New Gig Thread

This is for all non-EC or peripheral-EC topics. We all know how much we love talking about 'The Man' but sometimes we have other interests.
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oily slick
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Post by oily slick »

i got my RUSH tickets for august.

i knew you'd all be excited.
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mood swung
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Post by mood swung »

I was gonna get some of those, but the website, she don't work for me.
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Post by martinfoyle »

Saw a great show by Chris Isaak last monday. Amazing backing band, one of the tightest I've ever seen. Chris really knows how to work an audience, a nice line in self deprecation as well.
My first gig in a while, I'll be making up for lost time over the next few weeks. Next up this saturday is CSS, followed by The Espers on wednesday. May starts off with a triple header of Future Kings Of Spain, Camera Obscura and Low in the space of 5 days. While I was picking up the Low ticket I was told Wendy James Racine show here this monday is doing little business, god help her. At least she's playing here, though I think hell will freeze over before she plays any of the Gwendolyn songs.
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Post by bambooneedle »

Lloyd Cole - The Basement, Sydney, April 19th '07

1. Woman In A Bar
2. Don't Look Back
3. Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken?
4. Music In A Foreign Language
5. Like Lovers Do
6. Pay For It
7. Cut Me Down
8. Why I Love Country Music
9. How Wrong Can You Be?
10. No Blue Skies
11. Late Night, Early Town
12. Butterfly
13. Rattlesnakes
14. A Reason To Believe (Tim Hardin)
15. No More Love Songs
16. Love Like This Can’t Last
17. Hey Rusty
18. I'm Gone
19. 2CV
20. Undressed
21. Four Flights Up
22. Unhappy Song
23. The Young Idealists
24. Lost Weekend

encores:
25. My Bag
26. Jennifer She Said

There were probably no more than 400 people in there, still it was pretty packed, The Basement isn't very big at all. Some of the diners (not all) turned out to have the ideal spot, with their tables right in front of the stage on a lowered floor, and by the time Lloyd came on at about 10.30 they were sitting back looking very satisfied sipping their drinks. I was on the raised area surrounding, the bar about 8 feet behind me, and the ceiling was quite low, so the sound would carry well.

Rob Snarski was having a hard time of it with the (then) chatty crowd but some of the The Blackeyed Susans and The Triffids songs he played cut through and won their attention. Maybe it was because he was there to support Lloyd Cole that he kept very cool and restrained himself from trying to shake them up, but really, the talkers oblivious to the fact that a performer was on stage were being extremely rude.

Anyway, Lloyd walked on unassumingly and it allowed for only a brief moment of "there he is!" before he commenced to play. As I'd mentioned earlier, he really held the crowd captive with his songs - overall a fine blend of pop with some country elements, very lyrical and romantic and not without humour. I'm only a recent convert as he'd been out of my radar, I just had one album of his, but now I'm thoroughly won over. Thank you for the heads up about him coming over, Otis.

I turned my recorder on and used 'the cup method' - I held it and formed a cup shape with my hands down in front of me so as to catch the sound better. If you cup your your hands around your ears when watching tv you'll hear the difference it makes - it works. My recorder, a small iriver about the size of a lighter, has adjustable eq levels but I really had no idea what would be ideal so I left them on the default setting. Maybe someone has some advice for me in this regard?

The show went on for just under an hour and a half and Lloyd introduced a few of the songs with some humourous stories. I won't ruin the surprise factor for whoever requests a copy of ma new bootleg, however in one of the anecdotes, he related, winding the song down, some regret over not having ended a song by belting it out in a more Tom Waits chorus style, so then he did. He's a very good guitar player, very dexterous delicate playing and never overdoing it, good at holding your attention with it - when people would begin to yell out requests, he'd shut them up with a few notes... and he had a few tricks, like the dramatic upward strum he used to end No More Love Songs. 2CV and Hey Rusty were pretty memorable highlights but there were many. He dedicated My Bag to Johnny Cash. The Hardin tune went over pretty well, too. Luckily the crowd remained pretty quiet thoughout the songs themselves.

Very classy, highly recommended.

