This
weekend seems shorter of hours than usual, so there's only time to
record in dispatches a few gigs that have previously gone
unmentioned. I'll try to have something more substantive next time. A
modernist art exhibition that shook up art over a century ago or a
Hollywood movie that doesn't really make much sense, something like
that. (Disclaimer: “more substantive” doesn't imply more
up-to-date.)
Graham
Coxon (seen here saying “ooh yeh yeh”) was of
course instrumental in turning Blur from a godawful Britpop act into
a pretty decent band. (I'd say at that point “before going solo”
but, unbeknownst to me, he actually recorded three solo albums before
that.) I don't normally like guitarists going solo as they tend to...
well, solo, but Coxon's a great songwriter and
even when he went for guitar breaks it felt right rather
than indulgent. It's too far back to say anything clever or
insightful about this gig now (23rd April at the Concorde)
but it was a great night. (No YouTube clips seem to capture a whole
number, alas.)
Sometimes
you need to see a gig outside of Brighton to get back that sense of
an occasion. That it's more about everyone getting
together for a knees-up, and less about seeing some band, going home
and writing a clever blog post about it afterwards. In such a spirit
I once more trusted myself to the 2A bus to see The
Men They Couldn't Hang at the Ropetackle Arts
Centre, in Shoreham-by-Sea (Saturday 12th May 2012). Insofar as I can
recall, the first time I've seen them since the late Eighties.
The
Number One cool thing about this band (you know, apart from their
music) is that they're such a motley array. Spy them separately and
you'd never guess that bunch of people were in a band together. And
only the banjo player (on the left) looks like he should actually be
in a folk-punk band.
This
great gig was only mildly marred by guitarist Cush (to the right)
endlessly admonishing the crowd and treating us to harangues about
not reading the Murdoch press and the like, including during songs.
(Example here.)
This
may well be the fifth time I've seen the inimitable Damo
Suzuki and the second time I've seen him both
with AK/DK and at the Green
Door Store (on Tuesday 19th June). Though the line-up was
rejigged, and instead of a violinist Anne Shenton (off Add N to X)
brought along her theremin.
I may
have liked this night more than the last (as spoken of here.) My only caveat would be that AK/DK are
already quite a Krautrock-influenced unit, so (despite being entirely
improvised) it's still the sort of thing you might expect everyone
assembled to do. Of course I love circular drum patterns as much as
the next man, in fact considerably more so. But when I've seen Damo
with other musicians (or in his parlance “sound carriers”)
there's been more a sense of bold new adventures., of new styles
being hit on out of sheer extemporisation. Randomness = results.
(Check out this random YouTube clip I came across.)
No-one
seems to have uploaded any vids of that particular night, so here's
the self-same clip I posted over it's predecessor. Still, a good cast
is worth repeating and you can hear some of it here.
Since
you asked (okay you didn't), I'm mostly listening to Current 93's
'Thunder Perfect Mind', Beth Gibbons and Rustin
Man's 'Out of Season', At the Drive-In's
'Relationship of Command' and, inevitably enough,
Can. (But not as yet the
fabled Lost Tapes. I'm still figuring out how I'm going to
afford getting those. Any suggestions? I'm currently trying to limit
my options to legal ones...)
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