Sunday, October 30, 2005

madeleine peroux @ the barbican



when madeleine peroux walked out onto stage, i hate to admit it but i was disappointed.

i had no idea what she was going to look like – i suppose i expected something between a femme fatale and a banshee to house that incredible smoky voice, but in fact, she looked like an averagely attractive woman with brown hair, opting for the safe option in black trousers.

of course, this is nothing compared to my disappointment at myself.

there’s something disgusting about the fact that i expected her to be ethereal and other-worldly, abhorrent proof that i buy into all the crap about image over music. it seems to be an occupational hazard – being a girl with a guitar. even if you’re kick-ass fantastic, when you walk out on stage at Glastonbury, as did PJ Harvey, in a tight union jack geri-halliwell style dress, all anybody talks about is what you were wearing. bjork – innovative, groundbreaking, earth-shattering dance/punk artist suddenly becomes an “Icelandic pixie” who once looked a bit like a swan. tori amos – rip your heart out and spit in your eye amazing – but she does sing about (wait for the slightly dubious eyebrow raise) feminist stuff. the music press really needs to grow up – as, it would appear, do i.

i guess i’m sharing my shame as i think its something worth thinking about. we don’t love our rock stars half so much if they’re well-adjusted with loving wives and kiddies – see Chris Martin – mocked for his hemp-wearing, eco-loveliness, but whose life reflects that of every self-satisfied music journalist. weraing our ironic t-shirts, we fall over ourselves for pete doherty, despite the fact that without carl barat he’s, frankly, bollocks live. fuck forever has to be one of the single most smugly juvenile songs ever written.


bah humbug - i remember the days when songs about getting wasted were good – and a darn sight more accurate - iggy pop “nightclubbing” anyone?

But how was madeleine peroux i hear you ask? her voice has a slightly harsher, more feline edge live, and she has one of the most fantastic relationships with her band – there’s no “look at me!” high jinks – each musician was pushed to the front for some great solos and it really was like watching a proper band. as a performance, it was quite relaxed, but of course, tight, polished without being dull and very very accomplished. as i have proved with this post, madeleine peroux
has more depth in the bottom of her coffee cup than i have in my entire body, soul, heart and mind.

and she is so, so, so, so, way, way, way better than katie *bloody* melua and nora *snoring* jones – please stop associating them, madeleine belongs with billie holiday and nina simone.

expensive wine, sublime evening.

Saturday, October 29, 2005

road to nowhere - young @ heart chorus


minifig and I went to see road to nowhere today. a twenty-strong company from massachusetts, ranging from 73 to 92 years old, the young @ heart chorus are a joyous, and incredibly moving group of people. although they aren’t all exceptional singers, young @ heart have a real integrity and depth, which they bring to some of pop music’s greatest tunes. okay, so it’s quirky and cute to see old folks sing lou reed’s ‘walk on the wild side’, but seeing a chorus of grandparents singing talking heads' road to nowhere or the clash’s lost in the supermarket transforms songs associated with disaffected youth into incredibly poignant reflections. i enjoyed a silent, consistent weep through ruby tuesday to a day in the life right through to fake plastic trees: it was brilliantly heartbreaking. and okay, cheap shot, but the ramones's I wanna be sedated was just crying out to be sung! the show really is testament to the fact that the greatest songs are those with the most room for interpretation, and without wanting to make you all gag, the young @ heart chorus really are one of the most life-affirming acts i have seen. golden years indeed.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

my mum is the greatest

my mum is my heroine. i just called her on the telephone. she is in china, and she has just completed her walk of the Great Wall for Cancer Research. she is a beautiful, strong and amazing woman and i am so proud of her that i think you should all know about it. if you go out for Sunday lunch today, raise a glass for my mum and drink to her good health and happiness. she is awesome.

gush gush gush

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

hard-fi @ camden electric ballroom


minifig and i went to see hard-fi at the camden electric ballroom today. because minifig and i are such seasoned gig-goers, we’ve becoming increasingly blasé about seeing the latest quick bright things, so although we always arrive early, if at all possible, we go and bag a seat at the back near the bar and the loos. what a pair of old farts. leccy ballroom has a handy balcony above the stage, with its own bar and easy access to the bathroom, with bar stools and a table-football thingy that directly faces the stage. you can see the crowd mosh away whilst sipping your lager on a bar stool like lady muck, and after a long day at work I LOVE IT!

support from director and distophia (pronounced dystopia -what a stupid spelling, anyone trying to look up the band will have immensetrouble). director were actually very good, but fit too well into the militant art-rock style of editors and franz ferdinand – and familiarity breeds contempt, or at the very least, boredom. distophia were like poor-man’s brummie nine black alps mixed with a flavouring of old-school grunge. they were okay – better perfomers than director, but overall, i don’t think we made any great discoveries.

