Low/Radiohead (Bergamo Arena, Italy)

I’d initially been really excited about the fact that Low was opening for Radiohead. I missed Low’s gig at the Union Chapel earlier this year because it was Valentine’s Day weekend and I grudgingly recognized the need to do something romantic rather than drag long-suffering Alec to yet another gig. The sacrifice was more than worthwhile, but I always hoped I’d get another chance to see Low, and this was it. The problem was that their beautiful, deliberative harmonies were completely incompatible with a jabbering crowd of people who didn’t seem to give a damn about them. Little Argument With Myself, so well-suited to late nights alone in my room, lying on the bed in the dark waiting for sleep, just didn’t work in a huge outdoor venue. With twilight more than an hour away, that sublime climax of “Cos there’s nothing as sad as a man on his back counting STARS” fell flat, or at least it was hard for me to feel much while trying to shut out the clamouring Italians around me. Oh well. Great band, wrong place and time. A pity.

So finally, Radiohead. What can I say except that they were a dream come true, and by this I don’t mean the kind of dream where all my teeth are falling out and I can taste the blood but the kind where I’m roller-blading and I’m amazing, I can jump and turn and land and do all the cool stunts, but of course I’m not weighed down by all that pesky safety gear ‘cos I don’t need it, I’m amazing, and at the end I even start to fly.

Here’s a setlist:

  • There there
  • 2+2 = 5 (Thom swats flies which keep clustering around the mike, nice parallel with “I swat em like flies but like flies the buggers keep coming back” in the song although I don’t think he could possibly have planned it.)
  • Lucky
  • Talk Show Host
  • Scatterbrain
  • The National Anthem
  • Backdrifts
  • Sail To The Moon
  • Kid A
  • Bones
  • Where I End and You Begin
  • I Might Be Wrong
  • Fake Plastic Trees
  • A Punchup at a Wedding
  • Paranoid Android (Thom: “This is a song called Paranoid Android.” As if you needed to name it.)
  • Idioteque
  • Everything In Its Right Place
  • The Gloaming
  • Pyramid Song
  • My Iron Lung
  • Like Spinning Plates
  • Exit Music (For A Film)
  • Sit down. Stand up.
  • Karma Police

The feelings of inadequacy that plague me every time I try to write about music are slapping me around the head with a vengeance here. I feel almost, well, unworthy to review a Radiohead concert. We are not on the same musical plane, they and I. They make music and I learn to like it, it’s that simple. This doesn’t require much effort, but I sometimes need a fair amount of time to get my head round the music, which leads me to the first thing I was going to say.

Most of the songs sounded pretty much similar to their studio recordings, which is not a bad thing given that their studio recordings sound bloody fabulous, but I guess I was hoping for more radical reworkings. I’d have quite liked to work more to figure out the songs, rather than recognize them instantly from the start. On the other hand, this may not be the best way to do a big outdoor summer gig which people don’t expect to be “difficult”. So I’m not too sure what to make of their rather happy romping versions of Kid A and Everything In Its Place. They were certainly interesting to listen to, but they featured nothing I’d liked about the recordings. The piano version of Like Spinning Plates, however, was heartstopping.

In general, HappyThom was the order of the evening, dancing like a loon to Idioteque, doing Karma Police like a massive goodbye singalong with none of the claustrophobia or despair of the album version, no venom at all in the middle section of Paranoid Android where he used to spit “Kicking squealing Gucci little piggy.” Dancing crazily is rather endearing, but I’d have rather liked a bit of the old bitterness in the latter two.

This isn’t to say that everything was sweet and fuzzy. Guitars went mad in Backdrifts, which is even more fantastic live than it is on the album. The National Anthem, Bones, and I Might Be Wrong rocked hard, and the buildup in Sit Down Stand Up to the frenetic “The raindrops” climax was brilliantly agonizing.

Would I have changed some songs in the set? Well, yes. I’d have taken out Scatterbrain, Kid A, Bones, Pyramid Song and My Iron Lung, but only because I like them less than Black Star, No Surprises, You And Whose Army (make that most of Amnesiac, actually), I Will and Wolf At The Door.

Okay. Enough of this attempt at objectivity, balance or good writing. I SAW RADIOHEAD!!! THEY PLAYED LOTS AND LOTS OF SONGS!!! I REALLY REALLY LOVE RADIOHEAD!!!

