And finally...

Feb 22, 2009 20:08

11/02/08 Babyshambles at the Brixton Academy.
Nope, doesn't ring a bell. Oh, except that The Courteeners were supporting.

27/02/08 Peter Doherty/Television Personalities at the Rhythm Factory, London.
I was curious to see Television Personalities, and pleased to hear 'Look Back In Anger'. But I could only endure them for two or three songs. The performance was just dire. I went back to the front bar and read a book: I like the fact that one can usually find a place to sit in there.

09/03/08 Neil Young at the Hammersmith Apollo, London.
The £75 ticket price had initially put me off, but I changed my mind when I started reading setlists from the earlier dates on the tour: and I'm very glad that I did. He played two sets, one acoustic and the other electric, and it was stunning. He played all the classics (aside from 'Like A Hurricane', unfortunately), with 'Hey Hey, My My' and 'Powderfinger' standing out as especially mesmerising. I couldn't believe just how crisp and precise the sound quality was, for something so loud and distorted.

20/03/08 Diamanda Galás at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London.
I got her to sign a CD afterwards. I've mentioned that I don't like talking to popstars, because I get so starstruck and tongue-tied: but she's lovely! I could talk to her till the cows come home!

23/03/08 The Sonics/The Horrors at the Forum, London.
Peter was also supposed to be playing here, but he didn't. But The Horrors were slightly better than I'd been expecting. The Sonics were a bit disappointing, but I think that was mainly just because they did have the volume turned up high enough. It was still interesting to see a band that harks back to the days when the centre of a rock group was not the lead guitarist but rather the saxophonist. And they did do a great 'Louie Louie'.

26/03/08 Kristin Hersh at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London.
This was a strange one. She was telling stories about her teenage years, whilst noodling about atmospherically on the guitar. It wasn't brilliant, but she did tell one extraordinary anecdote that I had never heard before, about how her best friend at the time had been Betty Hutton! Yes, that Betty Hutton, star of Annie Get Your Gun and other such 1940s Hollywood musicals. The band was just starting out, playing the bars around Providence, frightening people with their peculiar songs about madness and self-harm, and Kristin was getting performance tips from Betty Hutton! How absolutely bizarre. There's no business like show business.

27/05/08 Liza Minnelli at the Coliseum, London.
They don't make stars like that any more! She may no longer be twenty one, but she can definitely still sing; and, even more than that, she can perform. I was reminded of Frank Sinatra in 1991. She sang 'New York, New York' too.

30/05/08 Babyshambles at Mass, Brixton.
Mass is up an implausibly large number of stairs above a church, and it's actually a really nice venue, mainly because there is lots of space and plenty of places to sit over on the right hand side. But I have never seen more heavy-handed security. Three burly bouncers stood in a line at the front of the stage throughout the entire show, completely obscuring any view of the band, and one of them even started throwing punches at one point.

15/06/08 Gong at the Forum, London.
Just a little attempt at nostalgia, which fell well and truly flat. Even in my teens, I doubt I'd have enjoyed this one anywhere near as much as the (Daevid Allen/Planet Gong) shows that I did in fact see; and, now in my thirties, I really didn't enjoy it at all.

17/06/08 Peter Doherty at Mass, Brixton.
There were a few breaks, for drinks or cigarettes or whatever tickles your fancy: but in essence he played from a quarter past ten in the evening until a quarter past three in the morning. Not a subscriber to the "leave 'em wanting more" philosophy, then, favouring instead the "last man standing" principle. There had been a couple of hundred people there at the start, which dwindled down to just seventeen by the end. (As for me, I left around half past two, along with most of the fifty-odd others who were still there by that point). But it was a lovely show, with many magical moments.

26/06/08 I, Ludicrous at the Bull & Gate, London.
I asked them whether they had a copy of the interview and session they'd done on Radio Cambridgeshire more than twenty years earlier. They told me that they didn't, and so I sent them an mp3 from the cassette that I have of it.

12/07/08 Peter Doherty at the Royal Albert Hall, London.
The contrast with the Mass show could not have been more stark: this one was just dreadful. Its one moment of redemption came at the very end. He was just launching into an encore, when somebody tried to get up onto the stage. Well, the ushers intercepted that one, and led the culprit off to the side. But then two others tried the same thing, at different points along the stage, and this seemed to provide the tipping point. The ushers did their best, but they had no real chance of success on two fronts simultaneously, especially when Peter was by now helping others to get up further along. Within thirty seconds there were a hundred kids on the stage, with Peter manfully doing his best to carry on playing at the centre of the throng. Yay! The people on the forum were awfully po-faced about it the next day, but I thought it was fantastic. Just like the good old days.

