Thursday night I went to a rather wonderful concert featuring works of Rachmaninov and Stravinsky.
On the aural menu were Stravinsky's Jeu De Carte, Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 4 and finally Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite Of Spring).
I'm not overly familiar with Rachmaninov so his Piano Concerto was a pleasing discovery.
The highlight for me, inevitably perhaps, was Le Sacre du Printemps. I've had it on CD for a while but it was only after hearing it performed live that I fully appreciate what a mad, radical piece of music it is. It's such a massive aural assault that it no longer seems a stretch of the imagination to think that it caused a riot at its 1913 world première in Paris. It's the classical equivalent of Never Mind The Bollocks: Stravinsky was a punk at heart.
Fortunately for you, the concert was recorded and filmed by the BBC. You can either listen to the concert by going here or you can watch the performances of Piano Concerto No. 4 and Le Sacre du Printemps by going here.
Be quick, though: both the audio and video are only available on the BBC website for one week.
Last weekend and another gig. This time it was Red Snapper, one of my favourite bands. I'd seen them live three or four times between 1995 and 2000 but they then broke up. And lo, for I was sad. But then they got back together at the end of 2007, started recording, produced a new album and are touring again. And there was much rejoicing.
A fusion of jazz, electronica, dub, funk, techno and trip-hop, the band consists of Ali Friend on double bass, Richard Thair on drums and David Ayres on guitar, and a succession of guest horn players, currently Tom Challenger. And, boy, can these guys play. Despite all the technical jiggery-pokery evident on their recordings, these guys are superb musicians who infuse real energy and humanity into their music.
I once saw them at an outdoor summer festival, V99 I think it was, and remember dragging my mates along. It was the middle of the afternoon and there were maybe forty or fifty people milling around by the stage. The band came on and started playing to this diminutive crowd, the guest vocalist looking a bit disgruntled at the lacklustre turnout. The band played on, great as ever, and everyone was enjoying themselves. About four or five songs in, I happened to turn around. The previously empty field behind us had filled out with people drawn by the wonderful noises of the Snapper lads. I might have felt just a little tug of smugness at that moment.
Likewise, the turnout at last weekend's gig was disappointing. The venue, an intimate place as it is, was barely half full. Red Snapper may not be a household name but I would have thought they'd have been able to draw more people than that. A bit disgruntled, I felt bad for the band. They deserve more attention.
It didn't matter in the end. The band launched into their set with customary gusto and the crowd, though small, was vocal in its appreciation, genuine fans who clearly knew and loved the band. There was a vague atmosphere of belonging to a select group privy to this brilliant band.
But still, more people should listen to Red Snapper. To this end, watch this:
Yeah, I was going to tell you about that Killing Joke gig I went to, wasn't I.
Well, Killing Joke did a gig in Glasgow a couple of weeks ago. And I went. It was good.
Hmm, I s'pose I should expand on that a little otherwise this will be a real crappy excuse for a blog post.
OK, so, this is the first time that all four original members - Jaz Coleman, Geordie, Youth and Paul Ferguson - have toured together for 26 years. Jaz Coleman, the band's shy and retiring frontman, comes marching out on stage adorned in boiler suit, lank black hair, hastily-applied face paint and bulging crazy eyes. He looked, quite frankly, fucking nuts, as if he could leap into the audience at any moment and start killing people. This is, of course, exactly why we love him.
His murderous aspect is juxtaposed somewhat by his heartfelt but often cheeky anti-establishment comments between songs, and he is quite touching when paying tribute to his reunited band mates and also former bassist, Paul Raven, who died last year of heart failure.*
Highlights? Wardance, Money Is Not Our God, Whiteout, and the double-whammy of Love Like Blood (dedicated to Raven) and Eighties (Jaz: "This next one's called Push Push Struggle...") were fantastic. It was also great to hear some older tracks like Follow The Leader and Madness get a rare live outing. Overall, there was an excellent balance of early Joke and later material.
One of the most interesting aspects of the show, in fact, was the make-up of the crowd, an almost equal mix of older original fans and a younger post-Pandemonium crowd. Me? I guess I fall somewhere in between.
(Here's an easy way to distinguish an original Joker from a new fan: Ask them what their favourite track from Killing Joke's eponymously-titled album is. An old-school fan will assume you mean the Joke's 1977 debut whereas a young whipper-snapper fan will think you mean the band's 2003 album. The correct answer is, of course, "Which one?")
Here's a little taster of the Joke doin' it for real...
A week later, in stark contrast, I went to see Roots Manuva. Now, Roots Manuva is that rarest of beasts: a good British rapper. So many British hip hop artists adopt this faux-American style and get all bling an' gangsta' on our asses, yo. It's laughable, really.
Roots Manuva (a.k.a. Rodney Smith from Stockwell, London), on the other hand, suffers no such pretensions. His raps are unashamedly grounded in British culture, his lyrics intelligent, insightful, witty, self-deprecating, gritty and occasionally bleak. The production on his records is also quirky and inventive, no lazy beats and samples thrown together in five minutes. There are all manner of odd effects and vocal manipulations bouncing around the stereo spectrum.
