Oh. (Russ L going to and fro in the Earth)

Wolverhampton’s Wulfrun Hall on Sunday the 23rd of April, to see Billy Bragg. If there was a support act I missed them. I have a sneaky suspicion there may have been a set from Ian McLagan (of The Faces/Small Faces fame) who accompanied Billy for most of the set, but I really don’t know.

Braggy is one of my absolute favourites, anyway, and with the the number of excellent songs he’s written over the years he’d have a job going too far wrong in my eyes. This set was particularly appealing to me - nothing from ‘William Bloke,’ alas, but plenty from the ‘Life’s A Riot…’/'Back To Basics’ era (starting with ‘The World Turned Upside Down,’ playing ‘There Is Power In A Union’ early on, and finishing with a long encore of songs from that era). We also got ‘Shirley,’ ‘Waiting For The Great Leap Forward,’ ‘England Half English’ segued out of and into a version of ‘John Barleycorn,’ a fun cover of ‘Green Onions’… oooh, we got loads of stuff.

A big part of any Billy Bragg gig, of course, will always be what he says between songs. He brought the strident political talk to begin with (which is very inspiring as far as I’m concerned but could put some people off) before settling into the warmer more charming style he’s known for (even more inspiring at times). Unsurprisingly, a lot of it centred around the BNP’s recent gains.

The aforementioned encore provided an absolutely fantastic end to the evening, including (amongst others. I forget, precisely. It’s the senility) ‘The Milkman Of Human Kindness,’ ‘The Busy Girl Buys Beauty,’ ‘The Man In The Iron Mask,’ ‘Richard,’ ‘To Have And To Have Not,’ and building up to ‘A New England.’ I assume he did ‘Between The Wars’ after that as a big finale, but I had to leave to get the bus. I sort of wish I hadn’t, now – the taxi is expensive but ‘Between The Wars’ is one of my absolute favourite songs (by anyone), and he didn’t play it the previous time I saw him.

Ah well. Bit late to worry about it now, I suppose. An absolutely excellent gig in every respect nonetheless.

(EDIT: This messageboard thread tells me two things. ‘A New England’ seems to have been the last song, so at least I didn’t miss ‘Between The Wars.’ Annoyingly, though, it also looks like Seth Lakeman supported. Blast! I love ‘Kitty Jay’!)

~ Russ L

I was off to Stourbridge Town Hall (the ‘Wollaston Room.’ It’s the library theatre, basically) with the parentals on Friday the 21st of April, to see David Benson’s one-man-show “Star Struck.” I was looking forward to it a lot, having enjoyed his “Conspiracy Cabaret” a couple of months ago.

This one was a singing, dancing, impressioning and amusing-anecdote-telling extravaganza in two parts. Mr Benson begins by telling us about all of the stars and heroes that he always wanted to be (Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Eric Morecambe, Noel Coward, Orson Welles, John Le Mesurier, Groucho Marx, the list goes on…), and asking us about our own (”Attila The Hun” and “Agneta from Abba” were offered up). I’ve never really been into hero-worship like that (even when I was little, as far as I remember), but David makes the condition seem somewhat appealing. In the second part he tells us of the times he dined with another of his heroes, Quentin Crisp, whose epigrammatic wisdom warns David against this sort of idolisation. Faced with disbelief, Fairy Godfather Crisp whisks David away to a party with all of his heroes, leading to the inevitable disillusionment and realisation that all he needs to do is be himself. It’s apparent from the very beginning what the ending will be, but it’s nonetheless a huge amount of fun getting there.

The main reason for this is that David Benson is an absolutely fantastic performer and entertainer. He’s very funny (both with his pre-prepared lines and spontaneous wit), his impressions are perfect, his singing & tapdancing are great (he claims never to have had a dancing lesson in his life. I’m not sure I believe him), and he himself is very charming.

Really enjoyable, and I definitely want to see more of his shows. I’d recommend them to anybody.

~ Russ L

I did this Machiavelli test.

