Humble pie

This is my fair and balanced review of Rogues’ Gallery*, which I went to on Monday night.

I went only because the boyfriend was terribly keen, who is also a fan of the CD which inspired the event; I was myself completely unconvinced by the fantastic line-up (which included Martha Wainwright, Eliza Carthy, Martin Carthy, Norma Waterson, Neil Hannon and Robyn Hitchcock) assembled for this concert as their remit was to sing – seriously now – pirate songs and sea shanties.  An evening of pirate songs and sea shanties.  Well, quite.

As it happened, I was proved completely (almost completely) wrong as the evening went on over its nearly four hours and forty-five songs.  We started to my mind somewhat inauspiciously with the performance of Baby Gramps, a man who looks every inch the singer of pirate songs, with extravagant beard and matching costume, who was accompanied by most of the other musicians singing back-up (as well as the main band who stayed on stage for most songs, providing the backbone for individual performers to do their stuff up front), lined up at the back of the stage.  From this point on, however, I began to be won over as the pure talent on offer became too evident to continue in an effort to save face: I couldn’t withstand the Carthy family playing together (Norma Waterson sang two of the most riveting songs of the night) and Eliza Carthy playing and singing a few numbers on her own: the woman is a goddess.  The Carthy family were probably the best received of all the acts on the night, with at one point an audience member shouting out to Eliza, “We love you – and your mum!” which got a warm round of applause from everyone else.  It was a lovely atmosphere, not at all smug but, for want of a better word, cosy, and the admiration for the Carthy family was utterly justified in their stand-out performances.

Neil Hannon, I was pleased to see, got two of the best songs and did them extremely well; one was fairly bawdy and fun, the other much more tender about the sinking of a ship on “the lonesome sea”, accompanied by David Coulter on the saw.  Hannon very nearly spoilt his own gorgeous performance and all but sabotaged Coulter by being a bit too arch when not singing, announcing the “saw solo” for comic effect, telling us to dig that intonation; whereas everyone else entered whole-heartedly into the affair, Hannon seemed to try to distance himself from the ridiculous piratical level of the night.  In singing the song, he did it straight and in doing so did it terrifically, but the minute he didn’t have a line to sing, he looked a bit uncomfortable.  All the same, though it came perilously close to it, it didn’t spoil the performance and I think it a terrible shame that there is no recording, so far as I know, of the evening, which had many moments which were as captivating as this one. 

Other people on the night included one-time favourite of mine, Ed Harcourt, who acquitted himself well if not very imaginatively; Richard Strange, sporting a linen suit and rakishly tilted fedora, singing a filthy On the Good Ship Venus, performed brilliantly both by the singer and the well-orchestrated band; band drummer Andy Newmark giving it socks; cartoonist Ralph Steadman, in another highlight of the night, doing a rousing version of Little Boy Billy, a jaunty little song about cannibalism; Teddy Thompson, after a spellbinding Carthy family performance, coming onstage and winning over the crowd with a simple, “Follow that”; Tim Robbins not only being there but being quite handy with a guitar and not a bad singer; Sandy Dillon and her completely unbelievable voice on Johnny Leave Her; Suzanne Vega’s sweetly enchanting fourteen-verse lament; and Martha Wainwright adding a bit of American glamour to proceedings.

The only times at which I felt thoroughly vindicated in my lack of pre-gig enthusiasm were during the performances of professional eejit Shane MacGowan and the occasions on which David Thomas took to the stage.  These two, along with Keith Moline and a Gollum-like fiddle player, did a rendition of What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor? which simply was not music.  In the interest of balance my boyfriend thought it was “magnificent” – I think David Thomas in particular is the anti-music, everything that music is not.  Thank God in Heaven Pete Doherty didn’t get there, though in fairness he’d probably have done exactly what MacGowan did.

Of course, this gig will go down in history as the momentous occasion on which Robyn Hitchcock and I breathed the same air.  Hitchcock got two songs and he appeared more and more as the evening went on in the gaggle of singers at the back of the stage (clustering round the same microphone as Tim Robbins and Richard Strange, the tall persons’ mic) and at one stage he came into the seated area via a stage door right beside the front row and stood by the wall to watch the stage (if I recall correctly, it was Hannon’s first song).  Hitchcock stood by the wall practically beside me.  I nearly fainted.

