The best of both wardrobes. And a lot more besides.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Through All The White Noise As It Crackles And Stalls*
Last week I had the great joy of going to see Jake Shillingford, a gig I nearly missed and only found out about due to the previously mentioned use of my pics elsewhere on the web.
It did initially seem a good opportunity for Going Out (capital letters, handbag, pretty shoes, etc) and I gave it some thought before deciding that the combination of a new venue in a town I know offers certain difficulties in finding somewhere sensible to park added up to too many different new variables, and you may imagine that in such circumstances just driving in the first place comes with a slightly heightened state of paranoia anyway.
Which is how I ended up especially grateful that I hadn't when I was on the receiving end of the most concerted bit of road rage behaviour I've had in ages. Quite why my doing 60mph is such an affront to someone's impatience that it's more important to get close enough behind me that the number plate is no longer visible than it is to use the motorway's two empty lanes outside me to overtake is anyone's guess.
Turning up in a city centre on a thursday night before the easter weekend, full of pretty young early twenty-somethings, I was only a tiny bit jealous of those milling around doorways in a state lubricated/liberated from the self-possession that, er, anyway, moving swiftly on.
A free gig is always going to be a bit of a lottery. It was this that convinced me to go for that show rather than the one a little further away, but I didn't know quite what to expect. This was perhaps the first gig I've been to in ages where I've been so acutely aware of being roughly twice the age of half the crowd, and as you might expect, there was a lot of people chatting with their mates while some guy with a guitar (and an omnichord) played in the background rather than an audience that might properly be described as fans. I caught the last song or two of the support act, who may or may not have had a load of mates crammed into the pub basement, but it was really nothing special.
Jake hasn't toured in eight years, according to his own website, which was another reason I didn't want to miss a chance to not have to go all the way to London to see him. This was largely the same set as in December, some solo songs and some My Life Story songs ably accompanied by Toni Krause on the keyboard.
Despite the frustrations of the collectively shouty indifference around the room, and I imagine the slight nerves of this being the first show of a tour, there must have been a dozen or so people who were actually there specifically to see Jake rather than there because they happened to be drinking and chatting there. In the circumstances it was a very good show rather than a great one, but especially good for getting thirty seconds to have a brief chat and shake hands with the man himself, get a CD signed and so on. And being heavily influenced by the fan gene, I'll almost always prefer that bit of personal contact to being able to wear something slightly prettier.
There's some stuff I've put on youtube added below, so you can see for yourself exactly what it was like but seeing Jake doing some of those songs is always going to be a pleasure, and being part of even a handful of people straining to sing the ba bu-bahbu-bah-bah-bu-bu-bah brass lines on Strumpet is always an uplifting experience.
If You Can't Live Without Me Then Why Aren't You Dead Yet?
Sparkle - Jake (and flaming crowd!)
* from Written Large – Jake Shillingford
The imminent changing hours of daylight for British Summer Time have been on my mind, for good reasons of having less excuse not to do something constructive with my evenings, and for other reasons too.
But today's visit from the department of coincidences is watching the final episode of Ashes To Ashes, in which Alex Drake tries (and fails) to prevent the death of her parents, on the first anniversary of my father's death. It's no big deal, but it still registers.
Coincidences running together is something I appear to have some small talent for spotting - I earn my living analysing things and looking for patterns and trends, so that's perhaps not such a big surprise.
But it amuses me greatly to find that a) I get a credit on someone else's blog for something I brought to someone's attention on the same day as b) I get a comment on youtube from someone who is the focal point of a particular clip on the same day as c) a handful of pics are being used to promote a gig next week by direct linking to my flickr page.
No big deal, but mildly interesting to find these occurring so close together.
Unexpectedly I find that a handbag I haven't used in years, and which, if I'm honest I've only kept for the sentimental reasons of where it came to me from, works perfectly with an outfit which would otherwise be sorely lacking in the handbag department. Having twice in the last week had reason to walk a couple of miles, it is interesting to note that it's not the height of the heel that makes the difference but the fit of the shoe. In any case, it's nice to find an outfit that works this well.
Anyone who starts a set with a song including the line 'I've been reading John Pilger in the Morning Star' is probably fairly clear where they stand on telling people what they think. And so it is with Tracey Curtis - same venue, same style of woman and acoustic guitar support act as my last visit, but there the similarity ends. Tracey's songs are often about or to her children, and it really suits her voice to do the sort of upbeat summery pop sounding material that has a simplicity in common with nursey rhyme styles, but covering an altogether more adult set of subjects. Like the death penalty.
'I Should Have Kept It Simple' is both a fabulous little song, and something of a representative title in a set that has introductions that can take longer than the song itself, and the sort of relentless infectiousness that would make a Butlins redcoat worry about coming across like Leonard Cohen, and I can see exactly where 'ISHKIS' comes from. Good honest fun, with some proper serious points to make – as if the selection on myspace hadn't already been enough, buying Tracey's album is not in doubt.