The Machiavelli personality test has a range of 0-100
Your Machiavelli score is: 77
You are a high Mach, you endorse Machiavelli’s opinions.

Hmmmmmmmm.

~ Russ L

I don’t really have the natural affinity with computers that some folk have, and as such a fair few concepts that are simple to said same folk require a bit of extra effort from me if I’m to comprehend them. I’m dimly aware of what an RSS feed is, but only dimly. I’ve gathered that it’s something you can use to have updates to websites displayed directly to you and thus remove the onerous task of having to actually look at them. It does sound quite useful (if a touch lazy) and I always intended to investigate it in more detail at some point, but hadn’t got around to it yet.

Imagine my surprise, then, to find that this very blog has a feed. WordPress have added a screen displaying the stats for it to the admin section that I get to look at because I am lord of all I survey and the rest of you don’t because you’re merely visitors here on sufferance. Apparently, I have a feed; furthermore, a (very) small number of people are actually reading it.

If you’re one of these people - you will tell me if I ever need to actually do anything, won’t you? I really have no idea. Simplest language possible, please. Thanks in advance.

~ Russ L

Just as the end my last blog entry about a gig spoke of a good turnout, the beginning of this one will speak of a bad turnout. Assert and Swellbellys played at The Market Tavern on monday the seventeenth, and (as with the last time Assert were around here) next to no bleeder turned up. It looked even worse at this one, since there were less people from the actual bands to hang about in the room. It’s a disgrace, it really is. I know this was the same night as Decimate’s first gig in ages, but I’m sure a few more people who weren’t at that could still have managed to drag themselves down.

Oh well.

Assert, as usual, blew the roof off the place. I’ve been to mostly post-rock/clever-metal/proggy sort of gigs just lately, so it was good to see a bit of all out raging punk/hardcore. Theirs is such a physical performance - Brit flings himself about the place like some sort of extremely scary powerball, while the music just rampages. For the foolish amongst you who haven’t heard them, they play a vaguely old school-ish kind of punk/hardcore, combining a lightning-fast-never-taking-it’s-foot-off-the-pedal air with a lot of groove (few bands manage to put the two together anywhere near as well as Assert). In a funny sort of way they remind me of a thrashier Motorhead, which is to be applauded.

Swellbellys play hardcore punk (the type of hardcore punk that always makes me want to put in a disclaimer that I don’t mean ‘hardcore’ in the way that people frequently do now. I’m not going to this time. Although I suppose I just have), Exploited-o-rama sort of stuff. They suffered a bit at this gig from playing after Assert (few bands could cope with that unscathed), but they still had bags of energy, good songs and a funny singer (always an advantage). I’ll need to get some recorded stuff (although I said that after I first saw them four years ago and haven’t managed it yet, so…)

It’s just a shame about the turnout. It really isn’t right, especially with a band as fantastic as Assert.

~ Russ L

I know I said I wasn’t going to post every week to plug the fact that The Art Of Noise A-Z has been updated and includes something I wrote, but I will this time (it’s up to ‘R’, by the way) in honour of the fact that it has been named ‘Blog Of The Week’ by The Times’ website. How about that, eh? Obviously I can’t really take any credit since I’d only been contributing for a fortnight, but it’s still somewhat stonkingly superb.

Since I am a-plugging, The Communion has just been updated for the first time in a few weeks and so there are lots of new reviews for you to read. None of mine are anything special this time (in terms of both the subject material and what I managed to write about any of it), but there’s good stuff elsewhere.

~ Russ L

There was another certain degree of uncertainty, this time regarding Friday the 14th of April. I thought I knew what I was doing, and merrily skipped down to The Jug Of Ale in Moseley with the intention of seeing Grails. After being there for a little while, a few contextual clues began to prey on my mind. A quick text exchange with The Mighty Naila and I was off on my way to The Hare And Hounds, where the gig was actually being held. Oops. Two thoughts occur: 1) Since I’m someone who actually compiles a gig guide, this sort of foolishness really isn’t very good; 2) Naila was more logistically organised than me. Naila. Christ almighty, I am useless.