All in all, an extremely enjoyable night and my goodness we got value for money, though I wasn’t fit for firewood after a bum-numbing three hours and forty minutes of concentration.  You won’t hear it said often, but the BF was right.

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* Now, here’s a thing: is it to be Rogues’ Gallery, as I have it, or Rogue’s Gallery, as I’ve seen other reviews put it?  I am sure it must be the former, as shouldn’t the gallery be that belonging to the multiple rogues within it?  What I mean to say is, is this a democratic collection of thieves and vagrants, or what?

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

I have just finished this and highly recommend it.  I have to say it is right up my street, as it’s a Victorian murder mystery which combines meticulous research into the real-life case at its heart and a rollicking manner of telling the story, but, that said, I can’t see how anyone couldn’t get something from it.  I picked it up after reading a synopsis of it in a report on the Samuel Johnson prize, which it won this year, and I feel it is fully deserving of the attention it’s received. 

Summerscale has chosen her case extremely well, as it is as baffling as it is grotesque and sad (the victim was a small boy whose body was found in a servant’s privy), and she handles her material with care as well as confidence.  She follows the investigation of the detective, the Mr Whicher of the title, and how his findings are reported, endlessly discussed and bandied about by the press and the public of the time, a Victorian version of our own obsession with crimes involving children – more than once I was reminded, in Summerscale’s descriptions of the contemporary public response, of the morbid fascination of the blanket coverage given to the disappearance of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman a few years ago, or that of Madeleine McCann more recently. 

I found it a very easy read and finished it in just a couple of days, but no less rewarding or informative for that.  It’s a keeper.

Sleb spotting

Last week Stewart Lee got off my carriage of the Central Line at rush hour; last Friday I saw Rich Hall walking down Cavendish Place, as I looked at the window of my local Eat sandwich shop; and yesterday I saw Mark Lawson in the same place, talking to a lady.  The bright lights of the big city!

Exploring

This weekend was, first and foremost, an exercise in annoyance as I don’t have a working digital camera over here; much of what I have to report would have made this blog (which I know is a bit under-illustrated these days) a lot more interesting to look at.

Firstly, on Friday, I went to the V&A Village Fete, an alternative take on the traditional charity fundraiser with stalls run by local artists and artsy folk, amongst them Tatty Devine and Rob Ryan, where instead of winning nothing but glory, participants could take home something desirable instead.  As I say, it’s a pity I didn’t have a camera for this as it was the sheer spectacle of it that was most entertaining, so it’s lucky Wee Birdy extensively photographed it on my behalf.

On Saturday I had some rather lovely ice-cream courtesy of Scoop in Covent Garden, because summer officially came to London this weekend (BBC Weather centre says we might reach 30 degrees Celsius today).  Later that day I finally got myself to Loop, a shop that’s been top of my list of places to visit for, oh, two months.  I went with no intention to buy a thing, partly because it’s not really knitting weather at the moment, partly because I don’t have anything I need to knit at the moment and partly because I don’t have the wherewithal to pay for expensive wool.  It was just as well that I had made this decision, then, as the shop would otherwise have wiped me out completely, at least if I had been able to decide where to begin: it is one of the prettiest shops I’ve ever seen with a very good selection of stock and some fantastic sample pieces on display.  It is bigger than I was expecting it to be – normally when shops over here are described as “small”, they’re about as big as a car boot – and the cashier was perfectly pleasant to chat to.  This is in sharp contrast to my local wool shop at home, which is not local at all, is quite unprepossessing as a building and utterly unprepossessing in its staff.  I am jealous of Londoners who can come here all the time. 

