Guess what? Back to bloomin’ Camden. But this time to the slightly more salubrious and less sticky-carpeted Jazz Café, where Wheel, DMH and I saw the Bard of Salford, John Cooper Clarke. So here he is. If anything, I’ve toned down his hair slightly.
I’ll leave you with a word from Johnny. A haiku, in fact:
To convey one’s mood
In seventeen syllables
Is very diffic
Friday night saw me, Katy and old school pal Dipali heading to the somewhat frayed Koko in darkest Camden (which oddly seems to be the most regularly featured venue on this here blog). We were there to welcome Brooklyn’s Ambassadors of Love, They Might Be Giants. Naturally, there were confetti cannon. There were square guitars. The were puppets (the Avatars of They, renamed Rupert and Rebekah for the evening, and snapped on my phone Wobblecam©, as seen above). There was lyrical dexterity. There were old songs. There were new songs. There were geeks. There were dweebs. There were weirdos. But most of all, there were tunes.
I could have drawn one of many brilliant things I saw this weekend; Grace Jones hula-hooping; The Hives expectorating wildly; Wayne Coyne firing green lasers out of his ginormous rubber hands… but in the end, it had to be Jarvis. Or Beardyjarv 2.0, as it turned out, when Sheffield’s finest sleaze pop legends played their uber gig in Hyde Park on Sunday, high-kicking and elbow-jutting back into our hearts. So here he is, that lanky get out of the Pulp band.
In a break from normal mattbaxter.org protocol (calm down at the back), here’s a drawing of an upcoming gig, rather than one I’ve just been to. The Flaming Lips, Oklahoma’s finest psychedelic noise pop experimentalists, are playing at Ally Pally at the end of the month, and Katy and I can’t wait. If past experience is anything to go by, the first five minutes alone will include confetti cannons, nudity, aliens, rabbits, nuns, giant space balls and huge tunes.
The past few weeks have seen cracking gigs by Elbow, John Grant, The Antlers and Beady Eye. As I’ve already drawn the first two tune-meisters (see earlier posts), and my penmanship isn’t sufficiently dexterous to do full justice to The Antlers’ luxuriant fringes, here’s a crack at the latter.
Liam Gallagher’s post-Oasis turbo-pub-rock feather-cut combo played the Brighton Centre (a venue capable of sucking the rock and roll spirit from even the most debauched performer) and put in a sterling effort, despite the soulless seaside shed in which they performed.
Gibbon-walking onto the stage, the band was greeted with an impressive volley of hundreds of half-finished pints, hurled by the audience (in a gesture of celebration, rather than derision… I think). As the boozy plastic pots rained down, my pal Kenny Ken leaned to me and shouted, “Bloody hell Matt. The recession hasn’t hit Hove… that’s £4.50 a pint.”
In November last year, my friend Wheel and I found ourselves in darkest Camden at the fantastic Roundhouse. Ostensibly we’d gone to see Texan beard fanciers Midlake, but the real standouts for me were the support acts. First up was bobble hat-sporting ex-Grandaddy main man Jason Lytle , followed by the big fella above: John Grant.
A wonderful set and a total surprise. It turns out his debut solo record Queen of Denmark is one of the best of 2010. You owe it to your ears to buy it.
All of which goes to show: get to the gig early. You never know who you might catch.
In the spirit of the Reading List drawings, here’s the first of a new set based on recent gigs.
First up: Ultrasound, who played at Cargo in Shoreditch in December last year. It was ace to see the prog-indie behemoths back on stage and sounding amazing after a ten year hiatus, with Tiny Wood (pictured centre) looking resplendent in his wellies. Well, it was snowing.
