Snippets: Brighton, Calla Gig, Lake District

I have no time to write properly about the weekend in Brighton. It was great cheesy fun. Deep fried donuts and silly screaming on the rides, chilly sea winds, warm man, the sky on fire at dusk.

I have no time to write properly about the gig I went to on Monday at the Water Rats. Three bands: Mogul, The Bookoo Project, Calla. I was there to see Calla, expecting whispers and buzzing strings and bluesy moodiness. I got pulsing walls of sound and emphatic guitars. Worth far more than the £4 the gig cost, and also every penny of the two albums arriving soon in the post.

I have no time because it is now 3 AM. I have spent the last few hours giving my room a crash course in cleanliness. My sister arrives from Singapore at 6 AM, and we get on a train to the Lake District four hours later. (Note to self: some time before then, pack.)

So see you all on Monday, then, and have a good weekend. I expect mine will be muddy.

The Real Losers/The Project/Magoo (Arts Cafe, London)

These bands played at the Arts Cafe last Saturday. Here’s a quickie:

  • The Real Losers: competent if not exhilarating punk. Funny moments when audience members, hopefully their friends, would shout things like “Go on yer losers!” and “Fucking losers!”
  • A strummy singer guy from NYC: needs singing and guitar lessons, which I realize is quite damning criticism to give a strummy singer type of performer, but he was really no Elliot Smith.
  • The Project: electropoppyweirdrock featuring girl with disembodied voice duetting with big-haired expressionless guy. Fascinating and unusual listening even to this jaded ear.
  • Magoo: bloody amazing, I haven’t been so blown away by a band I wasn’t previously familiar with since Asian Dub Foundation three years ago taught me to like drum’n’bass. Capable of crashing walls of sound and fragile balladry with equal panache. Apparently a new album is due July 23rd, and I’m assuming they’d have played songs from it. It’s going on the wishlist.

Public Enemy (Forum, London)

I’ve seen Public Enemy live, muthafuckaaaaas……

Ahem. Sorry, I realize not everyone reading this will regard such experiences as seminal. But let me take this in steps. First, they’re PUBLIC ENEMY, MUTHAFUCKAAAAAAS! Second, back in the days when for me, buying an album, any album, was an investment of staggering financial significance, It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back was the first hip-hop album I ever bought. I know the same could be said for countless other wannabe music eclecticists who did….did..did…..did believe the hype, but let me point out that I spent these formative years in Singapore, where most Beastie Boys albums (and Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope, for crying out loud) were banned until recently. Dammit, it took real commitment for a kid like me in Singapore to become an annoying music snob. Third, it became increasingly obvious in later years that my taste in MCs seems to have been indelibly moulded by the stentorian sounds of Chuck D. To this day, there is no MC I find as compelling.

Public Enemy have still got it. By the time Nick, Benny and I had got absolutely knackered from the sheer intensity of their performance, Griff was still doing quintuple kung fu kicks across the stage, Flav was crowd-surfing, and Chuck D was still sprinting everywhere bellowing. Some bits got a little self-indulgent, like Flav promoting his new album, and going on and on and on at the end about how the war was fucked, and how we had to raise our fingers in the peace sign, and then join them to signify togetherness, and then clench our fists to signify the power of togetherness, but I guess that’s something you have to expect from a rap group which are about more than gold chains and ho’s.

Other worthy features of the evening were masterful performances from supporting acts Killa Kela and Kool Keith. Killa Kela’s gotten even better since the last time I saw him. I suppose people in the beatboxing loop would say he’s still got some way to go before he reaches the dizzy heights of Rahzel or Doug E. Fresh, but I ain’t never heard of them beatboxing speed drum’n’bass before, ‘aaaight? Also noteworthy was his rendition of Britney’s I’m A Slave 4 U complete with gasping orgasmic vocals.

So that was another ridiculously worthwhile gig for the list. I’m seeing El-P and Murs next week, and I haven’t even written about the amazingness of Magoo on Saturday. And Calla are playing at the Water Rats in May. And I’m seeing Nick Cave in June. There are many other ways in life of being a sad geek, but all this certainly works well enough for me.

Cheerleader/Corrigan (Water Rats, London)

I’d never heard of any of the bands playing at the Water Rats on Thursday night, but decided that for £4 and a jaunt just around the corner, I’d take the risk and believe Time Out, where Cheerleader were described as “Buzzcocks and Pixies-styled noise” and Corrigan as “zinging post-punk and cinematic post-rock…variously recalls Magazine, Slint, Joy Division and Shellac.”

