Who put the worm in the apple ?
Nov. 20th, 2006 10:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaHaving posted here on Wednesday that I feared the M4 would make me late into London on Thursday, it actually turned out to be a combination of work, the M25, the A40, some roadworks in Willesden Green and the Central Line being shit that made me late. The Egg were due on a 8pm for a freebie set of unknown duration. Twenty past eight saw me scurrying up Tottenham Court Road, eating pizza of somewhat greasy antecedents, fearing that I'd get there in time to hear the final chord as they left the stage.
I'd experienced a somewhat sinking feeling when I saw that the Central Line was subject to delays. I fear that my parents failed to invite to my christening a fairy who was not so much bad as faintly pissed off. Unable to be properly bothered, she turned up and laid on me the rather limp curse that I will never see more than the last ten minutes of a set by The Egg. This would be the third time it'd happened.
As it was, I arrived outside Fopp and saw, as expected, a near empty shop. I wandered in, ultimately locating the 'downstairs' section... where an expectant crowd stood in front of the stage awaiting the arrival of The Egg. Ha! In your face, Faintly Pissed Off Fairy! I saw The Egg come on, and indeed watched them for a good 45 minutes until it was time to head to the next gig.
The Egg really are the most unlikely band. Four blokes (and optional female vocalist) who seem to have decided that rock bands should play dance music, and are really doing it rather well. Think vaguely ambient music with indistinct vocal lines and very funky bass. And a drummer who appears to be descended from the Duracell Bunny.
Particularly for a free gig, The Egg were marvellous. Fopp is also bloody marvellous, having a whole downstairs café section which converts into a proper venue. With a bar. Pintwatch swithered between electric Boddingtons (nastier than remembered) and a peculiar non-cloudy wheat beer made by the Artois people (nicer than expected), and ultimately decided grudgingly that the beer wasn't bad, for a record shop.
The first challenge of getting to see Luke Haines was finding Dingwalls. Having googled for it earlier in the day, I'd squinted confusedly at their map and thought that it was in about the same area as Lock 17. Further googling revealed pages which referenced "Dingwalls, formerly Lock 17" and "Lock 17, formerly Dingwalls". Having been there, I'm still not sure. They are the same building, and both names seem to apply.
Ding17 has about a million entrances, none of which are clearly labelled as the place to go for a gig. The one we found and went into turned out to be the wrong one, as a slightly agitated staff member fished us back out of the gig again and sent us up a flight or stairs, across a bar, down some stairs and round a corner to get to the right entrance to have our tickets checked and be let back into the room we'd just been chased out of. Bah.
I can't help feeling, when watching Luke Haines, the sort of sadness you might feel on watching someone very handsome slowly blurring into overweight. There's a similar softening of the edges which means he's not quite the acerbic, cynical songwriter he once was. I still enjoyed the show; I still like the sound of the new album and will no doubt get around to buying it sooner or later. Haines is currently firmly stuck in what he described as his "Everyone Awful" period, writing songs about paedophiles, murderers, and boxers who die in mysterious circumstances. Not that he ever wrote about particularly cheerful subjects.
Haines is touring with a line-up I've seen before (a gnome on drums, and Action Man on bass) but somehow there was a feeling of going through the motions a little. He's never had a great singing voice, and some of the time it felt like a below-par performance of good songs. The first time I saw Haines he had a symphony orchestra with him, and I fear future performances will never quite live up to that. He does retain a great line in self-deprecating stage banter (and dismissed a putative stage invaions with a single word), but I do wonder that I might prefer the studio quality recordings to seeing him live.
The best moments were, to me, when Haines was joined by a guy playing the saw. There was some argument going on in my immediate vicinity:
There's someone playing the saw, surely it's John Moore.
Nah, it looks nothing like John Moore.
It's got a saw, though, and how many people play the saw ?
That's not John Moore.
If you've never heard a saw played (with a violin bow) before, it sounds strangely like a theremin; vaguely sci-fi wooooooo noises rising and falling, and vibrating gently. Played well, it fits surprisingly nicely with acoustic guitar to provide a slightly unearthly sound.
