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Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Thursday, March 21, 2019
Thursday, March 21, 2019
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Edith Piaf lived an interesting life. The daughter of an acrobat and a cafe singer, she was abandoned at birth and raised in a brothel. Learning her trade singing on the streets of Paris, she was plucked from obscurity and became one of the most celebrated singers of the 20th century. But even with fame and wealth, sadness was never far from the singer famously dubbed 'The Little Sparrow'.
Her life is fascinating and her songs are beautiful, which explains why it's been such fertile ground for drama, with Piaf being the subject of multiple biopic films, plays and books over the years. Now, with Piaf: The Legend, New Zealand singer Mandy Meadows presents a classy evening of chansons at Crazy Coqs, accompanied by an authentically Parisian sounding band.
As Meadows acknowledges early on, the diminutive French singer is quite at odds with her: a tall, blonde New Zealander. But despite their physical differences, when Meadows sings she captures something of the distinct Piaf aural experience. I'm no musicologist, but I've always loved the way Piaf poured so much emotional resonance into her songs. In every recording, you hear her not just singing a song but performing it, emphasising words and phrases until they're practically creaking with pathos.
Meadows has an admirable set of pipes and manages to capture this elusive quality without sounding like a mere impersonation. The litmus test of any Piaf tribute show has got to be the iconic Non, je ne regrette rien. Meadows absolutely nails this - you get the impression that it's as much as pleasure for her to perform as it is for us to hear it.
Interspersed with the songs are a potted biopic of her life, with Meadows giving her take on what it meant to be Edith Piaf. The most effective sequence is about her doomed love with boxer Marcel Cerdan, one of France's most highly esteemed sporting heroes. Their love story ended with tragedy when his plane crashed on his way to visit her, and Meadows delivers this with a flair and skill that make the following songs that much more effective.
That said, this is a rather uncritical take on Piaf's life. Meadows resurrects the largely debunked and apocryphal tale of Piaf aiding prisoners of war during the Nazi Occupation of France. It's a rousing tale in which she craftily uses her fame and ingenuity to forge passports and save the lives of about a hundred French fighters. It's also almost certainly a post-occupation PR exercise concocted to fend off the accusations that she passively collaborated with the Nazis - having performed shows in clubs reserved for German officers.
I don't necessarily mind a hagiography, but I think it makes for a far more interesting story if you show how Piaf wasn't a perfect moral actor and that there are aspects of her life that should be criticised. But then I suppose this is Piaf: The Legend rather than Piaf: The Woman.
Whatever your opinion on that, you can't deny Meadows' vocal talents and the way she breathes life and vitality into these classic songs. I believe the show is going on tour later this year, so if it rolls into your town prepare yourself for a smart and stylish night, all borne on the breath of a seriously talented singer.
This review was conducted via a live stream of the performance from Crazy Coqs.
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
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Reviewed by David James
Rating: 
Ah, the simple pleasures of a guy beating the living shit out of an enormous drum. It's a sight, sound and sensation that awakens something primal within you: the pounding bass beat reverberating throughout the theatre; a thud you hear with your whole body rather than just your ears; an insistent rhythm that makes you want to dance around a fire smeared in paint chanting mad nonsense as you prepare to hunt the great totem bear and...
Wait, where was I?
Ah yes, central London, 2019, in the Peacock Theatre watching an excellent Japanese drum troupe performing their awesome new show. They are Yamato and their new show is Passion, the latest in a long series of touring shows in this country in which they showcase their enormous percussion instruments and their insane levels of skill.
The night consists of a series of pieces that range from comedy skits with elements of clowning in which the performers battle one another from drum supremacy, bits of audience participation where we clap and cheer along with the music and, my favorite, when the whole troupe is on stage performing as one and creating the most wonderful racket.
I really want to emphasise how *loud* Yamato is. On entering we're provided with earplugs and signs in the lobby warn us that this show is going to crank up the volume. During the show I glanced around to notice that the majority of people had theirs in. I tried my best to tough it out, but there came a moment where I had to admit defeat and put them in. Even with earplugs it's a thunderous cacophony, a series of booms that you can palpably feel shaking your hairdo and wobbling your larynx.
One notable aspect of Passion I realised midway through the show is a lack of technology. While there are one or two amplified instruments used in the show, the vast majority of the sound emanates from the drums themselves rather than through a sound system. The fact that taiko drums have been around since about the 6th century in Japan means that the show we're watching could have been devised and performed at any point within the last millennia and a half.
As it is next to impossible not to get sucked into these precise, primal and overpowering rhythms, you sense that you're feeling the same thrill as any human who has experienced a show like this over the years - creating a rare continuity of feeling across the centuries. For example, I have absolutely nothing in common with a 12th-century Japanese peasant - but I do know what she would have felt in her gut when someone struck a giant drum.
