Patti Smith: Dream of Life

“There’s a Patti Smith documentary out,” a colleague told me.  “I think you’d like it.”

“Oh?”  I pricked my ears up in interest.  I vaguely remembered two friends talking about the movie but had dismissed it, because I wasn’t familiar with Smith’s work.  Although I probably had been more concerned with the food I was about to tuck into at the time.  “Is she still around?”

My colleague laughed.  “Yes.  It’s full of poetry.  You should see it.”

And so, this misty, chilly December night, I set out for the West End.  In search of Poetry and its comrades, Truth, Beauty and Love.

The End of the Road Festival, 12-14 September 2008, Larmer Tree Gardens, Dorset

Festivals: General

It is a peculiar quirk of the English psyche – call it optimism, stoicism, delusional or plain eccentricity – that any prospect of sunshine, no matter how vague, must be celebrated out of doors, in a field, throwing shapes or gently swaying to live music.  Because it’s summer, yeah, and the weather is gonna be wik-ked!  Never mind that the chances of extended brilliant warm sunshine during the English summer are, although less slim than Gwyneth Paltrow contributing something of relevance to the average person’s reality, still quite unlikely.  It’s summer, and that means it isn’t spring (grey, with the sort of rain which gets inside your socks and winds gusty enough to turn your umbrella inside out), winter (dark, cold, with winds capable of whipping through your outer layers to your bones) or autumn (shorter chillier days wreathed in misty flumes, bonfire smoke and golden sunshine).

The Kindness of Strangers – Built to Spill, Scala, Thursday 24 May 2007

Being fairly petite and vertically challenged, my gig modus operandi, is to rock up suitably early to secure myself a raised vantage point, with a railing to lean on when Knee tires. The only fly in the ointment is that after having secured such a position, one needs to hang on to it for dear life. Unfortunately, after a pint or so, the need to relieve one’s self may interfere with this. This is when having a bud comes into its own. However, my buddy Jaya was wandering far and wide, trying to secure his ideal vantage point in the midst of the scrum. With a shrug, I thought ‘easy come easy go’ and scuttled off to the ladies’.

‘Jeff Rules!’ – Wilco, Shepherd’s Bush Empire, Sunday 20 May 2007

So came the inebriated cry, in a quieter moment during the Wilco set at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire on Sunday 20 May 2007. Wilco frontman, Jeff Tweedy, wrapped up in bringing a song to a close, did not acknowledge it but most within the vicinity chuckled.

Clumsily articulated, perhaps, but never was a truer sentiment expressed.

Hey Hey They’re the Monkeys – The Arctic Monkeys, Brixton Academy, 27 April 2006

The Arctic Monkeys played the Brixton Academy on Thursday, 27 April 2006, the last night of their 2 week UK tour. These four young’uns (all 19 or 20 years old) and their cheeky tales of Sheffield life – stories infused with wry social commentary and the sheer exuberant energy of lads with electric guitars – are the latest NME cover stars… and yes, i can see eyes rolling at the phrase ‘latest UK indie sensation’. But they’re very much a band of this century. Their initial success resulted from free dissemination of their music at gigs and through the internet and led to two number 1 singles and the fastest selling album of all time.

Guitar Anoraks Strike Back

T'was a slight surprise that Finland, land of the midnight sun and the Moomintroll, won Eurovision for the first time on Sat night. Particularly as their entry, Lordi, a masked band in the vein of Slipknot with a member named 'Hell Bull', sported a certain 'lite' brand of heavy metal.

The band's victory probably owed something to the lurver-ly Lauren Laverne, breakfast host at xfm extraordinaire (sound indie station, despite being owned by the extremely commercial Capital Radio). She adopted Lordi's cause in the name of ROCK, unleashed the Finns onto her unsupecting London audience, comprised for the most part of pimply wannabe guitar gods, aging indie kids and mellowing punks.

Who decided that, David Lee Roth comparisons aside, it was no bad thing that this year, the 'song contest' that was Eurovision should be reclaimed from all things kitsch fluffy and camp.

Hear! hear!

xFM Lordi campaign.

“Radiohead kindly request that you do not crowdsurf” – Radiohead, Hammersmith Apollo, 18 May 2006

There it was. The heavy weight of mortality and the insidious passage of time, making itself evident in the form of neat clinical signs posted throughout the Hammersmith Apollo.

A portent as it were.