The question of making points and its relationship with making music comes up throughout the headliners' set, and it's probably equally lazy and true to suggest that some people's views of Chumbawamba are coloured by their own take on politics, causes, ideology, stunts and That Song, and not necessarily in that order. With the 25th anniversary of Chumbawamba a fairly recent event, the fact they are still here speaks for itself.
There's a comprehensive set of information about how it's now an acoustic five piece act rather than the electric jump up and down shoutiness of what was the tabloids' wet dream of a threat to the nation's pop sensibilities for a good week after the Brit Awards in 1998 on their own website. Last time I saw them, it was in the company of a very good friend of mine that I don't see anything of these days, but I guess thinking too much on things I can't change is a fruitless pursuit. All the same...
Kicking off with Fade Away from 2005's A Singsong And A Scrap, it's one singalong after another, and what sticks with me is the way it's possible to have a good time while still dealing with weightier things than boy meets girl. In which vein, the new album brings us Sing About Love, and the message that 'I don't want to sing about the things I always sing about/I wish I could sing about love', in its own way another twist on Joe Hill's 'don't mourn, organise', perhaps.
The insanely catchy Add Me appears to be a new one on a lot of the crowd, and its treatment of the modern world – it's about adding people as myspace friends – with a healthy dose of bathos leaves it another one hit wonder that got away. Also from the new album, I Wish They'd Sack Me brings hope for escape of any kind from the daily working routine, El Fusilado tells the tale of Wenseslao Moguel surviving the firing squad, All Fur Coat And No Knickers deals with the ongoing commercialisation of anything that can be trademarked, branded or otherwise repackaged and oversold, in this case featuring the Theatre Of Dreams™. Between these newer songs there are older songs, sometimes just everyone singing, sometimes marshalled by various combinations of Lou's siren voice, Neil's guitar, Jude's trumpet, Boff's guitar and singing (and a shirt that's inviting an obvious gag that I'm trying to rise above), and Phil Moody's accordion to fill out the sound a little in places.
And that's really all it needs – I wouldn't say that those members of the electric band that aren't here are disruptive so much as that the music breathes easily in an acoustic environment, and the lack of plugging in/tuning up/swapping stuff around makes the whole thing run with a slick professionalism that crucially fits in a couple more songs over an hour and a half. Which is what it's all about for me, and I leave with probably my biggest haul of merchandise from a gig in years – three CDs and a book is mildly extravagant, but then again, bought this way the money goes most directly to the source without record shops or anyone else needing their cut.
Fabulous, life-affirming, celebratory goodness, and among an admittedly limited number, gig of the year so far for me.
Is a quote that's amused me greatly, admittedly from someone I generally find amusing, on the subject of why people have blogs.
And can I offer a better answer? Well, for me it makes it possible to remember all sorts of things from one year to the next, and allows me to keep track of what I thought about bands in slightly greater detail than a general, vague positive/negative impression. It also allows me the self-indulgence that my ever-expanding wardrobe can exist in some real world way that means it isn't just confined to these four walls, and when that's a subject that comes with a history of all sorts of secrecy and until recent years the sort of A Big Deal nature that makes things a lot more difficult than they perhaps need to be, then that makes a big difference.
In some ways, the discipline required to beat something into sentences that turn out be coherent to someone else is a worthy enough end. I've read enough interviews with musicians to understand where the cliche of 'making music to satisfy oneself and if anyone else likes it, that's the proverbial bonus' comes from. I have a reasonable feel for the small amount of traffic that comes here, and it's split between people searching for bands or musicians I've seen and blogged about, and a handful of people I've either directed here myself or who have found me using their own initiative.
It's also clear that people fall out of the habit of blogging, or run out of things to say, or have some other reason for letting things fall quiet. For this reason I'm keeping my own set of links to blogs I've read at some point, so I can keep an eye on any activity there from time to time.
But whatever brings you here, I'm glad if you've managed to get this far without moving swiftly on, and if you've anything to say for yourself then I'm happy to hear it.
The subject of Journey has come up before, more than once, and this week it's been brought to my attention that I could be in a box office queue for tickets to see them making another trip to the UK this summer. I emphasise could.
A cynic might suggest that the sole attraction of touring the UK at a time when one unit of local currency gets two US$ rather than the 1.2 or 1.3 it might have done some years back is pretty self-evident.
With any band that's in its fourth decade, some change of personnel is more or less inevitable, people change and it's pretty normal for nobody to stay in any job for that length of time so that's no big deal.
However, when a band's creative identity is based around certain members in particular, it is also inevitable that things may change when one of those leaves. Marillion with Fish and with Hogarth are two entirely different bands, and both have plenty of merit. But if they'd tried to replace Fish with a Fish impressionist, I reckon it's a safe bet they wouldn't still be the creative force they are today.
Since Steve Perry stopped being the singer in Journey, Journey have had a problem in the lead singer department. If you count Gregg Rolie's very early work, they have had six lead singers and even in the context of thirty-something years that doesn't sound too horrific. But somehow the prospect of seeing a Journey band with its third different lead singer inside just over twenty four months doesn't have me racing towards the box office at top speed just yet.
