Karohemd's World

Last night I finally managed to go along to a Distraction Club, a musical comedy club run by Mitch Benn and his band (The Distractions). Despite a very slow train and never finding my way around Oxford Circus, I made it to The Phoenix before 7 where instead of queenortart and fractalgeek, I first ran into valkyriekaren and d_floorlandmine which was a pleasant surprise. The others turned up a bit later and we chatted in the queue waiting for downstairs to open. The venue is quite nifty, it's set up with comfy sofas as well as tables and chairs so guests can eat while watching but having had a big meal at The Punter the night before I didn't eat and only had a baguette on the train.

Mitch Benn and his band (as well as individual band members) did a few numbers throughout the evening and also acted as backing band for the other acts when needed. Guests this time were:
- Silky (brilliant guitar picking and little songs about all kinds of things)
- Vikki Stone (brilliant, irreverent and cute, sang a cover of Bonnie Tyler's "I Need a Hero" substituing "hero" for "dildo")
- The Segue Sisters (cover versions of modern songs in the style of the Andrew Sisters, fantastic, too bad they only did two numbers)
- Matt Blair did a bit on Meatloaf
- Both the keyboarder/bassist and the drummer of the Distractions did a solo piece, the former an excellent Country parody and the latter a piece I can't describe without giving away the punchline
- Headliner was Phil Nichols (funny and occasionally a bit rude/offensive songs that rocked)
- As one of his pieces, Mitch Benn wrote a song during the second interval based on current news stories suggested by the audience (the new iphone, the royal stalker found dead in a park and the Daily Mail's false prediction article with made up quotes and facts).

So yes, excellent fun. Highly recommended (it's always on the first Tuesday of the month, details on the website, advance tickets are released a week or two ahead of time and it's worth booking early)

Friday: Finished work at 2:30, took the train to London, trekked across London to Hackney and checked into my hotel room. Freshened up a bit, got changed into a nicer shirt and went to have the dinner experience of my life at Roganic. Being very happy and full, I took tubes and trains back to Hackney, showered and chilled before trying to find some sleep in my hot room (it cooled off later).

Saturday: The Victoria Line was out (which links central London to the Overground nicely at Highbury&Islington) so I had to take the Overground all the way to West Hampstead and then the tube to King's Cross for the Vivian Maier exhibition (which warrants its own short post) and then lunch at Pollen St. Social (blog post in a bit). Walking back from lunch towards Oxford Circus, I happened across the Pride parade which was ace. I guess I probably caught the second half and was a bit sorry I missed the first because it was really good fun to watch all those delightful characters, even those with a rather serious message. Because of the train/tube outages I didn't bring my camera because I wasn't sure I'd manage to take it back to the hotel and make it to the gig in time so I only had my phone. Just two samples, the rest are on flickr.



I then made my way to the Southbank where I wandered around a bit, watched a few performers and the world go by before I got some early dinner at Pitt Cue Co.'s trailer underneath Hungerford Bridge. They provide their take on American style BBQ with various and repeating dishes throughout the day. When I got there, they Pulled Pork had just come out of the oven and I leapt at it. Served in a cardboard container on top of a portion of zingy 'slaw, dressed with a spicy sauce and hot pickles and a chunk of excellent bread, this was excellent street food indeed. Considering the location and the quality of food, 7 pounds was still acceptable, I thought.



Another trek across London to Hammersmith for an evening I'd been waiting for almost all of my life or at least since '85 when I bought the Scarecrow album, to see John Mellencamp live (again, a separate blog post for that but just to say it was amazing). Then, the worrying bit of making it back to Hackney on public transport began, various lines were partially or completely closed so I had to take first the Piccadilly and then the Central line to Stratford. Despite various delays, I caught the last overground train and made it to Hackney Central, saving a wad of money which would have been the taxi fare.

Sleep was hard to come by as tunes from the evening were still going through my head so eventually got about five and a half hours of sleep before getting up, packing and walking to The Roost for the day's photo shoot. Quite a few people were there already and the place was buzzing with photographers and models getting ready. I only had two things planned: Last July in the morning and druidess1982 in vintage dresses by bethany_eowyn in the afternoon. Here are two preview shots, a full post will follow after I'm back from holiday:



nevla was kind enough to give me a lift back and I was home just after 8, being rather shattered. I backed up the photos, caught up with telly and got a relatively early night.

I had bought a ticket for this a while ago because I like Robin Ince's bits he's been doing on Infinite Monkey Cage and his introduction to Brian Cox' Douglas Adams memorial lecture was brilliant, too.
In this show he basically talks about and reads from random books he's found (mostly at charity shops), mostly bad romance novels (Mills & Boon and the like), Giant Crabs, fundie Christian lit and random lifestyle advice books (The Secrets of Picking Up Sexy Girls, rabbit keeping, amateur taxidermy etc.). He also goes off on tangents a lot (or all the time) so everything is a bit random but it's brilliantly performed and very funny.