On Sunday I spent part of the afternoon wandering round Columbia Road Market, which was absolutely delightful.  It’s a road in a spruced-up bit of East London with a magnificent flower market every Sunday, full of colours and smells and the deafening cries of real-life Del-Boys trying to outdo each other.  I had met my friend E for lunch and we got to the market at around half two, which was just the time that the traders were trying to sell off stock, and I got a good big bunch of something or other for a fiver.  The stalls take over the middle of the road while the actual buildings flanking them either side are occupied by a marvellous collection of all kinds of everything: a perplexing map shop, a buzzing and inviting-looking pub, numerous home and garden shops, Rob Ryan’s new real-life base Ryantown and a very enticing little cupcake-and-tea shop called Treacle, selling lots of other pretty paper and ceramic goods (it reminded me very much of the Primrose Bakery, a place I haunted when I was staying in Primrose Hill).  I am coming to the conclusion that London, or at least the bits of it that I’m most interested in, only really come to life on Sundays – Columbia Road is quite a different place during the week without the stalls and with most of the pretty little shops also shut up; Cheshire St is fascinating on a Sunday afternoon and absolutely dead at eleven on a Saturday morning.  This is completely different to my expectations, in which all Sundays are, if not silent and grey, at least quiet and relaxing.  Not so here.

Tonight I’ll be at this.  I have to say my stance is sceptical at best, but a fair and balanced report will follow in due course.

I’ve left an important part of my brain somewhere in a field in Hampshire

This can be the only explanation for why I am over six weeks late in remembering the new issue of online quarterly publication NEET Magazine.  It’s a fantastic trove of fashion ideas or ideas that can be adapted for crafty types, with advertising as interesting as the articles (in a good way).  Much like whenever I step into Urban Outfitters, I feel it is for far more achingly trendy types than myself, but all the same there’s always something of interest in it.  Though I daresay the achingly trendy get to it before six weeks have elapsed.

Latitude (part III)

Sunday kicked off with a mesmerising performance by Joanna Newsom, whom I will marry one day.  She was completely enchanting, holding the main stage audience captive at noon on the final day of a festival (surely some feat) and keeping me at the least enthralled with the strange contortions of her face while singing; even when she forgot some of the words to a couple of songs the audience went with her, laughing along with her at her honest shock that this should happen, which she said had never happened before.  I was thoroughly delighted and will be looking into her back catalogue with glee.

Next we went to investigate Scrabble Sunday in Pandora’s Playground, an area given over to things much like Scrabble Sunday.  The idea was to have a number of Scrabble boards available for use by festival-goers with a referee and a pint to hand, possibly even getting a tournament started.  Unfortunately there were many Scrabble fans at Latitude and all the boards had been taken over, so I went and had a look at Foals on the main stage, who are pretentious and twitch far more devotedly to their own music than almost anyone else, but I liked them for all that.  Next I saw a terribly uncomfortable-looking Travis Elborough (Routemaster man) reading from what I took to be his new book on Brian Eno.  On the Uncut stage were Noah and the Whale, a band who had a glorious write-up in the festival programme, mentioning among their influences everyone’s favourite Scandinavian, Jens Lekman.  While showing some promise, I’m not too sure they deserve the attention they’ve been getting elsewhere (I’ve since seen them being blurbed as the Next Great Thing in quite a few publications, at least out and about in This London).  They gave off the confidence of people with better tunes than they really had.  The crowd then changed almost completely from artily-dressed young people to altogether more sensibly-dressed mature types, from predominantly female to predominantly male, for Paul Heaton’s set on the same stage.  Heaton played exclusively new material, and I think it’s a mark of the esteem in which he is held that the audience listened to it all with attention and without any outward sign of impatience for the hits.  I did wish that the vocal line could have been clearer, as I was unable to catch almost all his lyrics, which for Heaton is a real pity and doubly so as the music is unimaginative pub rock/rockabilly at best.  Still, nice to see a performer with a sense of humour: before launching into one song, he asked the crowd, in order to draw in more people, to boo enthusiastically at its end – there was a bottle of Jack Daniels in it for the most enthusiastic heckler.  The entire crowd took part lustily, but Heaton gave the bottle to a man in the middle, for “not only did he boo and give us the thumbs-down, he also called me a wanker several times”.