So yeah, I enjoyed Passion. I had been worried that two hours of just drumming would get a bit repetitive, but the variations in tone and style kept me engaged right the way through. My only minor criticism is that some of the comedy bits go on a bit, but given that they hide a change of scenery and a rearrangement the drums it's easy to forgive.
A wholehearted recommendation, but bring earplugs!
Yamato: The Drummers of Japan is at the Peacock Theatre until 31 March. Tickets here.
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
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Rating:
Finally, a musical that dares to depict the nobility and romance of corpse fucking. It Happened In Key West has been a long time coming for die-hard advocates of necrophilia: fine men and women who all too often have to put up with cruel, misguided comments from frankly unimaginative people who see a dead body and don't see an (over) ripe opportunity for straight-up sexy times.
Set in the sunny Florida keys, this is the true story of Count Carl von Cosel (Wade McCollum) and his (literally) undying love for a woman called Elena (Alyssa Martin). Theirs might have been a traditional love story were it not for Elena dying of tuberculosis, despite his frantic efforts to cure her. Lesser men might have grieved and moved on - but not Count Carl von Cosel.
After two years of mourning he cracked open her tomb and carted what was left of her home, expertly fixing up her with a combination of piano wire, wax and a hell of a lot of perfume. Life was bliss... until her family discovered what von Cosel had been up to.
It Happened In Key West is told from his von Cosel's perspective and with the bonkers forthrightness to treat this as a grand romance rather than a freakin' weird-ass dude obsessed with a mouldy corpse. The show's insistence that this actually isn't that weird a situation after all gives the story a snowballing ludicrousness that's both hilarious and satirises the generally saccharine genre of musical theatre. After all, what better way to poke fun at the objectification of women in a male protagonist-led romance than by reducing her to a literal object mid-way through the play?
Then again, there's also the outside chance that the writers genuinely think this is a romance. After all, the programme claims that von Cosel's story "reverberates through time as a universal tale of the incredible power love wields over each and every one of it" and the von Cosel was subject to an "immense and beautiful power [that] was the driving force propelling our hero every step of his journey".
It follows that up with - I kid you not - a goddamn Bible quote: "Love BEARS all things. BELIEVES in all things. HOPES all things, and ENDURES all things - First Corinthians 13:17" (capitalisation theirs). Hey guys, I'm not no theologian or nothing, but I'm pretty sure the Christian church has a concrete "til death us do part" policy that specifically excludes getting it on with an admittedly quite fetching corpse.
Honestly it doesn't matter whether this is a pointed satire of musical romance OR a genuine paean to the myriad pleasures and romanticism of necrophilia - this is a deeply, powerfully strange bit of theatre that I adored just about every second of.
The songs are great - particularly Undying Love and Don't Worry About A Thing, and they're effectively performed by a cast that skates along the very thin line between sincerity and slyly winking at the audience. The dialogue is funny, providing a genuine cackle from me about every couple of minutes.
The insanely talented Wade McCollum throws himself with zero abandon into portraying von Cosel as broken but basically charismatic, just about managing the Sisyphean task of making us sympathise with his plight, perhaps helped by him booming out his dialogue like an operatic Frasier Crane.
For the sake of a good pun I wish I could say that Alyssa Martin was a bit stiff, but she manages to make an (understandably) under-written role pop. There's something of the virginal Disney princess to the way she approaches the role - her wistful songs about seeing the world and living among the stars cruelly funny given that the show's concept revolves around her imminent death and the Weekend at Bernie's style descretion of her corpse.
I loved It Happened In Key West - it's exactly the kind of head-scratching what-the-fuck theatre that presses my buttons. Though it functions perfectly well as a parody of the kind of sugary shit that generally clogs up the West End, I really, really, really hope that this show is entirely straightforward in its goal of turning a necrophiliac into a genuine romantic hero because that is fucking bananas.
In summary, It Happened In Key West is...
(drum roll)
....dead good.
It Happened In Key West is at the Charing Cross Theatre until 18 August. Tickets here.
Thursday, February 1, 2018
Thursday, February 1, 2018
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Medea Electronica reviewed by David James
Rating:
Revenge is sweet. Revenge that involves a couple of dead kids and an incinerated lover? Maybe that's a touch on the savoury side. Pecho Mama's Medea Electronica retells Euripides 431BC tragedy Medea as a 1980s synthpop concert, making the wronged Medea (Mella Faye) as relatable, empathetic and as kind as possible and then seeing how far the audience is prepared to follow her down a disturbing, bloody path.