Boasting section

Bands I have seen in support slots:

Franz Ferdinand (genius – you knew they were going to be HUGE)
Bloc Party (okay-ish, very student garage band)
The Magic Numbers (sublime – again….it was only a matter if time)
Beck & DJ Shadow (supporting The Verve at Haigh Hall – class gig - with fireworks!)
Tom Vek (dull, supporting Graham Coxon, who was also later joined on stage by Pete Doherty)
Kid Carpet (bloody genius – go see him Friday 28th at the Barfly)
Antony from A & Johnsons performing with Lou Reed – wondrous strange
The Subways – aw, they’re so cute
The Mystery Jets / Eastern Lane – ubiquitous support bands of whom I am very fond

Dude, I am cooooooool.
(I am blatantly not)

as minifig points out on his blog, the dj between sets was boogie-licious! i appreciate a proper live dj, mixing up music properly, as opposed to just the same old CD repeated. the set was carefully chosen - the clash, the specials, nice dub beats, all very fitting for a hard-fi gig. the band did their time coming onstage though – it was nearly an hour between distophia and hard-fi, and when they did, middle eastern holiday wasn’t that good – bit rushed, bit slurred – but thankfully, things improved quickly from there.

when i first heard hard-fi’s album stars of cctv i thought it was brilliant. then I listened to it some more and found it flawed. but returning to it, the things i disliked about hard-fi are the things that make them great. their music is deceptively simple. they sing about crap jobs, all-night drinking, young offender’s institutes, drug addiction, mischief-making and all-round laddish bhevaiour. the album at times feels like a daily-mail front-page headline [i hate the f**king daily mail], at other times a slightly ridiculous exaggeration of urban estate-life. but its also incredibly genuine – it hits the nerve of anyone under the age of 30, living in britian, working 9am-5pm, with a penchant for pubs and flashes of behaviour that are two steps away from an ASBO (anti-social behaviour order for those outside the UK). Anyone young with half a heartbeat and a fluctuating bank balance will - or should - stick this CD on and feel a little bit more awake and smile heartily.

watching a crowd of people, screaming the “No! No!
” chorus in cash machine, followed by the gloriously punk music-hall chorus “There’s a hole in my pocket, my pocket, my pocket!” made me feel more connected to the gangs of miserable whey-faced commuters i join each day on my way to and from work. i felt happy to be young, despite the fact i was shattered from work. i had spent the train journey to camden locked in a southwest train carriage full of boozed-up teenagers in ben sherman shirts and mini-skirts, drinking neat vodka and screaming joyously. it was slightly irritating at the time, but by the end of the gig, i couldn’t help but think the state of youth today isn’t so bad – it’s riotously awake and stupid and exactly how it should be. hard-fi are rambunctious, noisy and boisterous. young, dumb and full of .... it’s a privileged position to be in.

hard-fi’s d.i.y. quality is impressive – the entire album was produced by the boys themselves and its arguably one of the best produced albums all year - little bit dirty, quite flashy at times, but has escaped the death-kiss of over-production. unlike kt tunstall, who might be okay, i can't tell, because a vampire appears to have sucked the life-blood out of her radio-friendly dribble.

hard-fi's oh-so-english, nostalgic dub and reggae tinges snatched from the clash and the specials gives the music a real edge - it's the music your cooler older brother listened to, the music hanging around when you were a kid. This, matched with the slightly cheesy, sweaty disco jubilance of tracks like gotta reason and hard to beat all help to take you from your seat on the commuter train to a trashy club on vodka and red-bull. this is truly uplifting head-space to be in.

plus, these hard-fi boys are mini-street poets. okay, so it doesn't always work, but each song has a little narrative running through it – broken relationships with nasty girls, an amazing one-night stand transformed into a glorious love affair, the pop-opera of drugs to self destruction that is feltham is singing out, money issues exacerbated by an unplanned pregnancy – stars of CCTV is a garish comic-strip of youth that makes you want to drink, dance and brawl. like a gorgeous overblown episode of ibiza uncovered mixed with a spaghetti western hard-fi fulfill all your saturday night needs.

we need bands like hard-fi – stop all the interior musing, the “clever” samples and “ironic” lyrics for just five minutes and have a right rare knees-up people! even if you are an old fart, like me and minifig...

and i still maintain, living for the weekend is the worst song on the entire album.
but the cheeky little piano solo on stars of cctv makes up for it