The other thing about last weekend

I have already spilled the beans on my two Hitchcock gigs in London last weekend; I thought I might as well post about some of the other things I did there too.

The BF moved in the past little while to the south of London, having always lived north of the Thames, and so he’s still finding out the good spots to visit.  Thus we went to Crystal Palace Park on Sunday; while not the very best place on an overcast and intermittently rainy day, it does have one claim to fame: their concrete Victorian models of dinosaurs.  I’ve actually written something about these dinosaurs for a college paper because I was so taken with them – I recommend the Wikipedia article on them as a starting point.  I think their charm is mainly in the fact that, despite being immensely anatomically inaccurate and widely derided only a few years after completion, the enthusiasm with which they were made is palpable – dinosaurs were completely new and the creators just wanted to tell people about these cool new findings.  (In the course of my research, I found out that the early palaeontologist Sir Richard Owen, who was consulted on the anatomy of the dinosaurs by sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, was a real piece of work.  I feel the world should know this.)

The above is one of the specimens I felt fared worst out of the march of time; despite knowing less than nothing about dinosaurs actually, I’ve still imbibed the likes of Walking with Dinosaurs, as well as Jurassic Park, and in comparison the thingummy above can’t help but suffer.  For me, it’s the RUBBISH forelegs, which look more elephantine that dinosaur-y; apparently at the time, it wasn’t thought that dinosaurs could support themselves on their hind legs alone, whereas we now know that their forelegs were really more arm-like.  Dinosaur, a term coined by the horrid Owen, means “terrible reptile” – that epithet absolutely fits the fella (the Megalosaurus, Wikipedia says) above.

I think my favourite was the Mosasaurus, above.  When you’re going around, all you can really see of it are those jaws, wide open – it’s a pretty good effect but I couldn’t find a photo online.  Anyway, the story behind this one is that at the time (the statues were unveiled in 1853), only a skull of the Mosasaurus had been found – but this didn’t deter them!  Instead, Hawkins just made a head and submerged the body, so the lack of the rest of the beast wouldn’t be apparent to onlookers.  That’s the spirit that made Britain great!

Another thing I really liked about the display was the fact that the information boards were completely honest about the very small esteem in which these models are held by real scientists, and even go so far as to print a picture of the model with a modern idea of what the dinosaur would have looked like, often with comically different results.  The boards even say that the Mosasaurus (the model with just a skull) isn’t even all that good a model of the head, despite that being the only thing they had to get right.  Still, it’s easy to poke fun, and these models really were ahead of their time, appearing six years before the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.  But I can’t help but feel something has been lost since their first appearance – not least the fact that, in their 2002 renovation, one of them turned from a bright, completely mad blue, to a more accurate, but less jolly, dirty beige.

Not the best photo of a really cool thing

Squee!  (It is addressed to “Dublin” rather than my name, for reasons best known to the artist.)

The post in which I out myself as an immense stalkery fan

While I could say that I visited London this past weekend in order to spend Valentine’s Day with the boyfriend, that would be, strictly speaking, not entirely the truth.  I booked the flight so that I could see this man in the flesh:

Photo courtesy of laurencea

In addition to flying over, I went to both the Islington gig on Thursday and the Bracknell gig on Saturday night.  I am not an immense stalkery fan.

I managed to get myself to the Union Chapel in Islington in good time so that the BF and I could nab ourselves a decent pew (point of information: three hours of sitting on a pew is an endurance exercise).  The Chapel is an impressive and unusual venue in what I would describe as a Victorian-Gothic style and is still a functioning church, with bar attached.  There was a particularly impressive pulpit: we conjectured as to whether Hitchcock would make use of it at some point during the evening to declaim some proclamations. 

During Catherine Feeny’s warm-up set I decided that I liked her pretty voice and guitar-playing more than her songwriting.  The one that stuck out was the sub-Alanis Morisette song which I’m guessing is called “If We Wanted to Learn”, a trite song about how one half of the world doesn’t understand the other half, with a refrain that asks “if we wanted to learn … could we?” - the BF got great mileage out of coming up with lyrics to fit into this song (samples: “the people in the sink don’t understand the people in the pipe”, “the people on the plate don’t understand the people on the fork” – maybe you had to be there).  However, she was a likeable stage presence and her performance really cranked up a notch when she was joined onstage by her husband Sebastian, the songs benefitting greatly from some harmonies and another guitar.