Euripides' play tells the story of a wife and mother who finds herself threatened when her husband Jason leaves her and her children for another woman. Medea's vengeance is brutal: she kills the other woman and then her own children, and scarpers to Athens.
Pecho Mama shifts the story to the late 1980s, with Medea and her family moving away from London to follow her husband's career. In the wake of his Dad's death, her husband Jason suddenly cuts all contact and moves out without explanation. Struggling to understand why he's acting so callously, Medea tries to maintain normality for her confused children. But, as she realises the depth of her husband's cruelty, she bends and finally snaps.
When I first heard about Medea Electronica and its ambition of fusing Greek tragedy with 80s era synthpop, my reaction was more curiosity than outright enthusiasm. I've been to some seriously wanky concept gigs in my time, in which bands with limited theatrical ability disappear up their arses and produce something that's neither a good gig nor good theatre.
It quickly becomes apparent that Medea Electronica isn't going to be one of those shows. Pecho Mama (Mella Faye, Sam Cox and Alex Stanford) match their musical skills with restrained but enormously effective stagecraft that narrow and intensifies the focus on its lead. Every other character is represented by pre-recorded voices, which (no doubt due to intense rehearsal) is technically flawless.
Throughout the show, narrative seamlessly bleeds into song. These effectively communicate Medea's fractured mind: the textured vocals, moody synth lines and warped samples combining into muscular, moving soundscape. It also helps that these are just damn good songs: I felt a strong Brian Eno influence in Into the Ocean Parts I and II and glimpses of Portishead in Manta Ray, all of which pushes my musical buttons.
But all this would be for naught if it weren't for Mella Faye. It's been a while since I've seen a performer so emotionally and physically committed to her role. She's magnetic perceptibly 'acting' her way through the songs rather than merely singing them. Medea's journey from caring mother to child murderer is a tricky one to get right, yet Faye's gradual unravelling is horrifyingly plausible - her final transformation into fire-wreathed avatar of fury and righteous destruction sending shivers up my spine.
The show feels designed to push its audiences' buttons. It's impossible not to sympathise with Medea's plight and understand the roots of her rage. You see a woman being gaslit, manipulated, isolated and victimised: on paper practically a case study in misogyny. But just because someone is a victim doesn't mean they're not capable of terrible things, the show essentially asking us to sit as a jury and decide whether she's culpable for the atrocity she commits. These are questions that kept me awake last night and were on my mind while commuting to work: classic signs of a complex, memorable piece of theatre.
To put it simply, Medea Electronica is the kind of show I wish I saw more of. It's expertly crafted, performed to the highest standards, thematically fearless, smart as hell and cool as fuck. I can't recommend it enough.
Medea Electronica is at Ovalhouse until 10th February (tickets here). Then on tour (details here).
Thursday, October 20, 2016
Thursday, October 20, 2016
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"The Man from Mo’Wax is a very strange music documentary. Most films of this ilk are glowing accounts of an individual or band’s inexorable rise to the top of the charts, demonstrating their musical virtuosity, inherent genius and the growing adoration of their fans. Here that curve is inverted, director Matthew Jones painstakingly dissecting a person with next to no discernible musical talent as his career crashes and burns.
That person is producer and DJ James Lavelle – hardly a household name – yet kind of an icon to dance music aficionados. His career spans three distinct periods: the first is that of a musically teenage wunderkind who sets up his own cooler than cool record label, Mo’Wax Records. The second is as creative leader of UNKLE, where he collaborated with various musical legends to create a series of increasingly poorly received and badly selling albums. The third follows the disintegration of his personal and professional life, the lasting image being of a sad and lonely man trapped in a storage space surrounded by his broken dreams."
★★★★
Sunday, October 9, 2016
Sunday, October 9, 2016
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Kissing the Shotgun Goodnight walks into the room swinging its big dick all over the place. The poster features a completely kickass drawing of a horrified person with their guts exploding all over the place (see above). The flyer promises "a 120 decibel suicide note. a linguistic kaleidoscope of caustic cartoons, crackpot fantasies and demented erotica." On your way into the theatre they hand you a pair of earplugs and make sure you pay attention to a warning that:
I'd saw this flyer a couple of months back and figured "yeah, this is the show for me". Lately I've been crushed under a truckload of syrupy theatrical shite - shows about cheerleaders learning to love and anti-drug PSAs masquerading as shitty rock musicals. It all left a bad taste in my mouth, and I was craving something aggressively fucked up - and Christopher Brett Bailey sounded like he was going to provide.
So I parked myself in the front row centre and prepared myself for not only blown out ear-drums but a blown mind.