However, according to John Moore (ex Black Box Recorder, ex of the Jesus and Mary Chain), writing on his blog it was him. And, incidentally, his blog is rather entertaining and well worth reading in its own right.
I'd experienced a somewhat sinking feeling when I saw that the Central Line was subject to delays. I fear that my parents failed to invite to my christening a fairy who was not so much bad as faintly pissed off. Unable to be properly bothered, she turned up and laid on me the rather limp curse that I will never see more than the last ten minutes of a set by The Egg. This would be the third time it'd happened.
As it was, I arrived outside Fopp and saw, as expected, a near empty shop. I wandered in, ultimately locating the 'downstairs' section... where an expectant crowd stood in front of the stage awaiting the arrival of The Egg. Ha! In your face, Faintly Pissed Off Fairy! I saw The Egg come on, and indeed watched them for a good 45 minutes until it was time to head to the next gig.
The Egg really are the most unlikely band. Four blokes (and optional female vocalist) who seem to have decided that rock bands should play dance music, and are really doing it rather well. Think vaguely ambient music with indistinct vocal lines and very funky bass. And a drummer who appears to be descended from the Duracell Bunny.
Particularly for a free gig, The Egg were marvellous. Fopp is also bloody marvellous, having a whole downstairs café section which converts into a proper venue. With a bar. Pintwatch swithered between electric Boddingtons (nastier than remembered) and a peculiar non-cloudy wheat beer made by the Artois people (nicer than expected), and ultimately decided grudgingly that the beer wasn't bad, for a record shop.
The first challenge of getting to see Luke Haines was finding Dingwalls. Having googled for it earlier in the day, I'd squinted confusedly at their map and thought that it was in about the same area as Lock 17. Further googling revealed pages which referenced "Dingwalls, formerly Lock 17" and "Lock 17, formerly Dingwalls". Having been there, I'm still not sure. They are the same building, and both names seem to apply.
Ding17 has about a million entrances, none of which are clearly labelled as the place to go for a gig. The one we found and went into turned out to be the wrong one, as a slightly agitated staff member fished us back out of the gig again and sent us up a flight or stairs, across a bar, down some stairs and round a corner to get to the right entrance to have our tickets checked and be let back into the room we'd just been chased out of. Bah.
I can't help feeling, when watching Luke Haines, the sort of sadness you might feel on watching someone very handsome slowly blurring into overweight. There's a similar softening of the edges which means he's not quite the acerbic, cynical songwriter he once was. I still enjoyed the show; I still like the sound of the new album and will no doubt get around to buying it sooner or later. Haines is currently firmly stuck in what he described as his "Everyone Awful" period, writing songs about paedophiles, murderers, and boxers who die in mysterious circumstances. Not that he ever wrote about particularly cheerful subjects.
Haines is touring with a line-up I've seen before (a gnome on drums, and Action Man on bass) but somehow there was a feeling of going through the motions a little. He's never had a great singing voice, and some of the time it felt like a below-par performance of good songs. The first time I saw Haines he had a symphony orchestra with him, and I fear future performances will never quite live up to that. He does retain a great line in self-deprecating stage banter (and dismissed a putative stage invaions with a single word), but I do wonder that I might prefer the studio quality recordings to seeing him live.
The best moments were, to me, when Haines was joined by a guy playing the saw. There was some argument going on in my immediate vicinity:
There's someone playing the saw, surely it's John Moore.
Nah, it looks nothing like John Moore.
It's got a saw, though, and how many people play the saw ?
That's not John Moore.
If you've never heard a saw played (with a violin bow) before, it sounds strangely like a theremin; vaguely sci-fi wooooooo noises rising and falling, and vibrating gently. Played well, it fits surprisingly nicely with acoustic guitar to provide a slightly unearthly sound.
However, according to John Moore (ex Black Box Recorder, ex of the Jesus and Mary Chain), writing on his blog it was him. And, incidentally, his blog is rather entertaining and well worth reading in its own right.