A Bellagio By Any Other Name

Although the main purpose of the Italy trip was a Radiohead gig in Bergamo to fulfil my dream of seeing them live before I leave, we also spent two days in the Italian Lakes. We based ourselves in Bellagio, a little village on Lake Como. If you imagine Lake Como (see this map for best guidance) as a lithe, sinuous dancing girl in mid-step, you will come to realize the exceptionally pleasing location of Bellagio.

On the first night, Alec presented me with an inflatable sheep. I have received many bizarre love tokens from this man, including purple punk whore boots and a cigarette with “I love you” written on it, but an inflatable sheep complete with mascara’d eyes, coquette-red lips, beauty spots and, er, orifice, did rather push the boundaries. He said he could explain. He said he’d been thinking about how annoyed I get when bad weather on holidays makes for lousy photographs, but remembered how much I like sheep, and so he decided to get me a sheep so that I’d be happy even if we ran into bad weather. I think I’ll name her Bellagio.

Moving Out

I’m hard-pressed to think of anything remotely entertaining about the final day of the move out of the flat, except that I went into Waterstone’s in search of a travel guide and instructed Russ, standing outside on a busy street carrying a hoover and its assorted tubes, to “try to blend in.” I could also mention his regular exclamations of “You know what I really like about cleaning? I really like _____” as he hoovered the entire flat with unbelievable meticulousness, scrubbed footprints off the walls, and picked up really gross stuff from behind Tamara’s couch, but that’s not entertaining, it’s just freaky. There’s also the way I packed the 3 little sheep in the box for the ghetto blaster that came at Christmas disguised as a big sheep, but on closer inspection the little sheep looked rather lost and sad.

In general, the day was one of those times where I realized how sheer personal will and capacity for exhaustion is sometimes just simply not enough for the task at hand, no matter how much you mutter “I think I can I think I can I think I can” and wear your superwoman underpants. Sometimes even independent Michelle needs other people. Russ to help me heft stuff to the charity shop, my shit to my new lodgings, a borrowed hoover back to the flat, hours of aforementioned cleaning. Alec to use up an entire bottle of carpet cleaner on our disgusting floors, return the hoover (carrying my laptop and a bag of random kitchen supplies at the same time), give me alcohol and sunflowers before I collapsed into bed.

We all had an 8.40 plane to Italy the next morning. Russ only got home after 1. He had to leave for the airport at 5. He got almost no sleep. He said it had been his pleasure to help me. The other night I was crying my eyes out at the thought of August 3, departure doomsday. Among other things, I was remembering this.

Packing Up

Whew. Handed in the dissertation on Tuesday. Am moving out of flat today. Going to Italy tomorrow to watch Radiohead. Hence recent silence.

The move so far has involved Alec in latex, James hanging out of windows, and later today, quite possibly Russ walking down the street cradling a very happy vacuum cleaner.

There’s something uniquely depressing about packing away the vestiges of a life you love in an empty flat. But at least with all the dust you have an excuse for the sniffles.

On a cheerier, more frivolous note, I cannot believe I am going to Milan (well, Bergamo to be exact, but Ryanair equates the two) at the precise point of time in my life when I have a total mullet head and seem to be going through a glut of Bad Face Days. It’s going to be pretty hard to avoid looking like a tourist.

Mainly For Accounting Purposes

I want to make quick notes about these few days, if only for the fact that if I don’t, I’ll forget how I managed to spend so much money and pass out when I get my bank statement.

Friday was relatively restrained. Dinner at good ol’ Sweet And Spicy never costs much more than £10 for both of us to stuff our faces. We decided to have a walk down to Columbia Road rather than go to the Califone gig I’d been pondering originally. We were looking for a drink, and wavered outside a particular pub. Peering in revealed an almost totally male clientele, and the fat slob staking out the pool table didn’t look as if he’d relinquish it willingly. Alec thought the place looked a bit loutish. Having had an awful day, I was, however, in dire need of alcohol, so we went in. The first thing I noticed was that it was playing George Michael. The second was that the bartender was a little camp and looked at us funny when we ordered drinks. The third was that the one woman I’d seen when I peered in appeared on closer inspection to have rather rugged features and didn’t seem to be wearing her own hair. When we left, everyone was singing “Anything you can do I can do better” and the slob was dancing.