I didn't get either. What Kissing the Shotgun Goodnight turned out to be was an okay post-rock gig. Maybe I should have lowered my expectations given the flyer we were handed on the way in, with the punchy punk advertising copy amended with annotations to point out that all that awesome sounding demented erotica stuff had been deemed "not relevant", the show had been reduced by about a third (from 100 minutes to 70) and that apparently, we were in for a concert "sprinkled with words".
What's more disappointing is that the sprinkling of words we did get were awesome. I'd heard that Bailey was a fantastically lurid poet, and his intro and outro didn't disappoint. It sounded like a fever dream of crushed limbs and unnecessary surgery, like a watching an old David Cronenberg film with a beak full of ketamine. As the lights dimmed, Bailey's voice ominously repeated "This is a helldream. This is a helldream. This is a helldream."
Oh, I wish it was man. I wish it was. What it actually is is a series of fuzzed out guitar, bass and violin led sound pieces layered over with synths and tapping away on smashed up bits of pianos. It was decent post-rock stuff, kind of a sub Godspeed! You Black Emperor pastiche, but nowhere near as musically aggressive or experimental as I was hoping for.
Perhaps most disappointingly, it wasn't even particularly loud. Sure, there were loud bits, but being handed earplugs gave me the masochistic hope that I was in for something that was going to leave a bruise. But the little cellophane packet remained resolutely unbroken and, despite assurances, I didn't even get to take home a tinnitus whine.
On top of that, the show ran into a major technical problem about mid-way through which took half an hour to fix and necessitated clearing the theatre. Part of the fun of these intense experimental pieces of music is losing yourself in the hallucinogenic lighting and music, sinking into a dreamy trance state and letting it wash over you. Having to retreat to a striplit theatre lobby to awkwardly stand about waiting for the show to get back on its feet is a straight-up atmosphere killer.
Also disappointing is that Kissing the Shotgun Goodnight isn't particularly theatrical. Sure, the triptych of musicians backed by 'piano corpses' is a striking image, especially when they're powerfully backlit through a haze, but everyone remains confined to their little area on stage throughout the night. It makes for a curiously static affair, with a huge unused space in the centre of the stage. If this were actually a concert it wouldn't be so bad as you'd be able to have a dance (well, a dazy sway), but being sat quiet and still, watching musicians posing in front of spotlights isn't the most dynamic experience.
Maybe if I hadn't have been to a tonne of actually ear-drum splitting bonkers 3am concerts I'd have reacted a bit more positively, but Bailey's show just made me fondly remember those other, better, gigs. Not quite theatre and not quite a concert, Kissing the Shotgun Goodnight ends up in some unhappy and awkward no-man's land.
I wanted Bailey to take a fucking hammer to my skull but sadly, it was not to be. Oh well. Better luck next time, eh?
★★
Kissing the Shotgun Goodnight is at the Ovalhouse until 11 October, then on tour. Tickets here.
Monday, July 25, 2016
Monday, July 25, 2016
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Last night, under a soothing crimson pentagram, I was dragged on stage and made out with a dude. This was my highlight of the inaugural Secret Tea & Fantasy at The Slaughtered Lamb pub in Farringdon; a (mostly) chilled out evening of culture tucked beneath a lovely pub off Clerkenwell Road. Curated by Owain Arthur of 'Under One Roof', the evening features music, poetry, drama, comedy and a smidge of performance art, providing a slightly hungover Sunday audience a refreshing cultural aperitif to prime them for the week ahead.
I've always liked hanging out at The Slaughtered Lamb. On a base level I dig any pub that takes inspiration from An American Werewolf in London, the place managing to combine great beer and food with off-beat countercultural vibes. Last night we were in the downstairs bar, the tables topped with cast iron teapots and the intimate stage dominated by a gigantic neon pentagram. Owain, compering, assures us that this is not a Satanist evening, though it casts an ominous red glow over the audience and performers throughout.
The evening's theme was 'recovery', the baton quickly taken up by singer/songwriter Thom Allen, who confesses that he "got completely muntered last night". No doubt he wasn't alone in suffering through a headache, dry mouth and aching limbs, so it's small mercy that his performance was a musical Nurofen. Gently jangly, apparently taking influence from Jeff Buckley, it was all too easy to close your eyes and gently bliss out.
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| Thom Allen (FYI it's difficult to take pictures with a giant glowing pentagram in the background) |
Poet/writer/dramatist Nick Davies was similarly languid, perching atop a stool and delivering two monologues and a poem. The first, from a work-in-progress play about three people trapped in hospital beds was a neatly evocative piece about being restricted in movement, but free in memory. Next was a dreamy poem about life in Chicago and ruminations on American in general, topped off with a gently surreal fable of a homeless man climbing a skyscraper, followed by a short excerpt from a previous play.