Now, to start getting some more of his albums.
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Post by martinfoyle »

Great write up, makes me want to catch him again when he makes one of his frequent trips to Dublin. Sounds like you got a good recording. It might be worth your while passing on a raw copy of it to someone on dimeadozen, not me I'm afraid, to give it a final polish. A message via their yahoo group should get one for you.
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bambooneedle
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Post by bambooneedle »

Cool, will check it out.
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Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Excellent write up, glad you're now a full convert. I'd say that setlist is pretty close to the Ur-lloyd great gig in the sky. Wish I coulda been there, but a boot would make for happy consolation. Am at your disposal for more discussion and recos on the topic, it goes without saying.
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Otis Westinghouse
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Post by Otis Westinghouse »

bambooneedle wrote:He's a very good guitar player, very dexterous delicate playing and never overdoing it
Was he doing the ice-bucket thing to relieve the pain? Agree he's good, though he commented when Jackson and I saw him solo on not being able to do some of the stuff Neil Clark (of the Commotions) does, but then Clark is a seriously good player. I think his last London gigs were the two of them + laptop.
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mood swung
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Post by mood swung »

Went to the TN Theatre to see Lucinda Williams Saturday night - is there anything better to do on a Saturday night? I think not.
Carrie Rodriguez opened. I'd never heard of her, either, but she has a nice voice, can play a fiddle like nobody's business, and her band was pretty good as well. Kind of same-y sounding songs, nothing that just said BUY ME NOW, but I was really fascinated with her drummer - he played with his hands most of the time, which was new to me and particularly effective with the haunted bluegrass kind of songs she plays.

Lucinda was fabulous. Kind of a Mood's Favorites show. Only three songs from the new album (Rescue, Fancy Funeral, and Come On). Joy, Fruits, Blue, Pineola, Real Live Bleeding, Righteously, People Talkin', and I Lost It amongst the highlights. She attempted Sweet Side 3 times. The first time the band went into hyper-drive and she stopped them, the other two she screwed up the lyrics. I thought she was going to do a Ryan Adams, but she got it together and went on to the next song. Some idiot in the balcony kept screaming Are You Alright? throughout the show, so it was tense there for a couple. She did Greenville, which is the 2nd Most Perfect Song Ever. THAT was worth the trip, right there. 2 Kool was the song she wrote in Knoxville on New Year's Day some years ago - I was happy to hear that story again, because I could not remember. And I'm not the only victim of age here - she had a notebook on a music stand that she flipped thru choosing songs and checking lyrics.

Went on until well past 11. She did a short encore, dedicating World Without Tears to all the VA Tech families. We were walking to the car and I looked up (because I always stare at the ground when I walk - you find a lot of loose change that way), and she was 10 feet away making a mad dash for her bus. Yes, I did the fan thing, shouting out LU-cinda! mostly because it just shocked me, like I looked up and saw oily slick or G2S standing there just out of nowhere. She looked and, I think, smiled and I was standing there going 'oh, god, what now?' because it was awkward. I'd committed to this without a thought. I did manage a thanks! great show! or something and she seemed relieved that I wasn't going to press the issue.

p.s. She did Jailhouse Tears and said she demo'd 25 songs for West and had written more since then, so hopefully another new album sometime in the not too distant future.
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bambooneedle
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Post by bambooneedle »

Otis Westinghouse wrote:Was he doing the ice-bucket thing to relieve the pain?
No, just drank bottled water and towelled his forehead periodically as he looked about and took some deep breaths.
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Post by Otis Westinghouse »

I'd only make a few changes to make that my perfect Lloyd setlist. It really is a reflection of the brilliance of his songwriting over a 24 year period. The one song I would have wanted to add would be My Other Life. How Wrong Can You Be? is my fave of Antidepressant. Why I Love Country Music is one of my favourite songs period. I love Lloyd.
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Post by verbal gymnastics »

bambooneedle wrote:How can you be a 45-year-old man excited by the Arctic Monkeys?

...

I can relate to that, 'cept I've just turned 37 not 45. How old are Arctic Monkeys gig fanatics verbal and SoLack again..? 8)
Unashamedly 43 on my part!

