Thou shalt always dance

Another Monday night and another gig in Oxford, this time to see the performance poetry/electro/hip-hop stylings of Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip.

They filled the stage with antique furniture - a desk, drinks cabinet, a battered armchair, old lamps with faded, frilly shades. Mr. Pip and Mr. Le Sac proved to be most congenial hosts, engaging in funny banter and bemoaning the fact that they had been given a complimentary bottle of wine but no corkscrew. At various points in the show one would sit back in the armchair to sup a glass of wine (once a corkscrew had been blagged from the bar) to allow the other to fly solo for a while. And the tunes, of course, were great and I had a jolly old boogie.

I had hoped that the crowd would be a little more animate than they were at the Fall gig a few weeks ago... Oh well. I'll grant you that Le Sac 'n' Pip have yet to release an album ("Angles", due out in May) and many people are only familiar with their hit single from last year Thou Shalt Always Kill. I confess that I had only heard three of their tracks before I went to the gig but that didn't stop me getting into all the other cool stuff they played that I didn't know. The rest of the audience, though... well, some of them did a half-arsed movement of the shoulders but they only sprang into life when that song came on.

What's the point of that? What's the point of going to a gig to hear only one song and not show any interest in the rest of the act's material. To be fair, the crowd did cheer and applaud between tracks but, jeez, if a self-conscious uncoordinated numpty like me can jiggle his bits to unfamiliar tunes then anybody can.

Sorry, but Oxford gig crowds are rubbish.