It's always nice watching a writer read his own words, especially when he admits that he'd just finished writing it just before he took to the stage. Hearing works in progress, sensing what works and what doesn't, gives us an insight into Davies' creative processes. On another level, it's just damn nice to hang out with an attentive and appreciative audience.
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| Nick Davies |
Up next were improv comedy group A Bag of Bees. I've got to admit that the phrase "improvisational comedy" gives me a mild spine chill, based on painful past experiences. True to form, things start out stilted and the audience remains largely unresponsive. Still, bit by bit there's the odd sharp observation and interestingly bizarre development - enough to make it worthwhile and wring out some chuckles. And hey, I laughed out loud a couple of times, so fair enough.
Due to an act not turning up there's a bit of a lull over the extended interval. Owain does his best to keep us amused, beginning with an initially wavering but eventually broadly successful covers of Radiohead's Exit Music (for a film) and My Baby Just Cares for Me.
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| A Bag of Bees |
Things kick off with a bang as the performance art comedian Michael Clarke takes to the stage to Chumbawumba's Tubthumping. Clutching bottles of spirits and cans of cider and beer, he chaotically chugs them down along with the chorus. And, suddenly so was I.
I usually make it a point to sit in the front row everywhere I go; especially at comedy gigs. I love that sense of danger and paranoia as you worry about whether you're going to picked on. And boy was I picked on here. Clarke dragged me up in front of the crowd and whispered at me to drink along. I managed to get most of a can of Carling down my throat (and some down my t-shirt) before I sat down again, a little relieved that I could get back to my seat and continue quietly taking notes.
But, after an extended reworking of Paul's letters to the Corinthians in the meter of Eminem's Stan, I was back on stage staring at Clarke's puckered lips. Sixpence None the Richer's Kiss Me was lilting through the speakers, he was laying enticingly on the floor next to a picnic basket, the audience were urging me on. What's a boy to do?
So I kissed him. The moment I did so he sprang to his feet and asked me what the fuck I was thinking? I really should have seen this coming. After a little more abuse I sat down on a stool - only to be double-crossed once more by an out of the blue make-out session.. As our beards bristled around our sweaty lips I pondered the path my life had taken for me end up kissing a man in a pub basement to the whoops of a hungry crowd. Oh well, that's showbiz.
I felt pretty brave afterwards for going through all this, but that's nothing compared to the high-wire that Clarke's walking with this act. I can't imagine that just any guy he pulls out of an audience is going to go along with this routine (some people are going to be pretty upset) - but this razor-keen element of risk elevates his act far beyond most comedians.
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| Michael Clarke |
Clarke was by far the best act on - the kind of experience that makes these cultural grab-bags worthwhile ways to spend a balmy Sunday evening. After him was Joe Corbin - but I only made it through one song before concluding that grindingly sincere, cod-cowboy emo-blues just ain't for me.
Secret Tea & Fantasy isn't exactly breaking the mold, but as far as pleasant places to hang out on Sunday evening's go, it's a good 'un. I was a little sorry to miss the final two acts, but I think a four plus hour running time means audiences will pic n' mix what they want to see. It's a fun time. Long may the good ship Secret Tea & Fantasy sail.
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
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"If you're worried about the weather / then you picked the wrong place to stay." so sang James Murphy in the closing moments of what was officially the muddiest Glastonbury ever. His audience, who'd collectively endured five days of trudging through drizzle, rain, fog and thick mud, cheered so hard he had to skip the next line.
2016 was not a vintage Glastonbury. Leaving aside the godawful weather for a moment, the line-up was pants, the headliners were a bit dull and the festival was in a collective state of mourning over Brexit. At 4am on Friday morning I was sat in a huddle near the stone circle waiting for the sun to come up when the news started to filter through the crowd. A cry of "Brexit for breakfast!" went up. The crowd's stomachs collectively turned, for once not as a result of consuming industrial amounts of ket.
Staggering back to my tent in an anoxic daze a fine drizzle started up, the pitter-patter of rain on tents punctuated only by freaked out mutters from within that "we are so fucked" and the occasional teary whimper. I hid in my tent reading whatever snatched news article I could get over the patchy 3G, devouring an procession of apocalyptic stories about the pound transforming into monopoly money overnight, a gloating Farage triumphant and general disbelief that the morons actually won.
I was awoken by irrelevant indie has-beens James, whose piss-weak mogadon rock was leaking over our campsite from the Other Stage. I began to wonder just what the hell I was doing here. The country is falling to pieces and I'm trapped in a filthy Somerset field with a damp sleeping bag and a growing puddle in my tent. In desperation I decided to go and see Billy Bragg on the Left Field stage. Surely Billy Bragg would know what to do! Did he fuck.