25/07/08 Daniel Johnston at IndigO2, London.
He was backed by an indie supergroup (Jad Fair, Mark Linkous, Norman Blake, Scout Niblett, maybe someone else), with its members individually supplying the support acts beforehand. It wasn't a great show, certainly not on a par with the one at the Union Chapel the previous year: but he did play 'Fish' this time, and I very much enjoyed that.

15/08/08 Big Boy Tomato at the Underworld, London.
I had recently been listening to those Snakebite City compilations from the late 1990s, and I'd been blown away by Big Boy Tomato's song, 'Carryout'. It's in 3/4 time, and I'm always a sucker for songs in 3/4, especially when they have lyrics as good as this one does. Naturally, I assumed that the band must surely have split up a decade ago: but I looked them up online, and discovered not only that they were still together, but that they would be playing in London just a few days later. And, in truth, they weren't terribly good: but they did play 'Carryout', and it was lovely to hear it.

29/08/08 The Streets/Justice/The Raconteurs/Black Kids/Kate Nash at the Rock en Seine festival, Paris.
The person I'd most been looking forward to seeing was Kate Nash, but I carelessly went to the wrong Métro station and, by the time I finally got to the show, I'd missed all but her very last song. But that one was good, at least, and I especially approved of her standing on the keys of her piano. And then Black Kids were rubbish, The Raconteurs were rubbish, Justice were rubbish, Amy Winehouse cancelled altogether... and The Streets were incredible. Such a transformation from those ropey shows I saw in 2002/03: I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone do a better festival set.

04/09/08 Peter Doherty/The Thirst at the Rhythm Factory, London.
I seemed to go to a lot of Peter's concerts this year. The Thirst (whom I'd already seen at a couple of the earlier ones) looked fantastic, and played fantastically well, but unfortunately they just didn't have the songs to back it up. Peter passed round rum and coke, which I thought was a nice gesture.

06/09/08 X-Ray Spex/Gold Blade at the Roundhouse, London.
X-Ray Spex were playing together for the first (and only) time in nigh-on thirty years. They were no Slits, but it was nice to see them all the same. Poly Styrene is very short.

01/10/08 Thomas Tantrum/Daisy Riots at the Hoxton Bar & Grill, London.
Thomas Tantrum's debut was the album of the year for me, and I had high hopes for the concert, which were only partially realised. I had hoped for -- I don't know -- more bounciness, I suppose: but the songs sounded good.

02/10/08 Peter Doherty, Wolfman, Dot Allison at the Hackney Empire, London.
My goodness, that boy is erratic! This one was just a mess from start to finish.

08/11/08 Queen at Wembley Arena, London.
I hadn't been planning on going, but, when an extra batch of tickets was released a few days before the show, I figured: why on earth shouldn't I? Reliving my childhood. Of course, it's not Queen though. I guess I can't really blame them for the fact that Freddie Mercury is no longer in the band, but I did feel that it was a bit rich to carry on using the name after John Deacon left.

13/11/08 Leonard Cohen at the O2 Arena, London.
There is something quite wrong, and yet also devilishly right, about the sight of Leonard Cohen skipping across the stage like Morecambe & Wise. I hadn't bothered with the dates he'd done earlier in the year, but I did finally go along to this one. The last tour he'd done previously had been a dozen years earlier (back when he was "just a sixty-year-old kid with a crazy dream"), and it's hard to believe that there'll be another one after this. He played for three hours, and some of it did rather drag, while other parts that ought to have been great were spoilt by the acoustics: but 'Hallelujah' was quite nice, and 'Famous Blue Raincoat' was staggeringly good. And the audience (who, incidentally, seemed to be far and away the oldest audience that I have ever been in) gave a big cheer when he sang "Democracy is coming to the USA" -- this being the week after Obama's election.

14/11/08 Greenbelt Collective/Ray Rumours at the Windmill, Brixton.
Heena (Al's sister) was staying with me, having come down for another show at the Windmill the previous night while I'd been at Leonard Cohen, and I went along with her to this one. There were five bands in all, mostly not very good, although one of them did play a cover of none other than 'Famous Blue Raincoat': nice to hear it two nights in a row! But I did like Ray Rumours, who were like a stripped-down and more delicate Talullah Gosh. Heena knew one of them, and we ended up seeing them off at the bus stop after the show. And I quite liked the Greenbelt Collective too. They hailed from Vancouver, twelve of them in all, except that some hadn't managed to get into the country. And they were very Arcade Fire-esque: but then there's nothing wrong with that.

There, all done. As The Grateful Dead used to sing, back in the day: "What a long, strange trip it's been"! I haven't seen anyone at all so far this year: but I have some real treats in store for me over the next few months...
Previous post Next post
Up