I was meant to be going to see Nick Cave and his merry bunch of Bad Seeds this week. Since I'm not, and gigs are something which I'm sure a lot of people are missing, I thought I'd write a little about 10 gigs I went to. Not my favourites per se, just memorable ones from down the years.
These are not reviews. I wouldn't do that very well. They're just memories. I have called the segment "I 'n' Gigs" (a pointless pun on the name Ryan Giggs)... that is a good indicator of the quality writing to come ...
I’ll end with this one. I noticed I’d mainly neglected the
festivals, and there were a lot of fabulous slots at festivals. There we go. I’ve
written about a few other gigs before – links here.
Wilco (followed by the Bad
Seeds) are the best band I’ve seen, Iron and Wine doing ‘The Trapeze Swinger’
at Green Man was the best moment, Leonard Cohen at the O2 was, next to Blur,
the best single gig.
I considered writing about Arcade Fire headlining Green
Man, Arcade Fire being a band I’m mainly disappointed by but in the moment of
their wordless chorus to ‘Wake Up’ as the whole crowd sang along, I could have
believed they were the greatest band imaginable.
But I’ll end with Ash at Somerset House in 2003. A beautiful
London evening in a beautiful London courtyard. I went to two Somerset House
shows I think. Ash supported by Electric Soft Parade, Belle and Sebastian
supported by The Shins the following year. I’m trying to figure out why I don’t
consider any one single B and S gig memorable enough to include. I’ve probably
seen them about 10 times, and never been disappointed – they do good gigs, but
they did settle for all-round entertainment, didn’t they? I can’t think of many
people hating a B and S gig, but you never know.
But Stuart M has always (or at
least since 2001 when I first saw them) been determined to make it a bit of a
fun, rather than a soul-stirrer …
Not that Ash are soul-stirrers… I’d remembered the gig as
one of the all-time greats, yet, when looking it up online to check my
memories, found a really sniffy 3* review of it in the Independent saying it
didn’t really enhance the setting, it was just another quite good Ash gig, the
band had only one gear, Tim Wheeler was a limited lyricist etc … and time tells
us there’s a truth to that.
That was a band at their peak, I suppose. Ridiculous to
think they were only 26, they’d already had a Greatest Hits collection out.
Charlotte Hatherley added something extra to the band, undoubtedly, some Pixies
element. Wheeler wielded his v-shape guitar, they had Girl from Mars, Burn Baby
Burn, Envy, Wild Surf, Oh Yeah, Goldfinger, Kung Fu, Candy, Angel Interceptor,
Candy, Shining Light, Jack Names the Planet, Walking Barefoot, Sometimes, A
Life Less Ordinary, three gleaming new songs.
They had enough for a
relentlessly fun and joyful gig in London in the summertime … and Ash have done
plenty of good songs since then, they really have, but nothing’s really bothered
popular consciousness again. You wouldn’t have guessed that evening that that
would be the case, that Tim Wheeler wouldn’t hit the sweet spot perfectly
again.
And sometime a great gig is when a band is just at that
point, when they have neither too few great songs nor too many, and the sun’s
shining and you’re happy, and that’s all …
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