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.

———————————————

* 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!