Cheerleader put on a show that deserved a much bigger audience than the 20 or so people watching it. Good songs that were catchy but not samey, occasional Frank Black-esque screaming from the guy, strong charismatic lead vocals, and both vocalists sounded great together; in general a solidly competent performance head and shoulders above some of the crap I have found myself watching in disbelief in the past (Mull Historical Society, this means you).

Corrigan was…intriguing. I’ve never seen a band that seemed so disconnected from its lead singer. The rest of the band looked the indie-rock part, shaved heads, spiked hair, cool faded T-shirts etc. As for the lead singer, I have difficulty describing what he was like without being probably rather offensive, but if you’ve ever watched Will And Grace, picture Jack in an rock band.

None of the band ever seemed to look at each other, and completely ignored the antics of the lead singer and his attempts to commune with them. I didn’t quite see the influences of Slint or Joy Division that Time Out saw, but must admit ignorance with regard to Magazine and Shellac, who are still on my long list of Canonical Bands I Should Probably Get Around To Listening To At Some Point For The Sake Of My Own Indie Cred. All the same, the band played cohesively if non-interactively, and I mostly liked what I heard. My problem was that I didn’t think the lead singer’s vocals (kind of like Billy Corgan but without the edge) went with the band’s type of sound, which, come to think of it, would have worked well with an Ian Curtis type of voice (so maybe Time Out was right to use “post-punk” after all).

So I think what I’m left with for this band is that I won’t personally be keen on them unless they change their lead singer, but they do deserve to go on to bigger things. (If you think about it, I’m sure a lot of people watching the Smashing Pumpkins starting out could have said exactly the same thing.)

Four quid well spent.

The Roots (Jazz Cafe, London)

The Roots. At the Jazz Cafe. Last night. Seamless. Seminal. Wow.

That’s the condensed version. Let the gibbering version begin by saying I’m a little worried: I might just have seen the best gig of my year already, although I’m hoping Sigur Ros and Massive Attack will prove me wrong. And there’s always the hope of a Pavement reunion tour (ha bloody ha)…

We begin with the venue. If you were more than 20 metres from the stage you’d have been really unlucky. I’m so glad I jumped at the chance to see them at the Jazz Cafe instead of in the vastness of Brixton Academy on March 29.

I suppose the quickest way to describe the performance is that The Roots live are every bit as amazing as you’ve heard they are. Half the time they’re a band that rocks harder than any of the NME’s latest “The ______s” darlings. The rest of the time they’re pretending not to be a band any more but a collection of classic records in the dextrous hands of a turntablist, except that they’re live musicians rather than recorded sounds, and Rahzel’s not using his hands. He’s “scratching” MC Black Thought’s rapping. He’s sampling. He’s cross-fading. I run out of DJing knowledge to describe most of what he’s doing, but the important thing I need to stress here to the uninitiated is that he’s using his mouth. The only other time I’ve seen live beatboxing was Killa Kela doing a solo gig at Cargo, which didn’t prepare me at all for the way The Roots fit it all together. Other highlights included their alternate ragga, ska and heavy metal versions of You Got Me, their ‘tribute’ to Jam Master Jay where they pretended to be Run DMC posing for a photo session, and the call-and-response bonus track from Phrenology for the encore.

Okay. I now redescend to essay-writing hell, but God bless The Roots for that brief foray into hip-hop heaven.

Dinner Parties And DJ Shadow Gigs

The frustrating thing is that while I was drifting through the world on autopilot (see previous post) I was actually doing lots of fun things, which I probably didn’t appreciate as fully as they deserved.

We had a dinner party of sorts on Friday – Tamara pulled off an impressive three-course feat a few weeks ago, and Alec wanted to return the favour. Avril, Chris, Kevin and me were just along for the ride, although I must mention that I tried to make myself useful in the kitchen by clearing rubbish, handing him things, and unsuccessfully breadcrumbing the bacon. (Note to self: must really make an effort to do the same at some point, although given current level of culinary skill, would be better off buying ready-meals from M&S and pretending to have cooked them.)