Oh well, it wasn’t all bad. It’s fortunate that the two pubs are in roughly the same area of South Birmingham (I could have gone to Stourbridge or wherever, couldn’t I?), and once actually at The Hare and Hounds one can take advantage of their wonderful cans of Export for only a pound. Whoo and indeed Hoo.

Openers Seeland were already halfway through when I got there, featuring someone from Calvados Beam Trio and someone who used to be in Broadcast. I think. Personnel aside, they were very Broadcast-esque (say that out loud, it’s fun) anyway, and bubbled along fairly prettily. No songs noticeably jumped out, but they were reasonably pleasant.

Bologna Pony from Nottingham took up the middle slot, and turned out to be the sort of band who are more interesting in theory than practice. Two axemen laid down a squall of swirling feedback, while a drummer pitter-pattered a series of complicated patterns out of the middle of it all. I quite like the idea of making the drums a lead instrument; when Bologna Pony get around to having another idea to go with it I might quite like them too.

I’d heard a few bits and bobs from Grails before this and liked them a lot, so I was looking forward to their set. Post-rock is a style of music so often tainted by the inevitable problems that attend a bunch of individuals who proclaim how they’re boldly breaking away from convention while they all do exactly the same as each other and create a new set of conventions. Grails get away from this by embracing traditional traditions, hanging their hat on Americana and creating a wonderful older-than-their-years rootsy air. There’s more of the Dirty Three about them than there is Mogwai (to pick a band I’ve heard them compared to), but they maintain the epic build-and-crash of their more obvious peers. Fantastic stuff, and it really is a shame that I had to leave before they’d finished to get the bus.

The turnout was really good, too. Hurrah for everyone.

~ Russ L

There was a certain degree of uncertainty regarding Thursday the thirteenth of April. Originally I heard about a gig involving Grandscope and Naomi (more about both of whom later), but subsequently learned that my old mucker Big Sean was putting on Assert that same night. Given the paucity of audience present last time Assert played around here, I couldn’t in good conscience miss this one. Plus Assert are wicked ‘n’ that. The gig was supposed to be at The Bear Tavern, but since The Market Tavern had been mentioned earlier on I thought it prudent to check Assert’s website on the day. It’s a good job I did – it had them down for playing The Market Tavern… on the seventeenth. I managed to get confirmation of this in the early afternoon, and so after work it was off to The Barfly instead for the gig I’d originally planned to go to. The only pain in the arse now is that this means I’m going to have to miss Decimate’s gig at The Flapper on Monday. You can’t win, can you?

I arrived at The Barfly in time to find not-very-many-people-at-all in the audience, and a band whose identity I have no idea about already on stage. They played your typical jangly indie (the Byrds-without-the-songs thing gracing opening slots nationwide every night), apart from one tune in which they added a bit of dirty, juddering funk to the mix. I quite liked that one. Otherwise it’s a ‘meh’ from me.

Naomi was on second. She’d really intrigued me in advance – the dearth of information on her website could easily have been annoying but successfully came across as likeably enigmatic (I’ve since found her Myspace page, which is probably a better one to go to if you want info) and I really liked the tunes. The Barfly website let slip that she was from San Diego, but other than that I knew little. And yeah, she’s hot. We’ll get that out of the way to begin with.

She set up, just her and her laptop. I really don’t know why, but her being on her own up there onstage meant the fact that the cavernous Barfly was empty (there were probably about twenty folks in the audience. It’s a 500-ish capacity venue) seemed even more surreal. Her set was absolutely fantastic nonetheless. Forceful, clattering electro beats boomed forth while Naomi’s beguiling, hypnotic vocals snaked back and forth around them. She danced, too. More artists should dance on stage. I approached her to buy her CDs afterwards and asked if all of the gigs on the tour had been as bad as this. “Worse” she quipped. Oh well. Hopefully this won’t put her off coming back over here again, although I wouldn’t blame her if it did.

