“Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.” - Ray Bradbury
Last night, Montreal friends Sunfields played the last night of their two week UK tour at The Windmill in Brixton. It was a great gig, in a great *very* un-London feel venue, and I’ve uploaded some photos here. There’s also a video floating around of their lovely, catchy new song Kiss Shy (we expect proper release soon, please…) recorded on the first night of their tour.
It’s been splendid fun seeing the lads over here doing what they do best – play great music and get drunk in their smiley, friendly Canadian manner. Just wish I’d been able to get to some of the non-London gigs. Until the next time though – whichever country it is this time – bon voyage, chaps.
A few weeks ago Gerard Smith, the bassist from TV on the Radio, died from lung cancer age 34. I found this out in New York, sitting in the flat of my friends who live above Union Pool – the very place I’d first seen TV on the Radio play with Gerard in a small, intimate, sweaty and fun filled gig. Sad news at any time, but especially so in that situation, and my thoughts immediately turned to his friends, family and bandmates and the shock of someone dying so young.
Like most TV on the Radio fans, I never knew Gerard as anyone other than a member of the band, playing wonderful music that made us smile, dance and sing. but one moment will stay with me that I wanted to share. In July 2009 TV on the Radio played Brixton Academy, shortly after playing a more intimate gig at Shepherds Bush. In coming out from the plastic cup strewn hall, we found a crowd of people gathered around a t-shirt vendor on the street. The t-shirts, bad knock offs of official merchandise, were laid out on the ground to catch happy fans on the way out of the gig. What made this scene so different from every other time, was that this time two of the band members themselves were helping sell the t-shirts. Jaleel and Gerard were laughing, smiling and trying to convince their fans that these were the best t-shirts ever much to the enjoyment of everyone around, especially the t-shirt vendor. A beautiful moment. Gerard, sorry the photo isn’t worthy of it, but the memory you left is one of the very best. Happy travels.
Through some circuitous route that, for now, escapes me (but possibly involved Grizzly Bear) I just came across this great site full of intimate impromptu performances from great indie bands. Check out Arcade Fire’s two songs – first in a freight elevator, and then out in the middle of the audience waiting for them to come on stage. Some very happy fan faces there. I love this! Who knows how our concert visits will pan out this year after last year’s epic excess of wonderfully intimate gigs, but with sites like this you can capture that small venue feel in the comfort of your own home. When you’re not playing Beatles Rock Band of course…
You may have noticed over the years that I’m not one for going to large stadium gigs. The intimate, smaller venues are almost so much more engaging – and generally a lot cheaper – for most bands that I love. That said, I have been very lucky with the bands I have seen in smaller venues. Sometimes though, you just have to bite the bullet and Friday night was just such a time – to see Fleetwood Mac play Wembley Arena – and I’m very glad I did.
The band came on around 8.30pm and started off quite slowly, with a bit of chat and a few slow songs. Stevie Nicks seemed a bit faltering and the energy was a bit off, but then, suddenly, everything turned around as they belted out hit after hit with barely a pause in between. Lindsay Buckingham did most of the audience interaction for the night, and seemed to be on stage more than any other band member performing a number of solo acoustic versions of classic songs. Never Going Back Again was stunning and moving and Buckingham’s guitarmanship is outstanding. Around an hour in the band was on top form, Nicks seemed to be more comfortable and started engaging more with the audience, and during World Turning we were treated to an extended guitar solo with shouted audience instructions from Mick Fleetwood, which culminated in a turntable/drumming head to head before the rest of the band came back on stage to finish the song.
I don’t think any Fleetwood Mac fan was disappointed, other than by the absence of Christine McVie. They played songs from all stages of their career – even solo efforts from Nicks and Buckingham and, most wonderfully, the blues classic ‘Oh Well’ from their pre Nicks and Buckingham incarnation – with Lindsay carrying off Peter Green’s singing and searing guitar with energy and impact. The only downside on the night was that we were so far back and the video screens were a bit crap, but the energy carried around the arena to keep us hooked. The full set, with no support, was about two and a half hours – three encores – impressive stuff and a wonderful night.