I looked in on Omid Djalili’s set, which was exactly the same as all the other turns I’ve ever witnessed of his, on my way to the Breeders, who were extremely genial and relaxed and murdered a medley of White Album songs.  After this I was made to wait for the appearance of Grinderman, Nick Cave’s latest vanity project, which was in every possible respect as proposterous an act as will ever be seen and, despite myself, I found them very enjoyably silly.  I headed over before their final song to pop my head into the literary tent one last time for my closing act of the festival, Dave Gorman reading from his America Unchained book.  Although I know plenty who don’t, I have a lot of time for Gorman and found him a very warm and engaging speaker and his adventures in America sounded like an interesting departure for him (though when he finished his spiel about not patronising the MacDonalds, the Burger Kings, the Holiday Inns, the audience – clearly made up for the most part of fans – started clapping and whooping sycophantically, which made me thoroughly pleased that the festival was now coming to an end).

I said goodbye to Latitude 2008 with a very fine chocolate and banana crepe and a stroll around the grounds, which were very pretty and had been kept so by the organisers’ excellent waste-management system, where every festival-goer was responsible for disposing of their own rubbish into either a compost, recycle or landfill bag.  I also felt the organisation extended into the good running of most of the stages – only one or two stages, to my knowledge, overran by very much and this, along with the fortuitous timetabling, meant that almost nothing I wanted to see clashed very much with anything else.  The atmosphere was pleasantly laid-back throughout, in contrast to other festivals I’ve been to when everything feels a bit rushed and panicked in getting from one stage to another and back again in order to pack in everything.  If only they could sort out the shower who run their shuttle buses, even I would be happy.

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This week I also saw Pixar’s latest, Wall-E.  I can’t see how the vast majority of it would work for kids due to the sheer bleakness of much of the story (at least bleak by my expectations of a Pixar film*) but it works fantastically well as a film in every other respect.  The animation is utterly flawless, from the jaw-dropping sequences of gorgeous-looking space to the ability to make two robots express emotion to the extent that they do, though this is probably more fairly attributed to the phenomenal sound design on the film – a good two-thirds of the film is silent, with only the minimum of dialogue in the rest of it.  All the same, the robots in the film, Wall-E and EVE, do communicate, just through a serious of bleeps and noises and sort-of words.  I really recommend this one.

* Now I come to think of it, the Toy Story films, Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc and so on are all about loss and peril in some way.  But Wall-E is far more dark than any of these.

Latitude (part II)

After The Irrepressibles were Franz Ferdinand, who were absolutely dependable, reliable but ever-so-slightly workaday.  I think it may have been the sheer size of the crowd, as well as the desperate weather they had to contend with.  However, they played a lot of new material and all of it stood up to the quality of their previous hits, so I still look forward to that new release.

I spent the morning of Saturday waiting for the all-too-promisingly-titled Learn to Play the Ukulele in Under an Hour (or How George Formby Changed My Life) in the cabaret tent.  A hundred ukuleles were standing by for the large crowd (again packed with kids – why does what I find appealing always coincide with what appeals to six-year-olds?) when two nearing-thirties men appeared on stage and began a show which would greatly improve with the help of a stern editor.  They had a shambling and unsatisfactory mix of an almost Dave Gorman-esque story (which they acted out in a wearing faux-naif manner) interspersed with some straight musical performance of Formby songs and a little, a very little, ukulele tuition.  The two lads were likeable presences on stage but I couldn’t help but be disappointed with such a show and such a title.  We didn’t get to keep the ukuleles.

After this we tried to get through the revolting crowds to Bill Bailey but it was simply not to be.  All was not lost, however, as I went and had some very fine risotto.  (It’s a risotto kind of festival, too.)  Later I did manage to get inside the tent for Jeremy Hardy, who talked very engagingly but not necessarily humorously for a good hour.  I then stood outside the Coral’s set, which had been billed as acoustic but was most certainly not acoustic.  The sun came out during Seasick Steve’s set, during which everyone in earshot remarked how much he was the embodiment of utter cool – he’s the sort of man who could talk to anyone and he plays a mean one-stringed guitar.  The final act of the day for me was Sigur Rós, who put on a spectacle that was the equal of a Flaming Lips set, if different to it in almost every way.  This was a magical performance, but I have to say it was only helped by the fact that they were performing in a different language – I can’t help but feel some of the grandeur might have eroded had I known entirely what was going on.