Grandscope headlined. When I first saw them (here’s some blah about it, amongst some blah about other gigs) they absolutely amazed me. The second time I saw them, a week-and-a-half ago (blah) I thought they were only in the ‘reasonably good’ range. I doubt I actually will end up enjoying them as much as I did the first time again, since they really have changed their approach, but this time they were once more pretty darn likeable. The bassplayer’s vocals were one of the sticking points for me at The Flapper gig, and blessedly they seemed a lot less ‘off’ this time. Must’ve just been a bad night for him. What we have (nowadays), anyway, is a proggy indie sort of lark, with lots of electro inflections – imagine, perhaps, a more traditional-song-styled version of ‘Kid A’ era Radiohead, I suppose, with some splashes of Depeche Mode here and there and maybe even the tiniest hint of some Boards Of Canada-ish moments. This is not to suggest even for a moment that they’re indebted to those bands, as this is a sound genuinely their own.

It’s not the sound I originally fell in love with, but I can feel myself falling for them again.

~ Russ L

I promise I won’t do this every week, but the ‘Q’ installment of The Art Of Noise’s alphabet is up, and I wrote something about Barbra Streisand. I don’t very often get the chance to write about Barbra Streisand, so I just wanted to make sure that everyone who might want to know is aware.

~ Russ L

The most spectacular moment of the Boris gig on tuesday the eleventh of April came very early in the evening, when I channelled the joint spirits of Homer Simpson and Mr Bean and managed to accidentaly walk directly into the plate glass wall at the front of The Medicine Bar. It was fantastic - if you missed it then you missed out. With the evening’s best bit of entertainment out of the way it was over to the bands to add whatever they could.

Mother Trucker were actually already on by this point. They did perform a new one that seemed to perhaps go on a bit more than it needed to, but other than that they were as great as ever. I’ve seen ‘em eight times now and can’t be bothered writing more-or-less the same things yet again. They’re really good. That’ll do.

Una Corda were the band-in-the-middle, and by now I’ve come to accept that the amount that I’m going to like them each time I see them will vary massively. First time I thought they were just OK. Second time quite good. Third time just OK again. Fourth time absolutely fantastic. This time… back to quite good. Ish. I’m sure it’s all just me and has no connection anything they may or may not be doing, but this time they seemed to lack the drama that they sometimes conjure up and ended up as another ‘fairly decent’ instrumental quiet-building-to-loud band. My old homejellymould Matt Pratt wasn’t as impressed with them as he was before Christmas, either, but judging by the cries of “More!” after their set we were definitely in the minority.

That’s not unusual for me, of course. The last time Boris played in Birmingham (at The Flapper), for example, I thought they were alright/pretty good while everyone else found them better than getting your own spaceship for Christmas. I could concur with the hyperbole after this gig, although it’ll probably now turn out that everyone else thought this one was rubbish. You’re contrary like that, you Other People.

They’re an interesting bunch, our Boris. The drummer spends as much time boldly thrusting his drumsticks skyward as he does actually hitting drums with them. The main guitarist would be quite attractive if her body wasn’t only about one inch wide. At the hips. The other one, meanwhile, wields an amazing twin-necked no-headstocked guitar-and-bass-all-in-one thing. It looked he could have shot Pershing-2 missiles out of the sky with it. It was ace.

Their set did not run exactly as anticipated. For a lot of their time they focussed on more uptempo stuff. Quick, pacey, headbangy material, very energetic and full of life, and seemingly the last thing that most of the audience expected. I enjoyed it, although your man’s vocals really aren’t good. The crowning glory, though, was the massive slow-doom feedback-o-rama in the middle of the set. My life. The frequencies. The sensory overload.

Typically for the Med Bar, we ended up leaving a bit before they’d finished. On my way back down Digbeth High Street it dawned on me that this was the first gig in a long, long time that had compelled my ears to ring afterwards.

~ Russ L