Good News For People Who Love Bad News
Dec. 10th, 2010 11:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexsarllApparently David Cameron's not just a Smiths fan, he likes Modest Mouse too. He's certainly doing his bit to keep their album titles topical. I skirted the edge of the protests yesterday. I wasn't in town to agitate or demonstrate - I did that the last time a party students trusted turned out to be lying about tuition fees, and I don't see that my contribution would achieve any more this time around - but since one of the routes I could take would combine the journey I was making anyway with a little disaster tourism, why not? With the lines of riot police blocking empty streets, the searchlight helicopter, the riot vans haring around in sixes, it all felt very Eastern European.
This was on my way to see the Jeays festive show at the Battersea Barge which - perhaps because of the disruptions? - wasn't as full as the past couple of years. The raffle format bore fruit, as it usually does - even when audience members chose songs I don't love on record like 'The Man from Del Monte', Phil's live performance has enough of Brel's demonic side to make them fascinating. The regrettably obligatory support slot from performance poet the Speech Painter was introduced by Phil in verse. A lengthy poem which was far more savage, and much funnier, than any of the supposed poet's work. It almost seemed too cruel. Almost.
Other shows seen this week include Brontosaurus Chorus (on excellent form - album-in-full shows are so much less depressing when it's a new album rather than a sanctioned classic), Jonny Cola (still with the new line-up), Boy Stood Alone On Mountaintop (solo acoustic singer-songwriters aren't really my thing, alas), Bleech (Amy Pond's sister and a slightly out of date Hoxtonista trying to be Elastica, but not as good as that sounds) and Pan. Apparently two thirds of Pan used to be Le Tetsuo, a name I knew but not a band I ever heard. The name doesn't really suit them, the sound being very tight and constrained, and their singer looking like David Morrissey as the young Gordon Brown. These are not bad things, you understand - simply things which contradict the name. I can't quite make out the lyrics, but the words I catch in one chorus include 'lesbian' and 'exes', which are both good words to have in your chorus.
This was on my way to see the Jeays festive show at the Battersea Barge which - perhaps because of the disruptions? - wasn't as full as the past couple of years. The raffle format bore fruit, as it usually does - even when audience members chose songs I don't love on record like 'The Man from Del Monte', Phil's live performance has enough of Brel's demonic side to make them fascinating. The regrettably obligatory support slot from performance poet the Speech Painter was introduced by Phil in verse. A lengthy poem which was far more savage, and much funnier, than any of the supposed poet's work. It almost seemed too cruel. Almost.
Other shows seen this week include Brontosaurus Chorus (on excellent form - album-in-full shows are so much less depressing when it's a new album rather than a sanctioned classic), Jonny Cola (still with the new line-up), Boy Stood Alone On Mountaintop (solo acoustic singer-songwriters aren't really my thing, alas), Bleech (Amy Pond's sister and a slightly out of date Hoxtonista trying to be Elastica, but not as good as that sounds) and Pan. Apparently two thirds of Pan used to be Le Tetsuo, a name I knew but not a band I ever heard. The name doesn't really suit them, the sound being very tight and constrained, and their singer looking like David Morrissey as the young Gordon Brown. These are not bad things, you understand - simply things which contradict the name. I can't quite make out the lyrics, but the words I catch in one chorus include 'lesbian' and 'exes', which are both good words to have in your chorus.