In the last 10 or so days I've been to see

Arctic Monkeys
Bob Dylan
The Pipettes and
The Kooks

I covered Arctic Monkeys briefly earlier.

Bob Dylan was great and it was good to meet up and have a drink with BWAP. Bob Dylan was on good form and typically didn't say a word to the audience except to introduce the band. However in a 12,000 capacity venue you were scuppered if you did not have a seat close to the stage as there was no screen. Even i struggled to see him and my seat was pretty good.

The Pipettes was fun and full of young girls. And their mothers! Not that that was a bad thing. :wink:

The Kooks was a secret gig in a 300 standing capacity venue and was superb!!!. And I should make a special thanks to the bouncers who were kind and polite and made sure Mrs VG was OK as it was very hot in there. one kindly bouncer let her stand by the open door.

I'm off to see James on Friday night.
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Boy With A Problem
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Post by Boy With A Problem »

mood swung wrote: She attempted Sweet Side 3 times. The first time the band went into hyper-drive and she stopped them, the other two she screwed up the lyrics. I thought she was going to do a Ryan Adams, but she got it together and went on to the next song.
She's notoriously mortified of this very thing happening and in recent years has taken to having a book of lyrics on stage with her. I guess she didn't have her book on Saturday? I like it when these things have a bit of an edge.
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Post by mood swung »

Yep, she had her little notebook on a music stand. It was cool, because you could literally feel the whole audience pulling for her (with the exception of Are You Alright? dude).
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Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Waterboys at the Cambridge Corn Exchange. First time I'd seen them. Great gig. My ears are ringing - loudest gig I've been to in a long time. Not all of it, but a few songs where the fiddle, organ and guitar conspired to strip me of much of my dynamic range. They started with 5 new songs, and weighted much of the first hour with new stuff, all of which came across very well live.

Indication of setlist to be found here. I'd looked at this the previous night, but missed the fact that The Stolen Child was on it, so was completely blown away when it started as it's one of the highlights of Fisherman Blues for me. I missed the deep tones of Tomas Mckeown, but soon forgot that, closed my eyes and was away with the faeries. The superb keyboard player Richard Naiff is also a wonderful flautist, and when Steve Wickham joined in on fiddle, well I was there among the waters and the wild in my own mind, opening eyes only briefly to see some very pretentious dancing going on.

I could have done with a bit more lighter stuff, e.g. more from FB (they only played When Will We Be Married? and the Dunford's Fancy reel/jig and of course the title track as encore. Just to much rocking out. But the're great live, and his voice really comes across. Strange Arrangement, You In the Sky, She Tried To Hold Me and Sustain were highlights, but really all the new songs impressed.

We saw Mike and Steve strolling from their hotel to the venue as we waited in the queue for the car park. Sharing a laugh like the best of mates.

Extra respect to Mike for having a bizarre habit I totally approved of and related to: twice he played the first couple of chords of Hang On To Yourself, once Moonage Daydream and once Ziggy Stardust itself, and told himself to stop it. Given that I've been immersed in reading about that album in Buckley's Strange Fascination for a week, it seemed Mike was reading my mind. Don't know if he's a big fabn, but it was a great bit of chord spotting for me!
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lostdog
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Post by lostdog »

Otis, safe to say Mike Scott is a Bowie fanatic. Check out his MySpace blog here:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea ... a2ed7d24e2
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Post by invisible Pole »

Good to hear Waterboys are still in such a good form.
Sounds like a great gig, Otis !
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Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Thanks, Lostdog. That fully explains it. I did actually search on Google for something to link the two men and drew blanks. The recent immersion, exactly mirroring mine, as you can see, fits perfectly wth the opening chords. Shame he didn't play a whole song!