On Saturday we (me, Alec, Benny, assorted others) headed south to see DJ Shadow at the Brixton Academy. We missed the first two opening acts (Fingathing and Beanz from Antipop Consortium), which I was fairly disappointed about, because I had a feeling I’d have liked them more than Soulwax, who were good novelty fun but didn’t really get me dancing except for when they played Kool Thing (Sonic Youth) and It’s Hot In Here (Nelly, and I’m not ashamed). I’ve never really taken to The Prodigy’s Outer Space, and was even less fond of it last night when it prompted Wanker Lad behind me to convulsing, elbow-jabbing heights of ecstasy.

Shadow put on a good show, but as DJ gigs go I had more fun at Orbital, and still remember the Scratch Perverts being very much the shit when I saw them at Fabric Live a few years ago. To be fair, factors beyond his control were at work. When I hear a hip-hop beat I want to dance – by this logic, I would obviously have wanted to dance at many points during his performance. The problem is that he doesn’t really make the sort of hip-hop I like dancing to, he makes the sort of music I listen to on cold, late nights alone in my room, Organ Donor cascading down from the speakers and feeling like I’m the only one awake in the world to hear it. So I was torn, I guess. The atmosphere at the venue tempted me into dancing, but when I did I wasn’t really dancing the way I like to dance. I was also too short to be able to fully appreciate his visuals from where I was in the crowd, though what I saw of them when I craned my neck or tiptoed was good.

But as I said, none of that was his fault. He put in a solidly competent performance, included new spins on album tracks, and built a good rapport with the crowd, and I suppose that’s everything you want from a DJ gig. If I’d seen it before I left Singapore to come to the UK it would have absolutely blown my mind. After three years here, I recognize quality when I see it – and Shadow was most definitely quality – but I’ve also seen a lot of it, and I guess it’s hard to make me gibber these days, which I must say is worrying. Having said that, the next gig on the agenda is Fugazi (Nov 3), which will probably succeed in the gibbering sweepstakes, even if only because I am likely to spend most of it crushed to an inch of my life between sweaty, bald, tattooed hardcore punks.

Joshua Bell Playing Sibelius (Barbican, 2002)

Much shrieking was done on Wednesday night when, while browsing through a Barbican programme I’d picked up on a whim, I suddenly discovered that Joshua Bell was playing the Sibelius violin concerto tonight (BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sir Andrew Davis).

The first thing I’ll mention, with my usual “I’m not an expert BUT” disclaimer, is that the acoustics of the Barbican concert hall seemed as dreadful as legend has made them out to be (as the Telegraph puts it, “the last great exemplar of how not to build a concert hall“), despite the much-vaunted revamp. I shudder to think what it must have been like before. Sound seemed brittle and strangled, struggling to reach us like a tethered dog on a cruelly short leash. This rendered the Stravinsky programme opener more damp squibs than Fireworks, and Joshua Bell’s highest notes in the Sibelius sometimes got drowned by the orchestra.

I came home and listened to my recordings of the Stravinsky and Sibelius. The Stravinsky recording has all of the caprice and pizzazz that sputtered and died in the concert hall. The Sibelius is the classic Jascha Heifetz recording, and I was quite worried before tonight that because I’ve grown to love this particular one so much, that I’d be unable to appreciate Joshua Bell’s rendition for what it was. My concerns proved unfounded simply because he was brilliant enough to make comparison unnecessary, perhaps a little less note-perfect than Heifetz, but he brought out all the delicacy and poignance that the divine, divine first movement begs for, and delivered enough fiery virtuosic touches to keep the thrill-seeker in me happy as well, so no complaints at all.

And then we come to the second half of the evening. I am far from conservative and close-minded where it comes to taste in music, but Colin Matthews’ vile Renewal really did seem to tick all the stereotypical failure boxes of modern composition. I have no problems with dissonance and repetition, but I felt as if I was descending into a neverending quicksand of disharmony without ever touching ground. Writing in weird-tone scales is all very well for stoking intellectual libido, but it leaves the average listener with little or no awareness of when resolution or evolution takes place, much less any melodic pattern of notes that’s capable of staying in the mind. And I’m not even arguing this from the viewpoint of the aggrieved pleb. Having played for five years in an orchestra which regularly included modern compositions in its repertoire, I’d venture that while I’m far from being an expert, I do have a little more understanding of modern music than the average listener – not that it helped tonight.

After sitting stupefied for the first three minutes, Avril and I unfortunately started on one of our giggling episodes. These usually involve muffled hysteria, sometimes snorts, in all the most inappropriate situations. We managed to calm down after ten minutes of acute stomach pain, and thankfully only experienced sporadic outbursts of mirth over the next forty bloody minutes of the piece before its merciful end.