I confess I don't listen to a great deal of rap but this man is a genius.
In person he is a warm and amusing presence engaging in random banter with his on-stage cohorts and the crowd. It's been a long time since I've seen a performer generate such goodwill and affection from their audience. And, aside from anything else, his music rocks and kicks and makes even a rhythmically challenged klutz like me shake his booty.
But, here, watch this and tell me it doesn't raise a smile even if you think you hate rap.
* Just noticed that tomorrow, 20th October, is the first anniversary of Paul's death. R.I.P. Raven, my man.
No, not The Wire, the celebrated TV show about... what is it about, anyway? Cop show, isn't it? I don't know, I don't watch TV anymore. It's supposed to be brilliant, by all accounts, so it can go on my "Essential TV DVD boxsets what I must buy before I die" list. Other shows on the list include Deadwood, Dexter and the last couple of seasons of The Sopranos. I'm sure there is other great stuff I should consider but I can't remember what they are.
No, the "Wire" to which I refer is this lot:
Yes, that Wire, the post-punk pioneers from them days. I was only two years old when their debut album Pink Flag came out. They have a new disc out called Object 47 and it ain't half bad, I tell thee. And this isn't some reunion tour cash-in that seems to be in vogue at the moment because, barring the occasional three to four year break, they never truly disbanded and continued to produce albums throughout the eighties, nineties and naughties after the magnificent triumvirate of Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154 in the late seventies.
The question is do they still have it or are they a bunch of sad middle-aged geezers desperately trying to hold on to their youth? Answer: they still kick arse. They got up there and spent an hour and a half making the biggest, crunchiest ear-offending racket I have heard for quite some time and pissed all over today's so-called nu-post-punk wannabes from a very great height.
Having said that, I would have liked to have heard more of there downbeat experimental stuff such as Practice Makes Perfect or In A Heartbeat. Can't complain, though, with a gig that ended with a ludicrously fast and loud rendition of 12XU that makes Minor Threat's cover version sound like Celine Dion. (Hmm, Celine Dion performing Minor Threat classics - there's a thought.)
In summary, then: bloody great show! And it only took me half an hour to get home afterwards. Sweet.
Future gigs pencilled into the calender include Killing Joke, Roots Manuva and the Scottish national Orchestra performing Stravinsky's The Rite Of Spring. Marvellous.
OK, I thought it was only Oxford crowds who don't dance at gigs but I am beginning to suspect that I am simply not abreast of current trends. As far as I can ascertain one no longer shows one's appreciation at a music concert by dancing but by standing still and taking pictures with your mobile phone. Clapping and cheering between songs appears to be acceptable behaviour but dancing is, like, so last century.
I came to this conclusion after witnessing an exuberant performance by Jamie Lidell at Koko London on Camden High Street last Tuesday night. Lidell is a singer whose music is an interesting fusion of soul and electronica; imagine Otis Redding mucking around with a sampler and a bunch of digital effects processors. Jamie's live performances are equally innovative: He starts the show singing to the accompaniment of a traditional backing band but then he will saunter over to a computer and rack of digital toys and starts to record himself humming, beat-boxing, singing a bass line, wailing, and building up layer upon layer of vocal improvisations while his band go off for a cup of tea. As he creates a new track made of vocal loops right there on stage, the band eventually drift back on stage and start to play along and somehow segue back into a familiar song. It is, quite frankly, fucking brilliant.
It is not a mere showcase of electronic trickery, though: Jamie and his gang play a damn fine set of good old fashioned-style soul music. Jamie is a performer of great energy and humour, his voice powerful, intense, tender and heartfelt. Even though he is obviously the focus of attention he is also generous to his players and gives them all their due credit. I can't remember the last time I saw a band having so much fun playing together on stage, their obvious enjoyment truly infectious.
Infectious, at least, for me and a few others.
Fair enough, the set consisted mainly of material from Jamie's new album Jim which was only released the day before. My copy turned up in the post on the morning of the gig so I was fortunate enough to give it three or four listens before heading out to the gig. That's not the point: I would have enjoyed the show regardless of whether I was at all familiar with the new songs or not. Throw some great music at me and if I engage with it then I will damn well enjoy myself. True, I dance like your dad but when I hear something I love I want to move about a bit.
My complaining about people not dancing at gigs is actually quite absurd. I'm horribly self-conscious on the dance floor and despite my eclectic tastes in music I am really fussy: if I don't like the choons then I ain't dancin'. I am also lacking the "cheese gene", the appreciation, genuine or ironic, of cheesy, juvenile pop music - you know, the standard wedding DJ repertoire. I have to hear something I really love before I can forget myself and strut my funky uncoordinated thang.