My ears are still on the mend. Gonna have to check out some of their CDs. Time to finally replace the very overplayed FB tape with the new reissue. Also must get This Is The Sea (very nice rendition of Old England last night, with the Steve playing the sax part on violin, soundling just like a sax!). Fancy Room To Roam, too.
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Post by ice nine »

Heeee. heeee.....Otis shooting blanks....heeee, heee.
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Post by Otis Westinghouse »

From The Jam - two thirds of the original band. Me first, and Verbal next on the 24th. Shameless nostalgia, but I loved every moment of it. We had long debates about openng track. Pretty Green? Start? Eton Rifles? Nah, In The City! Then The Modern World. Then To Be Someone. Thought it was going to be a chronological romp through the classics, but then it varied. Mostly from the classic All Mod Cons/Setting Sons period, with a few later ones.

To Be Someone seemed a bit ironic, and you wonder how they feel there without Paul, bu Russell the singer does a passable imitation, and you can almost imagine how it would be if they had faded with time and stayed as a three piece, on the gig circuit like the Buzzcocks are.

Rick looks Chinese. Very thin, shaved head, like a Shaolin monk. I loved his moves. The little wrist flick as he hit the crash cymbal. Bruce looks like Cliff Richard. It was great.

Setlist contains most of the classics. They don't disappoint. Highlights for me were a cracking Thick As Thieves, and the fact that the immortal So Sad About Us were included. But it was all good. Crowd went mad. Lots of overweight bald old timers, many of whom, like me, had their young minds blown by the original band once upon a time.

Setlist was pretty much (chronologically, not the order they played them):

In The City
The Modern World
News of the World (Brucie!)
David Watts (more Brucie!)
'A' Bomb in Wardour Street
Down in the Tube Station at Midnight
So Sad About Us
To Be Someone
Mr Clean (with a Cambridge ref!)
In The Crowd
Strange Town
When You're Young
Smithers-Jones
Eton Rifles
Thick As Thieves
Little Boy Soldiers (yay!)
Going Underground
Start!
Pretty Green
That's Entertainment
Boy About Town
Town Called Malice
Carnation
The Gift

http://www.noblepr.co.uk/Press_Releases ... he_jam.htm is fun. Links for interviews, etc. (Just checked out Rick and Bruce interviews, incl. account of Bruce meeting Paul for first time in ages together.)

Photos of them rehearsing and live in Oxford on first night of tour:

http://www.eyevinearchive.com/Productio ... 473&ipp=24

Bruce and Rick sound great. The chunky bass, the precise drumming. Absolutely on top of their game.

The tour has sold out so quicky that they've gone on to book bigger venues for a Nov/Dec, and include towns ignored on the current tour, like, er, London. they'll be back here at the Corn Exchange. And of course they finish at Brighton Centre in Dec, 25 years almost to the day after they were last there.

Then again, nothing can compare to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56olAaEdjfY
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Post by Boy With A Problem »

I should have got tickets when I had the chance. All the shows on this tour are sold out.

On a lot of levels this is wrong, but after a couple of pints, who cares.

I've seen both these guys in recent years - and it seems like niether has put on an ounce of weight since 1981. I wish I could say the same for myself.
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Post by Otis Westinghouse »

How about Brighton at the end of the year and the tour?

Wrong? Well, yes and no. Easy to argue against it, I guess, but if you listen to Bruce talking about it, it's all pretty straightforward. If Weller doesn't want to do a Sting and reform, why shouldn't the other two give us the nearest to it possible? To me the irony here is Weller's admirable if not foolhardy move to get out when they were still on top of their game and be his own man would have been fine if anything he's done since could measure up to the genius of songwriting I witnessed last night, but for me virtually nothing since comes anywhere near. I would rather possess virtually any song off All Mod Cons or Setting Sons (with the exception of Heatwave) over his entire Style Council/solo output (without wanting to resurrect the '10 best Weller/Jam songs debates).

There was a touching moment early on in the gig when, after some three or four songs with almost no words other than 'alright?', the singer announced they wouldn't be saying much, just letting the songs speak for themselves, which they were more than up to letting them doing.

When New Order first started playing Joy Division songs (I was there, I believe - LWTUA, Birmingham, '83), the diehard theory was that this was a betrayal and that you had to stand by your principles. Only Ian could sing those songs, etc. I was furious. Now I love the fact that NO are including lots and lots of their songs in the set. Who else can do it better?

