen things that may have influenced them it's still the most original album I've heard for years. I was walking along the other day when my right headphone konked out, "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" continued to grate into my left ear but the other was getting the sounds of a car alarm and some passing children and the high street in general. Maybe that sounds terrible (try it) but it was not dissimilar to one of the less great tracks on the album. It's the same with bus brakes and the start of "Never Understand".
Anyway, the concert. We got there just in time to hear the remaining support act furiously sawing away at his cello for about thirty seconds before the lights came up and we spent the next half hour in the bar. Broadcast started off facing each other over dimly lit consoles that they tweaked to produce a heavy track that went on for a bit too long really, a good ten minutes at least of electronic vipp noises with percussion that sounded like some huge wooden sprocket and treadle.
After that the male half of the band picked up one the guitars that I had assumed had been positioned on stage for feedback purposes only. The track they then played was "Corporeal" - good enough for me to be buying its album.
From this point on the music got more interesting with the noises becoming more intricate and Trish Keenan's vocals more focussed than the earlier portentous wailing. The guitar got another outing for a naggingly familiar riff. It did my brain in until I finally placed it - it was from "I Could Be Happy" - the bit where the guitar really breaks about halfway through into an oriental sounding cascade. I hadn't expected that.
Visually the show was dominated by a continuous flow of images onto one screen - it started off with what seemed like footage from an old black and white sci fi film giving a distorted, alien's eye view of the planet. Other images in conjunction with some effects-channelled vocals often gave off an eerie vibe - which I'm sure is their aim. The Wicker Man, at the instigation of the likes of Jonny Trunk and Bob Stanley, seems to have been seeping through this corner of indie for years.
Probably the most effective image was when the singer cast a stark shadow onto a brightly coloured backdrop for the duration of an almost lullaby-ish song. Standing in front of the black space of her own shadow, bathed in the multi-coloured projection, it looked as though she'd stepped out of the image.
Then all of a sudden it was over, and I knew we weren't going to get an encore. Brilliant.
Yesterday I went to see Spectrum play. It was all very spontaneous – I read about the gig in Metro on the train into work and then in a flurry of e-mails made the arrangements. The club was in Elephant and Castle (on Elephant Road itself) and we stopped off for a couple of beers at The Hole in the Wall, a pub I somehow omitted from my list of favourite London pubs a while back. If you’ve ever got half an hour to wait for a train at Waterloo I recommend that you pop in – the back room is great. It clearly hasn’t been decorated since about 1956 and it’s tucked under a railway arch so it rumbles every time a train goes over, which is quite often. I’ve never eaten there but the food smells good.
I’ve mentioned before how highly I rate Pete Kember, mainly on account of Spacemen 3 but also the first Spectrum album is an occasional favourite. I haven’t kept up with his output to be honest and most of what I have heard really is (far more so than “Metal Machine Music”) music for people who like to listen to their fridge turn on and off. I missed out on the chance to see Spacemen 3 play live back in the day and for some reason it’s Kember and his various bands that I regard as the torch bearer of that sound following the split. And while I like some of what he’s done with Spectrum the main draw for me was the chance to hear a live version of “Transparent Radiation” and maybe a few other Spacemen 3 tracks.
We got to the venue in good time but walked past it once: the Apollo Theater it was not. The warm up acts were not conventional bands but instead a trio and then an individual who performed some furious knob twiddling. Not really my bag but one of them was wearing a poncho – so top marks for that. The man himself strode on stage (very tall and thin and, like Jason Pierce, a testament to the age defying properties of heroin) and opened with a jagged instrumental that quickly set them apart from the support acts. “Transparent Radiation” was the second track up and, perhaps inevitably, I was disappointed. It seemed hurried and all the beauty of the studio version was bludgeoned to death under some very heavy handed guitar. Where were the cellos and violins? Or failing those it would have been more apt to play it on an acoustic guitar. Oh well. The only other classic was “Revolution” - a track made for listening to at close quarters played on guitars turned up to 11. But what little sharpness the song had was again lost to the club sound.
The venue was a bit of a toilet really but that’s the kind of place I like to see bands. Probably a maximum capacity of two or three hundred. I find it baffling that Pete Kember can only command such crowds while down the road Spiritualized have packed out the Royal Festival Hall. I’ve always found Spiritualized a bit dull but at least Jason Pierce has the sense and ambition to make use of strings and a horn section and he isn’t afraid to do quiet. That’s what was needed last night, the occasional respite from the pounding drums and raging feedback.