Sorry this report is so bitty, I plan to have it finished tomorrow.  Till then!

Latitude (part I)

After a long journey from London to Suffolk, via a good train and a really bad shuttle bus, we arrived at Henham Park on Thursday afternoon.  Almost all the stages didn’t really get going until the Friday, but that evening we did manage to see Jon Ronson do a reading (with his son reclining on a chaise longue – it’s a chaise longue kind of festival – occasionally asking his dad not to do a particular story “because he’s heard that one 300 times”) of a selection of articles, including both his domestic columns for the Guardian and his more interesting proper journalism on crackpot conscpiracy theorists.  After this we did some more wandering around, getting to know the layout of the grounds, and finished the evening by watching a silent 1920s version of Moulin Rouge, accompanied by a live orchestra.  The story was that of a mother who unwittingly attracts the lover of her daughter against the glamorous background of 20s Paris.  This story may have been more compelling had not the daughter looked at least as old as her mother.

The next day we began by queuing for tickets for BBC Radio 4’s Just a Minute.  Two episodes were to be recorded at Latitude over the course of the weekend, and despite getting to the queue as soon as the main gates were opened (and running from the main gates to the queue, to boot), I didn’t manage to get a ticket to either recording, which was a bit of a stinker considering that’s what I wanted to see most at the festival.  However, we recovered by going to the comedy tent, where there were half-hour/forty minute sets from Robin Ince, Adam Bloom and Simon Day in quick succession.  Ince and Bloom were both good, though I’d been expecting quite a bit less shouting from Ince for some reason; Bloom was unknown to me and quite impressed me with a well-pitched performance; but Day was a real disappointment, especially because I’ve always been quick to defend him in the past – when others say he rode on the coattails of more talented performers in The Fast Show and other programmes, I’ve always said he has a charm of his won.  His Latitude appearance was entirely charmless.

Over the rest of the day I saw sets by Beth Orton (excellent) and The Go! Team, who won me over with their immense likeability, their youthful energy, their colourfulness, but were sadly lacking in tunes to match everything else about them.  They had two good songs and the crowd erupted for them, but otherwise they didn’t quite live up to their promise.  I also saw a few songs of Julian Cope’s set, which were impenetrable to a non-fan such as myself.  My highlight of Friday was set by The Irrespressibles on the “In the Woods” stage.  This stage was a magical setting, where the man-made stage was beautifully incorporated into the sylvan surroundings; the trees provided a canopy overhead, making it a lovely natural venue.  The Irrepressibles are nigh-on indescribable: they were a nine-piece orchestra playing a specially-commissioned piece for the Latitude Festival, but that doesn’t even begin to tell you about the choreography, the outlandish Flash Gordon/1920s costumes married perfectly with the lighting and presentation and just the sheer sound of it.  They were fronted by a singer who sounded like a cross between Morrissey and Antony of Antony and the Johnsons.  Apparently an album is coming out in October – I am excited.

The traveller returns

Hello!  It may take me a little time to get all my Latitude reviews up, as I need to go back over the programme, make sure I mention all I want to mention, write it up fairly well, and do all this at work.  But, until then, suffice it to say that I had a great time, despite the vagaries of the useless coach service to and from Ipswich and the extremely changeable weather.  More to follow.  (Hope you’ve all been keeping well.)

Graham Greene

I forgot to mention that, while I’ve been doing very little reading over here, I finally finished Graham Greene’s The Ministry of Fear last week and thoroughly recommend it.  While not too samey in subject matter as his screenplay for the film The Third Man (incidentally, one of the best films ever), which is probably the work of Greene’s that I know best, it does bring up similar noir-ish issues of identity, marred lives, longing and loss.  Excellent.