Compounding the political misery was the sheer physical effort of getting anywhere. Glastonbury is enormous and navigating it is difficult at the best of times, but particularly when every footstep lands you in glue-like, wellie devouring mud. Considering festival goers are running on a couple of hours of sleep and subsisting on expensive fast food served from plastic plates (the portions seemed pretty stingy this year), just getting between places wears you down. Even I, a seasoned Glastonbury-goer, had to retreat to my tent on Sunday afternoon. I was beaten down by the thick drizzle, the omnipresent mud and the fact that I'd just spilt a full bottle of vodka and coke down the back of my jeans. For a brief hour, I just buried my head in the sweaty t-shirt I was using as a pillow and wished I was back home.
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| Taking these on and off was not fun. |
But when life hands you lemons, even lemons caked with mud, you make lemonade. Even if the rest of Britain has decided to inflict upon itself lobotomy via handgun, even if I and all my possessions are covered in mud, at least I'm surrounded by the generous, progressive, open-minded and supportive people.
What the non-Glastonbury going public can never quite understand is that the heart of Glastonbury isn't on the big stages - and it's certainly not in Chris Martin's bland wail - it's in the thousands of ways strangers pull together for a greater good.
Throughout the festival you see people dragging each other out of mud, human chains being formed to pull people up from sodden banks, people distributing free food and dry clothes to the soaked. Upon hearing that we were low on phone battery, a stranger casually handed us a free portable charging pack. My friend and I spotted a lone woman pukily staggering out of a late-night dance tent, gave her some water, chatted to her and we three proceeded to spend the night happily exploring the weirder corners of the festival.
It's sentimental, but there's something genuinely special about this place. Glastonbury is the briefest of glimpses into a world that could exist if this country didn't default to suspicion, hatred and xenophobia. It's an unsustainable bubble (and lets face it, it'd go Lord of the Flies if things went on too much longer), but even a peek into a society that functions compassion like this was enough to warm my Brexit-broken heart.
After crawling out of my tent and sliding on my 'cleanest' (i.e. least filthy) pair of jeans I went to LCD Soundsystem's mind-blowing awesome closing set on the other stage and danced my guts out as best I could (while rooted in mud). Then I drank cider underneath a discoball in a treehouse. Then I went to see Kate Tempest. Then I swilled my brain out in the weirdest corners of Shangri La. Then, finally, as Monday morning crawled into view, I scaled the slippery, mud mountain atop the park stage, reaching the big Glastonbury sign and gazed down happily over a festival that represents just about every value I hold dear in this screwed up world.
You get back home and everything is shit. Sour-faced commuters glare into their doom n' gloom newspapers. The country is peppered with xenophobic violence. Our supposed leaders can't even wipe their arses without smearing shit over their faces. We face a grey, uncertain future. The only certainty is death.
But there'll always be a very special, albeit muddy, patch of Somerset that shows us what we could be. And I'd wade through a thousand miles of mud to do it all again.
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
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"Among all the torments that Mankind is capable of, the most dreadful of them is to be buried alive." So says The Most Lamentable And Deplorable Accident, a 1661 pamphlet describing the deeply unpleasant fate of Lawrence Cawthorn. Prior to modern medical science, comas and deep unconsciousness were often mistaken for death and with little way of delaying decomposition corpses were buried pretty damn fast.
So imagine poor Mr Cawthorn, gradually coming to and finding himself in pitch blackness. He tries to sit up, hitting his head as he feels the cold, hard wood surrounding him. Panic sets in. He begins to scream and scream and scream.
Churchgoers, alarmed by "great groanings and shriekings" from underground hastily disinterred him and opened the coffin to reveal a terrible sight: "the shroud was torn to pieces; the eyes were swollen; the brains beaten out of the head; clots of blood were to be seen at the mouth; and his breast was bruised black and blue."
So yeah, being buried alive sucks: confirmed. But how does it feel to be in the freshly buried's shoes? Oskar McCarthy's Buried Alive gives us an idea of the sadness, claustrophobia and misery via a performance of Swiss composer Othmar Schoech's Lebendig Begraben, a song cycle adapted from a poem by Gottfried Keller, sung from the perspective of the newly buried. Our protagonist awakes in panic, praying that a mourning girlfriend will hear his cries, or that an opportunistic grave robber will come to his rescue. No-one comes, and as the air thins he eventually sinks into hypoxic delusion.