Saturday being the day hippies were staking out Stonehenge, we decided to go to Greenwich for the summer solstice. Or at least, we walked through Greenwich Park to Blackheath, and toasted the summer solstice from the artificially-lighted insides of a rather nice microbrewery.

On Sunday I managed to visit Spitalfields market and only spend £10 (a T-shirt). All was going well, but then that night’s attempts to see electronica maestros Four Tet and Prefuse 73 at Plastic People fell through when the gig got totally sold out in advance, so we went to The Elbow Room instead for two hours of pool and several rounds of drinks. Team composition shifted constantly, and despite playing 5 or 6 games, some partnering Nick, and others partnering Alec, I can’t remember if my team ever won.

Monday was the first Tony Hawks day, which wasn’t the best intellectual preparation for Brand that night. But I must confess my motivations for seeing the play weren’t entirely intellectual to begin with. The Independent review begins thus: “Casting an actor of such extreme gorgeousness as Ralph Fiennes in the title role of Brand somewhat undermines the plausibility and point of Ibsen’s tormented hero,” to which I say undermine away, Ralph baby, you were scorching, which is impressive for any performance in a Norwegian play. (I am actually capable of deep commentary on the play, but I’m saving my deep commentary skills today for deconstructing the respective Canadian, US and German approaches to content neutrality in free speech adjudication.)

Tuesday wasn’t meant to be stupidly indulgent at all, but then I went and read the second Tony Hawks book, and a dinner trek with Alec to the seedier bits of King’s Cross ended up decidedly non-seedily in The Perseverance with blackened cajun salmon on a bed of rocket and cherry tomatoes, eton mess with assorted berries for dessert, and a lovely Rioja.

Yesterday I met Jiawen and Gwen for dinner at Little Bay (lovely, I’ll definitely be back). Today I’m watching Henry V. On Friday Benny’s doing a birthday thing. On Saturday I’m going to the Bridget Riley exhibition at the Tate Britain with Russ. I am fervently hoping nothing comes up on Sunday or Monday. And on Tuesday the damn dissertation is due, whether or not I have finished writing it.

The One Where Alec Does Strange Things With Food

The other day he popped out to get us some lunch. Standing in line in the cafe, reading the sandwich menu, he was delighted to see “fried banana” under “sausage” in the list of sandwich ingredients you could have. Elsewhere in his culinary explorations, he cooks a mean breadcrumbed bacon steak in whisky sauce, and apparently an alternative to the whisky sauce (although somehow we’ve never deviated from the booze route, you wonder why) you can actually do the bacon with fried banana.

So he reaches the counter, and happily orders a ham and fried banana sandwich, whereupon the poor confused cashier who is probably on the minimum wage and really doesn’t need this kind of weirdness goes “Huh?” and Alec rechecks the menu only to realize that it actually read “Fried sausage” and “Banana” rather than “Sausage” and “Fried banana”, banana presumably being sold in its capacity as fruity accompaniment to sandwich rather than actually lurking within, but by now it’s too late and he’s a bit confused too, so he says yes, he wants a ham and banana sandwich, and he gets this ham and banana sandwich and takes it back to the flat and says here, Michelle, a ham and banana sandwich.

Meanwhile, until recently there was a huge watermelon with a funnel in it on my dining table, and a bottle of Smirnoff. He was trying to infuse the melon with vodka.

Unhappily Distracted

When you are one week away from dissertation deadline, and are so worried about being wastefully distracted from your finely-honed dissertation production routine that you have taken the dramatic step of packing up laptop, books, photocopied articles and a couple days’ worth clothing and hefting it all to Alec’s hopefully distraction-free flat, you don’t expect to find yourself having read two entire non-dissertation material books in two days at the end of it all.

Given that the last author you mentioned reading on this site was Salman Rushdie, it is even less expected that these two books will both have been written by Tony Hawks. Let me explain.