You can currently watch the Gorillaz documentary ‘Bananaz’ online for free right now. It’s a great behind the scenes look at one of this decade’s biggest bands, from the initial conception right through to their rapidly sold out shows in NYC.
Blur have performed their first ‘comeback’ gig in a small railway museum, and by most accounts it was a jolly good romp. This is good news as next week we’re seeing them at their ‘mid size’ pre Hyde Park gig in Southend. Huzah! Well, that’s assuming our tickets ever turn up – which I’m assuming will be last minute so people tempted to tout them are screwed over. Not very helpful for us actual fans though is it? Surely is there no other way…. Coff.
Speaking of music, as I write this it sounds like we’ve acquired a female vocalist fronted band practice in an apartment next door. On the one hand she sounds pretty good. On the other hand not a big fan of live drums on any day, let alone a Sunday. Of course it could just be a very high fidelity stereo system.
So for those of you who haven’t noticed my lack of blog posts recently, I seem to be throwing more random musings onto my twitter. yesterday though my main iPhone based app Twitterific failed during the ‘Tweetpocalypse’. This is where the numerical unique identifiers for new messages went above a certain level, a very big number that is not handle by standard data types. So a lot of subsidiary twitter apps went south. Ah well.
Finally, a big thanks to mum & Henry for a) something they know about and b) for my Gordon Ramsey sunday lunch cookbook years ago. I finally did a couple o’ recipes from it last night to stretch the normal. In fact not only did I cook, in itself a strange event as I’m normally relegated to washing up duties, but I cooked a wild mushroom pasta (recipe: shallots, mushrooms + oil, cook) and ate it all. Blimey. We’re trying to be more veggie this week and that was a first successful step. To celebrate we ate a wonderfully unhealthy lemon posset (lemon juice, sugar, cream – how can you go wrong with that?). Mmm..
We all had a splendid afternoon yesterday at the Rise Festival – a diverse collection of musical groups that combined together to support racial tolerance in the form of a free concert in Finsbury Park. The weather had been threatening all morning, but once we got there and met up with Chris et al the weather stayed lovely and sunny for the most part. Of course none of us had brought suntan lotion so there are a few tan lines today.
We arrived in time for the Dub Pistols, who I don’t really know, but they were accompanied by Terry Hall from The Specials who I do know which meant we all got very excited when they played some Specials tracks. They also played a dub version of Peaches by The Stranglers which made me think for a moment they had some of those guys up there with them as well, but unfortunately not. And as Terry Hall reminded us, this festival is not really about music, it’s about saying ‘F*ck the BNP!’ Nice. In-between the main bands we were entertained by beatboxing from Beardyman, who is something quite special indeed with his beatbox versions of most popular dance anthems.
My personal highlight of the day was CSS – who were as strange and bouncy as ever, even if the sound was a bit off. Although they got most of the crowd bouncing, they were outdone by Jimmy Cliff who played some classic tracks that had the whole crowd swaying along. Lovely stuff, and the sunset that accompanied him was perfectly timed.
What is it about England right now that leads us to be constantly fascinated by leftfield cover versions of well known songs? Every day I hear something that’s a cross-genre cover/mash up/something that brings me up short as I try to work out a) the original song and b) the artist singing it.
Right now there’s a country version of ‘Walk this Way’ coming over the air which is cute but probably forgettable (except in nightmare). Yesterday on the train we had four young Suffolk lads blasting a Chris Cornell cover of Seven Nation Army from their mobile phone as they debated whether or not to mix the rum with their soft drink, or to drink it neat and follow up with the soft drink* – they all agreed though that Chris’s version was better than the original, which just goes to show that there’s no accounting for taste, or lack thereof.
*The answer was rum first, soft drink later as “We’ll get more drunk that way” “You’re roight!”. And lads, for reference, having the money to get drunk in Ipswich does not stop you from being ’skanks’ too like your penniless friends – sorry.