For starters, McCarthy knows how to set a scene. Having initially performed this in the marvellously opulent Brompton Oratory last October, he shifts to the similarly impressive St Giles Church in Camberwell. From the moment you enter, the place practically shivers with atmosphere. Candles dot the aisle at the centre of the nave, creating a gloominess that's underlined by the gradually waning summer sun shining through the stained glass. At the crossing, a simple black coffin stands surrounded by a ring of candles.
Jammed inside with nary an inch of free space, McCarthy looks believably corpse-like, the underlighting giving his features a tinge of Hammer Horror. It's a powerful theatrical image, one able to withstand the enforced stillness of the performance. On top of that, McCarthy, though constricted to the coffin, puts in a great physical performance. As he sings out his claustrophobic despair he wriggles uncomfortably in his box, clenching and unclenching his fists. By the end he's mixing in an effective bit of mime, pressing against the unmoving lid in horror.
It's quiet, dreamlike and slightly hypnotic, McCarthy's baritone as convincing communicating hope as it is plumbing the depths of despair. I've seen this performer in a number of things: Pop-Up Opera's Cosi fan tutte and L'Italia in Algeri, and recently Midsummer Opera's Don Giovanni. Each time he's stood out in an ensemble cast and here, with the spotlight firmly on him, he similarly excels. There's a fine balance to his performance style, believably and naturalistically inhabiting a character whilst delivering a fantastic vocal performance.
A church-set German language song cycle might not sound like the most thrilling time, but wherever this plays next it's well worth a look-see. Tinged with cool gothic morbidity and with a deft, light and effective theatrical touch, Buried Alive is going to stick in the memory for a while yet.
★★★★
For information on future performances please see buried-alive.org
★★★★
For information on future performances please see buried-alive.org
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
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Going to an arena pop concert for someone you've never heard of is a surreal experience. After all, a good pop concert should present the performer as a kind of minor deity - descending from their digital Mount Olympus in a hazy cloud of dry ice. But when the performer is someone you don't know - it feels like you've wandered into an alternate reality.
Such was the experience of seeing G.E.M., one of China's biggest pop stars. G.E.M. (an acronym for 'Get Everybody Moving') is the stage name of Tang Tsz-kei, who is dubbed 巨肺小天后 (the Girl with the Giant Lungs) in her native land. After this gig I can see why. She can belt out a ballad like nobody's business, not to mention tightly choreographed dancing, playing the guitar, piano and drums and making soulful speeches to a rapt crowd.
The XXX Tour is a decently sized pop-production, boasting with gigantic video projections, glitter cannons, strobe lights, CO2 jets and a squadron of dancers who move in such perfect synchronisation you suspect they may be bionically enhanced. This is a slickly professional pop product where every glittery millimeter is honed to mass appeal.
Well, mass appeal to Chinese audiences at any rate. Perhaps understandably, G.E.M. makes little or no concession to English speaking audiences. When she's singing this isn't too much of a problem. Her songs are performed in a mixture of Mandarin and Cantonese (though I have no idea which is which), but while I can't understand the particulars of her lyrics, you can appreciate the sledgehammer emotions that power them.
More vexing is her habit of launching into long spoken word segues between numbers. These speeches being greeted with rapturous applause and general merriment from an audience that was 99.9% of Chinese origin. My reaction was mild confusion, having no idea she's on about. Brief snatches of English punctuate the speeches, but a sudden garbled "Thank-you Jesus!" only added to the cryptic atmosphere. By the end of the gig G.E.M. was in floods of tears, engaged in an incomprehensible (to me) act of emotional self-flagellation.
That said, The XXX Tour was still an undeniably fun time. The language of pop transcends international and language barriers: who can resist a troupe of Backstreet Boys-a-like backing dancers strutting around in hot pursuit of the starlet, G.E.M.'s emerging in an impressive sequined catsuit with a big red cape on, or simply the moment where she emits a Whitney Houston-esque sustained bellow in the middle of some particularly baroque number?
Further highlights come in a lovely ballad accompanied by imagery of a red balloon rising up to the stars - I may not know the lyrical content but I can still appreciate a lovely piano melody. There's also the inevitable dubstep-tinged breakdown that feels ever-so-slightly naff in 2015 - but which I secretly still very much enjoy. She even throws in a couple of covers toward the closing moments of the gig; going hell for leather with a muscular rendition of Rolling in the Deep and an all-too-brief snatch of We Will Rock You.
After three encores and nearly three hours of pop-fun, G.E.M. leaves the stage. By this point I'd surrendered - gleefully participating in the ultra cheesy simple pleasure of "Gimme a G! Gimme an E! Gimme an M! - G.E.M.!".
The XXX Tour is, perhaps, some undiluted essence of pop. Because I can't understand anything G.E.M. is saying I can only experience the broad swathes of her music - which is entirely clear as it commands the audience to wiggle their butts and wave their hands in the air (like they just don't care).