After a brief wait, Hitchcock took to the stage alone to play a great version of “I Got the Hots” on an acoustic, playing right out on the verge of the platform “so you can see there are no tricks”.  After this, he was joined by bassist Paul Noble, drummer Rob Ellis and cellist Jenny something-or-other (I’m afraid I didn’t catch her name); for “Sinister but She Was Happy”, Hitchcock took up a polka-dot guitar which happened to match his polka-dot shirt.

Photo courtesy of nick.hider - note the matching polka dot shirt and guitar

 Overall, the setlist was fantastic – about halfway through, the BF turned to me and asked me if I’d written it myself.  Considering I’m not a mad completist (as the BF is), it’s very gratifying that I could recognise so much, let alone that I am terribly fond of a great deal of the setlist.  My favourites from Islington included “Sinister but She Was Happy”, beefed up and absolutely rocking with Ellis’ beat (including absolutely thrashing the hi-hat with a tambourine on the off-beat); a really well-arranged version of “You and Oblivion”; another really nicely arranged “Full Moon in My Soul”, speeded up slightly from the Spooked version; “Saturday Groovers”, which became an instant favourite, and one of the many points during the gig that I felt it a pity it was seated, as it’s a song made to be pogoed to; a fairly mellow “Sometimes a Blonde”; a wonderfully tense “Insanely Jealous”, with a particularly compelling vocal from Hitchcock; a very sweet “Comme Toujours Here I Stand”, with Hitchcock and the cellist alone; and a really atmospheric end to the evening with the title track off his new album, “Goodnight Oslo”.  (See the comments for the full setlist.)

Ellis contributed a great deal to my enjoyment of the evening, not only on “Sinister” but throughout each gig, giving it socks consistently and breathing new life into arrangements with his energetic arrangements.  Noble was the stereotypical laid-back-to-the-point-of-being-horizontal bassist, very smiley and clearly enjoying himself.  Jenny the cellist was, in contrast to many strings players with conventional bands, put to good use when on stage and shone particularly on “Comme Toujours”.  Hitchcock himself was great value and full of jokes and asides.  He gave some tremendously enjoyable vocal performances but I have to say his guitar solos were a bit naff at times, but the songs were buoyed along on the overall charm of the band.

Photo courtesy of laurencea

After somewhat misjudging how long it would actually take to get to the South Hill Park Arts Centre in Bracknell, we missed out on Catherine Feeny, but were still in plenty of time for Hitchcock himself.  The Wilde Theatre in the Arts Centre, where the gig was held, is a very comfortable, cosy little theatre, despite the awful 80s tubing in evidence all over the place.  On this night, before taking to the stage, Hitchcock was introduced by a man the BF and I dubbed Mr Bracknell (I assume he was the manager of the theatre, but he made no indication whatsoever of who he might possibly be, so we made the logical assumption).  This second gig followed much the same pattern as the Islington gig.  The notable changes were that, rather than singing the drum fill for “Oceanside”, Ellis actually performed it the traditional way in Bracknell; “I’m Only You” made a welcome appearance, again really pleasingly arranged for the band; and, to the BF’s immense fanboy glee, a really rare b-side, “Zipper in my Spine”, reared its head.  I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I think if anything I enjoyed the Bracknell gig even more than the Islington gig; I broadly knew what to expect and so could just pay attention to what was going on rather than wonder at the back of my mind if “I Got a Message for You” might be getting an outing.

And that’s about it, except for the fact that after the Bracknell show Hitchcock did a little surprise meet-and-greet DURING WHICH I MET HIM.  Unfortunately, somehow what I had intended as a declaration of undying love and a marriage proposal came out instead as a chastisement for not playing Dublin.  As neither of us had expected him to volunteer signing things, neither the BF nor I had any of his own albums to thrust at him; all I had was the notebook I never leave home without.  It now houses a picture of a bat, signed by Hitchcock and addressed, simply, to “Dublin”.

I just had to post this straight away …

The ladies at Beaut.ie have got hold of an outrageous internal memo from the Bank of England advising female employees on appropriate office attire - including the admonition “not to wear ankle chains – ‘professional, but not the one you want to be associated with’”, amongst much else.

Round-up

Here we go again!

• Purl Bee’s beautiful sewn paper Valentines
• Design*Sponge reports on an innovative new product
• The Dublin International Film Festival is starting up in the next fortnight, including Irish premieres of Doubt, Last Chance Harvey and Five Minutes of Heaven.  It’s a bit pricey for the likes of me (a galling €18 per ticket for the “opening gala” showing of Doubt, €10 for any other ticket) but it’s definitely worth going – last year I saw Daniel Day-Lewis give a really interesting interview after the first Irish screening of There Will Be Blood.  Book early if you do want to go.
• Sad news – Murder One on Charing Cross Road has closed