Pet Shop Boys (Singapore Indoor Stadium, August 2002)

At some point I really must write about the Sonic Youth gig I went to in my last weeks in London but for now I will be content with swearing undying love for the Pet Shop Boys, who I saw on Monday.

Due to my brother’s obsession with them, they were the soundtrack to my childhood. Before I was snarling Who’s bad? into hairbrushes I was crooning I love yoooou, you pay my rent, though obviously not even remotely understanding what the song was about at the time. I learnt the meanings of “suburbia” and “left to my own devices” from the Pet Shop Boys dictionary before I ever came across them in books. I think a big reason why I like vocoders is because they make everyone sound like Neil Tennant.

I will not make cowardly attempts to maintain indie cred and pretend I only like PSB because of their kitsch appeal. I did not sit coolly back at Monday’s gig, quirking my lip occasionally at oh, the 80ness of it all. No, I pumped my fists in the air and jumped around crazily for the I love you bay-bee section of Where The Streets Have No Name, pointed west for Go West, screamed out ALL the lyrics to Left To My Own Devices and would generally have domino danced the night away if they’d gone on that long.

Yish and I had initially been quite dismayed at finding out, after we’d bought our tickets, that this tour wouldn’t involve Lycra-clad dancers and other high-campness. But seriously, completely discounting what I just described myself doing in the above paragraph, there’s so much more I love about the Pet Shop Boys than that. I think the aspect of songcraft that involves matching lyrics with music that’s right for them is deceptively simple, and rarely well achieved. I’ve written about this before but let me elaborate: enjoying some bands really is all about the music for me – I don’t know most of the lyrics to my indie rock albums because they’re much less relevant to my appreciation of those albums than, say, the sound of a warping wall of guitar. Pavement can (and does) sing whatever meaningless burblings they want and I’ll still like listening to them. But there are other bands where the lyrics, even if they’re unimpressive on paper, are somehow so enmeshed with the music in my consciousness, that without those words the song is not the song I love. And apart from the Silver Jews and Simon and Garfunkel, no one else seems to do that as well for me as the Pet Shop Boys.

I think I just lost a lot of musical credibility. With, like, everyone.

The Week In Words

Every now and then you need a day of doing nothing, and that day is today. It’s been a week of always feeling the need to be doing something or other, keep moving Michelle, don’t waste the time you have here before you leave, get the most out of that Travelcard, but today – today calls for nothingness. For the first time since I got back from Germany the weather is fairly blah and hasn’t lured me outdoors. I’m mildly headachey and sore-throated from dehydration and a lot of sun at Wimbledon yesterday, and want to get over all that before I go to Xen at Cargo tonight. There’s also laundry. What probably seals it is that a gunman has taken someone hostage in the Amex building and most of central London is sealed off, so there you have it.

The morning has been lazy, with tea and Xfm and Don Camillo Meets Hell’s Angels (Giovanni Guareschi), which I discovered in Spitalfields market on Sunday and bought with glee, having read and loved most of the other books in the same series, but with all that out of the way and the laundry hung up to dry, I’m finally in front of the computer. I want to write about last week, but much like my record of the last week in Singapore last summer, it’s likely to bore anyone but me.

Tuesday:
I spent half an hour in silent prayer before the Lord in St Anne’s Church (off Brick Lane). This wasn’t exactly voluntary – Alec got the mass time wrong, so we were half an hour early – but turned out to be welcome. I’ve had a lot to be thankful for lately. Dinner was in Eat And Drink, because I was craving Chinese food – they do rather good sweet and sour fish, for anyone who’s interested.

Wednesday:
There’s something really endearing about the graffiti in and around Brick Lane, but I’ll save that for another day when I can upload pictures. I had lunch in Cafe 1001, great for people-watching and toasted foccacia sandwiches, but my cherry smoothie tasted mostly and strangely of banana. The evil, evil Laden Showroom wheedled me into parting with £30 for a pink appliqued skirt after trying on and reluctantly rejecting what must have amounted to at least £150 of other clothes. As I paid I half-expected to see the cash registered displaying “Soul” along with Visa as an accepted method of payment.

