(no subject)
The past week was mostly uneventful except for my sojourn on the Isle of Wight and Thursday night's gig at the Water Rats Theatre.
I went there with scifisteve to hear The French play a set. Fantastic fun watching the singer Darren Hayman try (inadvertently) to break his instruments. It was the first time I've ever seen an electric ukelele (which he dropped). He also knocked over his guitar and also the wee cymbal that was briefly clamped to his keyboard. Other than that the set seemed to go rather smoothly.
The first support act was a guy called Vinny Peculiar - a kind of performance artist rather than musician - he came on and recited poetry and recounted anecdotes before each of his songs which were about various things - being a sperm donor and teenage bedrooms included. Most entertaining. I felt rather sorry for him as he shamelessly plugged his CDs between the songs - I've no idea if anyone actually bought one, I hope they did.
The main support was Spearmint. Before going to the gig I downloaded some of their songs to get a flavour. I enjoyed the records but they were poor in comparison to the live band. I thought they were fantastic live and even Nick (who doesn't really like the recorded tracks) grudgingly admitted that they were "quite good" - praise indeed! The lead singer of Spearmint ( a guy called Shirley I think) was very energetic and resembled (strikingly so at times) a shorter version of Jarvis Cocker. He was wearing a Sonic Youth T-shirt which I envied. When I commented on it after the gig he offered to sell it to me as he said he needed the money, poor chap. I was tempted but I couldn't bring myself to have the shirt off a man's back. I bought one of the band shirts instead.
It fits beautifully.
I went there with scifisteve to hear The French play a set. Fantastic fun watching the singer Darren Hayman try (inadvertently) to break his instruments. It was the first time I've ever seen an electric ukelele (which he dropped). He also knocked over his guitar and also the wee cymbal that was briefly clamped to his keyboard. Other than that the set seemed to go rather smoothly.
The first support act was a guy called Vinny Peculiar - a kind of performance artist rather than musician - he came on and recited poetry and recounted anecdotes before each of his songs which were about various things - being a sperm donor and teenage bedrooms included. Most entertaining. I felt rather sorry for him as he shamelessly plugged his CDs between the songs - I've no idea if anyone actually bought one, I hope they did.
The main support was Spearmint. Before going to the gig I downloaded some of their songs to get a flavour. I enjoyed the records but they were poor in comparison to the live band. I thought they were fantastic live and even Nick (who doesn't really like the recorded tracks) grudgingly admitted that they were "quite good" - praise indeed! The lead singer of Spearmint ( a guy called Shirley I think) was very energetic and resembled (strikingly so at times) a shorter version of Jarvis Cocker. He was wearing a Sonic Youth T-shirt which I envied. When I commented on it after the gig he offered to sell it to me as he said he needed the money, poor chap. I was tempted but I couldn't bring myself to have the shirt off a man's back. I bought one of the band shirts instead.
It fits beautifully.