Support was from Philip Jeays who sings lovely, fun and evil songs about various things with a rather Brecht/Weill feel. Very expressive, a lot of fun.

The Orchesta Buena Vista Social Club was fantastic. The concert has been over since 9:30 and I'm still buzzing and bopping along to the beat and groove. I've been meaning to hear them for 15 years, since I bought Ry Cooder's seminal album of the same name.
The ensemble this evening included Omara Portuondo who is 80(!) and brought the house down with her energy, charisma and beautiful voice.

What an awesome evening of jazzy latin music. They're on quite a big UK tour at the moment so catch them if you can!

Had a fun evening at The Man on the Moon. :D The lineup this evening were

Spucktute who are doing I'd like to describe as beat poetry with an electronica soundtrack. Quite bleak and angry lyrics.

Last July in their new lineup with nevla on guitar. A decent PA and the extra layer of the electric guitar made them so much more fun to watch than last time I saw them. A really excellent gig. I predict a great future for them. :D

I probably don't need to introduce Devilish Presley who play dirty and fun Rock'n'Roll with great impact and charisma while only consiting of a guitar duo and a drum machine. It was during one of their tracks they told us to make scary faces and whoever made the scariest, would get a free CD. I gurned and was chosen to be the scariest, hence the subject. :D

I had taken the camera but the lights at the MotM are notoriously bad so there won't be many good photos but DP had two floor lights pointing up which helped cut through the murk. Might do a little preview before I go to bed.

It was good to see scy11a again, too.

I mainly went down to London to see Deathboy live again who were supporting Project Pitchfork at Islington Academy and thought it was a good opportunity to see PP live (which I hadn't) and take Deviant UK and Dutch Order as a bonus.

Cambridge Bus Syndrome meant I missed the train I wanted to take and came in halfway through Dutch Order's set. They weren't quite my thing but fun and techically sound.

Deathboy were next and they rocked their (and our) little socks off, especially considering they hadn't played live for something like three years. They played a great section of their repertoire from Cheap Shot to tracks from CogRock (which is free to download). The band very obviously enjoyed themselves and the audience went for it, too.
jasontheknight had organised a photo pass for me and I tried my best to fight against the venue's backlighting. (they actually do have white front lights but never use them :o()

Deviant UK were the surprise for me. I hadn't seen them live and hadn't been impressed with their recorded stuff but they're really powerful and fun live. The frontman stomps over the stage like a madman and really brings the thing alive. Excellent stuff.

And then, Project Pitchfork, one of the bands that have been active for quite a while but I hadn't had a chance to see live and don't know that well, either. I have a few tracks on compilations but actually none of their albums, something I need to change, I think.
They absolutely killed on stage, despite only the frontman being really active on stage with two static synths and a drummer (who was really going for it), their act felt really organic and was a lot of fun. The audience were really going for it, too, the majority were dancing and I think that impressed the band, too. I'm not sure but this might have been the first drum solo I've seen an industrial/EBM band do. It was ace.

Three photos for now, more to come:

I first heard of Son of Dave on Later... with Jools Holland (like so many other recent musical discoveries) where he was the weird new act. His combination of blues harp, beatboxing, percussion and singing using a digital loop and other effects which produced an incredible groove immediately pushed my musical buttons.
When I recently saw that he was playing at The Junction 2, I obviously had to go and see him. The ticket was only a tenner, too.
I got there at doors open at 7, picked up my ticket and waited for the venue to open. First, there was only one other guy. Various hipsters came in, looking lost and were told to go to the other Junction for Yann Tiersen. It was funny that you could exactly tell who people had come to see.
They finally let us in 10 to 8 and I got a seat in the front row, dead center. :) The venue actually filled up quite a bit but wasn't sold out so maybe about 100 people, maybe a few more.

Support was Gil Karpas who was OK (vocals and guitar). Nothing special but not exactly bad, either.

After a short break, Son of Dave came on stage, wearing a thin red, patterned coat (see website) and a black and white striped shirt/trouser outfit, a bit like a classic comic prison's outfit but with a red heart stitched onto the breast pocket; two pairs of shades and a huge hat.
In front of his chair were two microphone stands (one for a vocal mic, one for percussion), there was a table with a selection of harmonicas and percussion instruments, a handheld mic for harp and beatboxing, one mic on the floor for recording the stomping and an effects/sampling/looping controller.