Am I a music snob? Maybe. Probably. On the other hand, I don't listen to anything because it is supposed to be cool, I listen to it because I like it - that's the bottom line: do I like it? I couldn't help but feel that many people were at that Jamie Lidell gig because he is très chaud right now - there were an awful lot of painfully trendy designer spectacles in the crowd - rather than people who simply dig his music and wanted to have a good time. Either that or they were there just to get some "cool" photos to upload to their fucking Flickr profiles.
Having said all that, I didn't dance at the concert I went to at the Barbican the following evening: Pierre Boulez conducting the London Symphony Orchestra performing works by Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Bartók. A wise decision on my part, I think. I somehow doubt the audience nor the performers would have appreciated my standing up and throwing shapes in the church of dance as they played Sonata For Two Pianos and Percussion.
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.
On Monday night I ventured out to the Oxford Zodiac - sorry - the Carling Academy Oxford (gotta' love corporate chain-branding for that underground vibe) for some raucous post-punk noise with Mark E. Smith and The Fall.
Turning up far too early, I retired to a nearby pub which was full of St. Patrick's Day revellers and spent a couple of hours getting suitably leathered.
At around 9.45pm I stumbled into the venue just in time to catch some VJ doing an audio/visual scratch mix thing that went on far too long, although I thought the cries of "piss off!" and "get off the fucking stage, you wanker!" from the crowd were a little harsh.
Speaking of the crowd, I was curious to see what cross-section of the Oxford populace would be there. Oxford doesn't strike me as the kind of place that would embrace a mad, wasted Manc bloke mumbling and screeching scathing social commentary over abrasive punky guitar noise.
Turns out I was right. The band emerged on stage and started to thrash out an impressive racket for a minute or two before the man himself, the legend that is Mark E. Smith, took to the mic and I dutifully cheered and started jumping around with a gusto.
Sadly, though, there were only about ten of us down the front getting into the spirit of the thing. I kept looking around only to be greeted with the sight of a room full of people just standing there staring at the stage with their dead eyes, no joy, no enthusiasm.
Despite this apathetic response from the crowd, the band played tight and good and we dedicated few at the front did our utmost to show Mark & Co. that their efforts were not entirely in vain.
I left the gig exhausted, my ears ringing, and baring a big stupid grin. I had a fucking great time but I felt a little sorry for all those poor lifeless bastards in the crowd who didn't appear to have any idea of what was going on or why they were there. They probably should have stayed at home and listened to their Coldplay albums.
Anyways, I am now off to Devon for the Easter weekend to chill out and finally reading that damn Tristram Shandy novel.
Whatever your plans, enjoy yourself and don't eat too much chocolate.
In order to further fulfil my resolution to take in more live music and to augment my recent efforts to better familiarise myself with classical music, I found myself at the Barbican Centre in Thursday evening - "found myself" in the sense that I bought a ticket weeks ago and very deliberately got on various modes of public transport to arrive there at the allotted time. "Pray, Sir, to what end?" you might ask; calm yourselves, for I shall divulge my reasons.
I happened to quite deliberately arrive at said time and place for the purpose of attending a concert given by the BBC Symphony Orchestra accompanied by the BBC Symphony choir. The programme for the evening included a rendition of Johannes Brahms' Fourth Symphony and, more significantly, the United Kingdom premiere performance of Krzyzstof Penderecki's Eighth Symphony (Songs Of Transience).
What can I say? (Apparently, judging by the last two paragraphs, an awful lot about not very much at all. Damn that Sterne fellow and his accursed Shandy novel.) 'Twas - excuse me - it was a wonderful concert. First of all was the Brahms, a composer with whom I am not yet acquainted but, after this recital, I am about to rectify that.
Following the interlude came the main event, Penderecki's Eighth. I've owned this on CD for a month or so but my humble speakers have not done it justice, not by a mile. To hear this symphony performed live with the full orchestra and choir was spine-tingling. The sound was simply huge, the players and the venue fully projecting the beauty, subtlety and sheer power of the music. In a word, awesome.
As a result of this experience I have decided that I must:
go to more classical music concerts and,
get a better home sound system.
On an unrelated musical issue, I have got into the habit of listening to David Bowie on Sunday mornings. I don't know why but Sunday morning is Bowie-time - it somehow feels right. Just one of those curious little rituals.
Walking home from the shop along Walton Street in Oxford and who passes me? Only Jeremy bloody Paxman. S'true.
On an utterly unrelated note, I saw Amon Tobin do a DJ set at The Forum club in London. Fuck me if the bass in that place didn't almost cause a prolapse. A bloody good night only marred by slightly higher than usual Twat Quota in the audience, four Shoreditch yahoos wearing sunglasses in particular. Never mind, it was still a blinding show with Tobin mixing up his own stuff with music that has inspired him into one big jazzy drum 'n' bass pudding. He even played Second Bad Vilbel by Autechre, my favourite track by them and one I never thought I'd here in a DJ mix.
Other than that, nothing else exciting to report. The job still sucks and I'm currently reading The Magus by John Fowles which doesn't.
. And then go buy 