On Monday I wanted something to read over breakfast, and surveyed Alec’s bookcase. I should say, for the sake of fairness, that it does contain many fine volumes brimming with literary merit, but I don’t like that over breakfast when I am trying to write a dissertation, which is why I decided The Vision Of Dante (1894 edition, respect!), and Baudelaire, The Complete Verse would have to wait. Here were some of my other options:

  • Classic Irish Whisky, Jim Murray. Too basic. After all, I am an authority on Classic Irish Whisky Breath and have no need for such entry-level efforts.
  • The Catechism Of The Catholic Church. Perhaps some other time.
  • The Story Of Lucy Gault, William Trevor. I would have read this, but after Two Lives recently felt like struggling my way through a literary quicksand of depression and tragedy, I need a little time before my next foray into William Trevor world.
  • Playing The Moldovans At Tennis, Tony Hawks

Well, there you go then. It was riveting. I confessed my daytime exploits to Alec who found this highly amusing given my usual literary pretension.

On Tuesday I wanted something to read over breakfast, and surveyed the bookcase again. Here were further options:

  • Les Miserables (Volume Two). No volume one. Go figure.
  • On The Genealogy Of Morals, Nietzsche. A gift from me, I must confess. He read it politely. I owe me no such politeness.
  • The Ultimate Pipe Book, Richard Carleton Hacker. See entry for Classic Irish Whisky.
  • Round Ireland With A Fridge, Tony Hawks.

So Alec calls at lunch and asks solicitously how I’m doing with the dissertation. “Well,” I venture with quavering, self-hating voice, “Tony’s just left Ennistymon, they wanted to take the fridge scuba-diving but thought better of it in the end.”

Hail To The Thief – First Impressions

On first three listens to Hail To The Thief, the songs which are standing out to me are Backdrifts, I Will and Wolf At The Door. But anything could happen between now and 7 July (when, after four years of trying and failing to get Radiohead tickets because they sell out in this country within 10 minutes, I’ll finally, finally, finally get to see the band live, although I’ll have to go to Italy for it). Meanwhile, I haven’t been this excited about listening to a new release (by any artist) since, well, Amnesiac, and there’s a whole 56.37 minutes’ worth of fascinating sounds to explore here, plus supercool limited edition roadmap packaging and sleeve notes! (Just grant me this small joy, will you, I’m writing a fucking dissertation.)

Recipe

[I meant to post this about the weekend.]

Have picnic lunch on Regent’s Park grass, then stroll through the park taking in London panorama on Primrose Hill. Leisurely consume several pints and packets of addictive pork scratchings over the Sunday papers in a pub with jazz band and immensely endearing bulldog. Add good company in the form of Alec and Matt.

Stir and serve on Sunday.

Enjoy.

[Can you tell I am trying not to write an essay?]

Fury (Salman Rushdie) – First Impressions

Fury contains an overwhelming maelstrom of socio-economic-cultural-political-philosophical-mythological-literary-you-name-it-he-references-it references Rushdie pulls out and brandishes before the (probably, well anyway I am) less well-read reader.

My first reaction to this is to feel very stupid. I mean yeah, when he talks of Spinoza and Derrida, I know they’re philosophers; when he refers to Alex Portnoy and Mr Roth I know he means Philip; and when he mentions Jil Sander power suits and Marcus Schenkenberg hell yeah I know what he’s talking about there, but when he describes a building with a cornerstone etching of “to Pythianism”, I’m afraid I must admit I was unaware that this was a clash of Greek and Mesopotamian metaphors, or that Pytho was the ancient name of Delphi, or that Pythian verse is written in the dactylic hexameter, so thank you for telling me, Mr Rushdie.

My second reaction is that he’s trying a little too hard. In describing a girl, I don’t quite get the need to include that she is wearing a black D’Angelo Voodoo baseball cap, except so that Rushdie can say look at me peeps, I still got love fo’ the streets. When describing a commercial featuring a group of fashionable vampires wearing Ray-Bans, I don’t quite get the need to explain that “thanks to Buffy on TV, vampires were hot”. It’s something I noted about The Ground Beneath Her Feet as well. I can’t say there’s anything wrong with it, it’s just that I have this recurring mental image of Salman Rushdie doing Dr Evil’s “I’m cool…I’m hip…t-chk-a-chk-a-chk-a etc.” routine, and it’s kinda scary.

But it’s early days yet. I’m only 49 pages into the book, and although I may poke a little fun at him now and then, Salman Rushdie is still a writer whose mastery and flair with the English language makes me quail and kowtow and wonder why the hell anyone ever bothers reading this website when they could be reading Salman Rushdie.