I was very disappointed by the fact that Weller's supposed Jam night in NY turned out to be far from it, though at least he's taken to adding some of the classics like Tubestation and Thick As Thieves. I wonder as he plays them does he let himself admit to the fact that these songs are streets ahead of the Stevemusic (Marriott and Winwood, whoever they are!) he peddles nowadays. I bet he doesn't, but surely the crowd goes apeshit for these in a way that very little if any of his subsequent output could match.

This for me was the triumph of last night. They weren't murdering the songs, they were resurrecting them and giving them new life. OK the singer was basically imitiating Paul down to the ground, and when he tried his own bits of phrasing it often didn't work, but the combination of Rick and Bruce, who sounded utterly majestic, was enough to compensate for anything 'wrong' about this.

They weren't just backing musicians, they were a huge part of what made the Jam special. So what if Weller will never return to past glories with them, why shouldn't they bring some of that magic back to life and remind us what an awesome live band they were? If it was clearly just for the money, it would be very wrong, but here it's clearly for the music, though you don't begrudge them helping their pension plans whilst they're at it.

I had a headache before and stuck to water, but it was still great fun. There was a lot of crowd movement, communal pointing, punching the air, joing in with the 'oys', loads of people singing along to every word (inc. me, apart from the two off The Gift whose titles I had to check with a friend!), hilarious excessively loud joining in when swear words and other key lines came along ('And if I get the chance, I'll FUCK UP YOUR LIFE!'), pogoing, clapping. Probably the lack of a London gig meant people travelled up. There was even an embarrassing chant of 'We are the mods' before the encore.

Rick and Bruce 1 - Paul 0 (in terms of reforming or not - not in terms of his songrwriting, of course).
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Post by Boy With A Problem »

I'm all for Bruce and Rick going out and playing the songs if they want to. You're right, they were much more than a backing band and probably got short changed on the song writing credits and the cash. No problems with those guys whatsoever.

I also agree that the Jam songs mean much more to you/me/our generation than the Style Council or Weller solo. When you're young everyhting is more important - every guitar and every bass drum! I also agree that "The Jam Night" in NYC sounded a bit less than what I would have wanted.

Like I said, I've never been overly impressed with the Weller solo stuff, until I saw him live late last year. The guy is incredible and relevant, very much in the here and the now. I completely see his point about not revisiting the past. I would quible with his attitude and disposition towards his old mates.

My biggest problem with the whole thing, and you point this out a little bit, is with the Weller impersonator fronting the band. I don't know how they could do it better - have Bruce sing the songs maybe and have somebody else play guitar and do the backing vocals - or maybe have someone who is less about the looks/image/voice impersonation thing. Maybe get someone else from the era to front the band - the front guy from the Purple Hearts or the Records or the Vapours or something (I don't know). But with the current guy fronting them, don't they come off more as a tribute band? We'll have to check in with VG and see how he compares them to the Jam with two ms.

Anyway - I'm sure I'll end up going to see them at some point and singing along to every word!
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Post by mood swung »

biker bar tomorrow night to see James McMurtry. And oily slick.
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Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Boy With A Problem wrote:Maybe get someone else from the era to front the band - the front guy from the Purple Hearts or the Records or the Vapours or something (I don't know).
Can you imagine? bruce Foxton having to play the Bruce Foxton imitation bass-line on Turning Japanese!

I think there's quite a difference in the whole thing with Bruce on board. You don't need to look at the singer much, just focus on Bruce, and marvel at Rick's quite astonishing cymbal style (which he didn't have in The Jam, at least early period Jam - I was revisiting '77 Complete Jam footage earlier on). And you have got Bruce-sung songs in the set (News of the World, Smithers-Jones, David Watts), which then feel like the real thing, almost.

It's fair to say I might be more favourable towards solo Weller if I saw him live. I'm just checking out a recernt bootleg to see how that goes, but I think you need to be there to feel it. I 'got' Bragg a whole lot more after seeing him, and probably would with Nick Cave. I'd recommend any serious Jam fans to go see this line-up, though, especially if you never saw the real thing. If only you could relive experiences you had in the past, I'd love to repeat the experience of seeing them in 1980.
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