He would start a song by creating a beat and background (either vocally or with the harp), recording and looping it and then singing and playing harp and percussion (various shakers or tambourines) over it, sometimes recording and looping parts of that as well or replacing the previous loop, creating several layers of sound in the process. His main influences are Blues but also other areas of music. It's really difficult to describe. Have a listen on myspace or find some videos on YouTube.
ETA: Oh, Alabama 3 would fit into this category as well with the difference that they're a full band.

One side I hadn't known from his albums is that he's a really funny guy, either in his interaction with the audience or telling little stories (like the one about his great-great-grandfather who invented the encore).
After a few songs, he randomly picked a couple from the audience, took them backstage and came back with a set of seats and a table for them, told them to sit down and then took a pack of Kettlechips, a bottle of wine, two glasses and some fruit out of his suitcase for them. He even turned one of his monitors so they could hear better. In return they had to join in during a few songs playing percussion (wine bottle and tambourine). It was hilarious and the two while clearly a bit overwhelmed (especially the girl) also had the time of their lives.

The gig was a lot of fun and the music very infective, I certainly couldn't sit and was constantly moving, stomping, clapping or clicking my fingers. Shame it was a seated gig, really.
During the grand finale he handed me a huge, inflatable banana which I had to blow up and which was then thrown around the audience. Very random.

I'm still buzzing, not from the volume because that was nicely understated but from the sheer energy of this one man on the stage creating such fantastic music. Another great gig this year.

No photos because I stupidly left my G10 at home when I rushed out of the house this morning. It would have been tricky, anyway. There was generally enough light but his face would have been mostly in shadow. Also, I was just having too much fun and grooving too much for taking photos.

Next gig: Bellowhead on the 25th.

It was that time again to go down to the Corn Exchange and watch one of my favourite living singer/songwriters perform. I've been a fan of Steve Earle's for 25 years (almost as long as of Springsteen) and after Springsteen is the artist I have the most albums of.
This tour was on the back of his latest album, Townes (a whole album of Townes van Zandt covers). Townes was one of Earle's mentors and best friends with their lives having some rather sad parallels with the difference that Earle managed to turn his around while van Zandt's ended prematurely.

Tonight's gig was a quiet affair, just Steve on guitar/mandolin/harmonica playing classics (starting with Christmas in Washington) pared down to the basics, with the odd rambling in between (although there was a lot less of that than last time). Surprisingly, and disappointingly, he only played two tracks from Townes but he did play Pancho&Lefty (and yes, I cried, dammit) but the acoustic renditions of his earlier work were so good that I can forgive him for that.
I was quite surprised to hear him play the theme from The Wire (I'd seen him as an actor but as I haven't seen Season 5 yet, I didn't know he actually sang the theme in the last season) which was a great number with audience singing the choir part. Mentioning TV, I now have to see Treme in which he also acts and has written music for.

Support was Christopher Rees, also solo, who played some cool folky stuff.
He finished with a wonderful and quiet version of Little Rock'n'Roller.

The first time I saw Buddy Guy was a few years ago when he supported Jeff Beck (who was rubbish) at one of the Tower of London gigs. He was absolutely brilliant then but I only saw a little bit of him when he wandered down the aisle during one track.
This time it was a headline gig at the Shepherd's Bush Empire and I was bright and early so ended up in the second row standing, probably about 3m from his microphone.
Support was by Bjørn Berge, just a Norwegian and his two acoustic guitars (a 12 and a 6-string) and a Seasick Steve-ish stomp box thing (but smaller, he just tapped it with his toes) playing anything from acoustic blues to some really wild multi-level picking madness, a bit like Rodrigo y Gabriela. Very good fun.
Just before I'd left I thought, 'ooh, I have a standing ticket and will be early, I could take the G10' which I did and I had an almost perfect spot. Just one shot, there'll be more when I'm done with The Perch.



After stage reset, Buddy Guy came on and played about one hour and 20 minutes of blues, fun and banter with the audience. He's 73 but still young at heart and you can tell that he's doing it because he has all the fun in the world going out and bringing his music to the audience. His voice is still strong with an amazing range from a deep bass to a wondrous falsetto and his guitar playing is top notch, be it traditional blues, emulating Hendrix or Clapton or playing with a drumstick, piece of cloth or his teeth.
What a wonderful, gracious, modest artist. Catch him while you can.


The light was awesome: Canon G10 at ISO400, 1/60th-1/100th, f3.5-f4.5

Willie Nelson was great. Some new stuff and loads of classics. Had a bit of a tear in my eye during Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to be Cowboys and Good Hearted Woman because I half expected Waylon to appear on stage.
The only track that was really missing was Pancho and Lefty.