We wandered into Shoreditch after dinner, mingling with the mulleted at The Bricklayers’ Arms before try-out night at the Comedy Cafe, where Ria turned up wholly unexpectedly, complete with ukelele, as part of the lineup. She was great, but I don’t know if I’d go to a lot more try-out nights. The embarrassment I felt for other people who were failing miserably was so acute it was uncomfortable. A surreal gag I rather liked came from a guy who said a woman came up to him at a bar one day and said she’d love to have his children because his head was so small.

Thursday:
I couldn’t find the new Reckless Records outlet or the Ben Christophers gig, which were the two reasons I went to Camden in the first place, but Music And Video Exchange helped to ease the frustration by providing me with Rock Action (Mogwai, £5) and Morcheeba’s contribution to the Back To Mine series of compilations (£8). Singapore Sling’s Hainanese chicken rice was passable (chilli more piquant than is authentic, but rice and chicken tasted comfortingly familiar). Also, Alec acquired new ammunition for his long-running “People who share Michelle’s music taste are losers (this obviously includes Michelle)” campaign with the cancelling of the gig, so a good day was had by all.

Friday:
I spent early Friday morning watching England meandering out of the World Cup, although it was quite hard to actually make out what was happening in the game while peering at a small, distant TV in a packed pub through the space between some guy’s armpit and the game machine he’d propped his arm against.

Actual game aside, I do always feel that the cosy atmosphere of total and cheerfully irrational bias makes watching football in a pub an experience and a half. When Ronaldinho got sent off, the TV commentator observed that he’d helped make Brazil’s first goal, scored their second, and commented on the irony of him now being sent off. The pub crowd generally confined their observations to “SEND THEM ALL OFF, THE FUCKERS!” When Rivaldo was hamming it up after a tackle by writhing excessively on the ground, the commentators remarked on this as a growing trend in international football, and brought up other instances of such conduct by the Brazilians earlier in the match. A guy in the crowd was more succinct with the simplicity and forcefulness of “CUNT!”

Lunch was indulgent (Carluccio’s with Tamara). Tea equally so (Valerie’s Patisserie with Victoria and Jolene).

The calorie overload was to prove useful later while dancing in the rain to Orbital at Somerset House, which, without going into long rambles about transcendental quintessential summer experiences (because I’ve done that too many times already), was one of those transcendental quintessential summer experiences. It was pouring down while they did The Box, driving, insistent, intense rain, just like the song. Strobe lights in the downpour, flashing off the sedate stateliness of Somerset House. That familiar feeling in the back of my head: remember. Remember.

David Grubbs (The Spitz, London)

Music Industry Trends Not Yet Overexposed (A McSweeney’s list). I swear some of these already exist on the AMG.

Elsewhere in music, we went to see David Grubbs at the Spitz on Tuesday. I’d never heard any of his solo stuff before – what drew me to the gig was more the six degrees process of connection i.e. David Grubbs was in Gastr Del Sol with Jim O’Rourke who now works with Sonic Youth, who is Michelle’s favourite band. So I already knew it wasn’t going to be one of those gigs where I could stick my head up my arse for a bit and, based on my own personal knowledge of the artist, revel smugly in the indieness coursing through my veins. This is probably why I spent a large part of the “song” where sounds of a baby crying/cat wailing (not sure which it was), opera, orchestra and random blips were repeatedly and what felt like randomly pastiched together inwardly giggling at my cliched wondering of whether he was just getting his sound samples ready for the song, or whether the song had already started, or whether everything had gone horribly wrong technically and he was desperately trying to regain control. (Aside: Man, that was a convoluted sentence.)

I enjoyed the gig, though. He looked and acted like his name, which is not to say he was engorged and slimy and writhed around on the floor under a big log, but rather that he seemed overwhelmingly ordinary when he wasn’t being a brilliant guitarist, the sort of person who’d mooch unassumingly into a gig and sit stolidly two thirds of the distance away from the stage with his Bud, watch quietly and leave.

We sat at a bad angle from the stage, and I think poor Alec spent most of the gig watching a pillar playing the guitar. Every now and then the tea light at our table would wink out from a draft and we’d have to relight it. I didn’t actually observe everyone else around us that much, except for a guy with some serious beard action and an aging hipster whose reactions to the music tended to be obvious but didn’t seem put-on. For some reason, even though I was perfectly happy being in a room with lots of other people, none of whom were irritating me (this can be rare), even though I was definitely absorbed in what was a fairly remarkable performance, there was a corner of my mind where the edges of the room seemed to blur where Alec ended, where the hand that wasn’t touching him didn’t register as a part of me and the hand that did, did.