GHUITAW

[alexsarll]

Readers with nothing better to do may recall that it took me a while to be convinced by Los Campesinos!; initially they seemed somehow to be trying too hard, but eventually I was convinced that they were one of the most important new bands in Britain - a little behind The Indelicates, perhaps, but the ranks were already thin and thinner as of today's sad news from The Long Blondes. At the Shred Yr Face tour, I went through that whole dilemma once again in fast forward. It probably didn't help that it was the first gig I'd attended solo in a while. For sure I turn up to a lot of shows solo, but normally I know my people will be there - Hell, normally I know the band. But here I was back to peoplewatching, looking at all the indie kids and wondering if we looked that fvcking wet* and the girls looked so hard and cold and we just didn't realise it, or whether something has changed. I missed Times New Viking entirely, which I can't say I regret given 'German Bold Italic', but was there for the whole of the set by No Age which, ironically, lasted An Age. Not that they were bad, I just didn't need so much of them, as is so often the way with support bands; I find a deserted room far more ballroomesque than the main Electric Ballroom and read my book in the half-light. Anyway, LC! - it didn't help that they did one of those soundcheck-right-before-main-set things, always a good way to squander your mystique, but for the first few songs I was thinking back to last December and how much I love Patrick Wolf on CD and how thoroughly punchable he came across when I saw him live. But then 'You'll Need Those Fingers For Crossing' opens with Gareth singing 'Millionaire Sweeper', and he gets another Kenickie namecheck in elsewhere, and I realise he's one of the few who realises how sad last week's anniversary was. And I've moved back a little and I can see them all, and it makes more sense that way, and 'You! Me! Dancing!' and 'Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks' make all the sense they do on record, and I am won over all over again and yes, that's because they are a good idea.

"I guess the real trouble is that we - us humans - are just not nice enough to support something as benign as the Culture. The point is that as a species, as a civilisation, you can choose to behave with consistent decency at any stage in your technological development, not just in a post-scarcity environment, and any species which could instigate or become a founding part of the Culture would, I'm afraid, almost certainly have been behaving a lot better in the lead up to that event and throughout their history than we have throughout ours. I would like to be wrong, but I suspect we are too selfish, stupid, xenophobic and cruel to be Culture-compatible." - Iain M Banks

Comments

[darkship.livejournal.com]

As regards 'You! Me! Dancing!' and 'Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks', it's strange how all of the best LC! songs were released as singles: I can't think of many bands like that. As regards Times New Viking, I have the record on my PC and fall in and out of love with them: I think I like the songs, but have to get used to the intentionally bizarre, horrible production job.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

If we take that as a given, pop acts would be the obvious point of comparison - there aren't many great lost Britney, Sugababes or Christina Aguilera album tracks, for instance. But as regards LC!, I'm not sure I agree; apart from anything else, I don't think 'Sweet Dreams' was a single, was it? Wikipedia agrees with me on not. And something like 'This Is How You Spell...', say, for all that the delivery wound me up when it came along early last night, is probably my favourite track of theirs.

[teamwoolf.livejournal.com]

Aside from whether or not Times New Viking are good, didn't you think it was a bloody joke that it took almost an hour in the queue to collect tickets?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I honestly have no opinion on TNV either way, I'm not even sure I've heard them - I just knew that I had to do Stuff before coming out which would preclude me from seeing whichever band was on first (and I think I thought No Age were first anyway, for some reason), and so decided to come up with a spurious Kylie joke to retroactively justify myself.

The queue: I don't know, it didn't seem that bad by the time I was there. I was in the guestlist queue, which might have helped - but then I heard someone say it was longer than the other, so maybe it didn't.

I didn't spot you - or indeed, anyone I even vaguely recognised, hence some of the old and alienated thoughts above. Were you down the front?

[teamwoolf.livejournal.com]

I was, yes. Fairly near, anyway. But the layout of the "ballroom" pretty much means that you're never going to find anybody in there. I even lost the person I attended with halfway through, so had no chance of finding anybody else, even though I knew a lot of people who attended.

The guestlist queue was also the "ticket pick up" queue. We got there at 7.30, and we didn't get in until 8.20. Was not best pleased.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

OK, that is ridiculous. I must have been there about, what, 8.50? By which time they had clearly learned at least some lessons from the suffering of the early crowd.