It's a high-sugar / zero fibre kind of show: one that whistles through the muscles rather than the mind. G.E.M. is a pop star's pop star - and wears it well.
Monday, November 9, 2015
Monday, November 9, 2015
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Someone screwed up at the Prudential BluesFest. You'd think a twofer gig featuring Van Morrison and Tom Jones, musicians with hundreds of millions records sold between them over the last 50 years, would be an easy sell. Apparently not; whether it be a failure of marketing, pricing or simply that there wasn't as much audience overlap between the two as anticipated.
Whatever the reason, there was a gargantuan queue snaking its way around the o2 hungry for freely distributed comp tickets. I'd snaffled one up myself, figuring that while I'd never go out of my way to attend a Tom Jones or Van Morrison gig, it sure beats sitting at home doing nothing.
So that's how I found myself squeezed into the vertigo inducing fourth tier of the o2 Arena watching men with a combined age of 145 plough their way through two idiosyncratic setlists. The nosebleed seat I was given was as far away from the action as you're able to get: 'Row U, Seat 835'. From my lofty vantage point the stage was maybe a kilometre away - even the jumbotron video screens were difficult to make out.
This hangar-like performance space is generally best suited to theatrical pop spectacles with huge props, big costumes and thumping great basslines. Sadly, this meant that Van Morrison (who I saw and enjoyed at Glastonbury in 2005) was less than thrilling. Within the vast space his band sounded reedy and muted, with Van himself cutting an indistinct figure in the centre of it all. As he meandered his way through a setlist of samey sounding R&B muzak, attention began to wane.
I suspect I'd be more positive if I'd seen this exact gig in a more intimate setting. There you'd be able to see the band truly at work and piece together the jigsaw of each musical interaction, and properly watch how Morrison's style as band leader dictates pace and mood. All that was lost in the cavernous emptiness between performer and audience, resulting in a disappointingly impersonal and bland experience.
It was at about the halfway point that an early tube home started to seem attractive. By now, Tom Jones had even joined Morrison on stage for a couple of not-particularly-inspiring duets - if this was to be the peak of the night then....
But, curious to what Jones' act is like after more than fifty years in the business, I stuck around. I'm glad I did. Tom Jones has apparently reached the 'Johnny Cash' stage in his career: his age, rumbling voice and onstage making him an unlikely harbinger of old-school-Christian apocalyptic Judgement Day drama.
Opening with Burning Hell, followed swiftly by God's Gonna Cut You Down and 'Til My Back Ain't Got No Bone, the setlist swiftly transforms the hitherto harmless crooner into an ominous omen of doom. He's helped by a band firmly locked into down-at-heel doom rock, the chugging, hypnotic guitar riffs sounding like they're chiming in the four horsemen and a lighting design that covers the stage in sickly low-lit neon - a faux draped curtain backdrop making things look all Twin Peaks red-roomsy.
And this is Tom Jones! Lovely, huggable, reality TV crooner, national institute Sir Tom "Granny's bit of rough" Jones! He seems to take pleasure in playing against type, taking advantage of the opportunity to headline a highbrow Blues festival and largely skip over the expected hits. Granted, he reverts to his usual gregarious personality between songs, but his faintly aged but still powerfully sonorous voice fuels an intense set that even manages to partially redeem Sex Bomb.
The highlight is a cover of Leonard Cohen's Tower of Song. Watching Jones perform you feel like you're participating in a chain of musical history. Leaving aside Jones' iconic songs, he's associated with the best and brightest - from Presley to Portishead. Tower of Song cements him in this company, feeling like it's been written for him to solemnly boom out lyrics like:
"I was born like this, I had no choice
I was born with the gift of a golden voice
And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond
They tied me to this table right here in the Tower of Song"
It's a neat bit of self-mythologising, painting Jones as passenger to his prodigious vocal talents - managing to both humanise and deify him all at once. It's such a shivers up the spine moment that following it with It's Not Unusual comes across as a little cheap. I'm not going to deny that I didn't have fun watching him work through his signature tune, but switching gears into this crowdpleaser immediately dissipated all the atmosphere he'd painstakingly built throughout the set. Oh well, the audience seemed happy.
This marks the end of his solo set, after which he's rejoined by Van Morrison for a couple more iffy duets. By this point they look like they're having fun, but it proves to be a rather anti-climactic end to the evening, with the audience steadily leaking out into the drizzly London night.
Van Morrison I can take or leave, but I don't think he's best suited to a venue of this size. Conversely, Tom Jones more than fills it, delivering a portentous musical performance that's refreshingly (and surprisingly) low on cheese. Top stuff, Tom.
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