So, a few gigs over the last week or two – warming up to what is about to be a marathon of them.
First off – Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy at the Hackney Empire.  There had been a company meeting, followed by some drinks (including whisky tasting) earlier in the evening – and when I arrived at the venue, I was feeling very… sluggish. I arrived as some frenchman was begging to be allowed in, or to buy a ticket, or anything. I had a spare – so gave it to the poor chap. Then discovered my ticket was for the upper balconies. I made my way up hurriedly (being slightly late) – and discovered I was indeed rather high up – so much so that my blurry tired eyes really struggled to focus on what was going on. But I could hear well enough – and to be honest, the man is not exactly easy on the eyes – so probably better that I couldn’t see him properly. So I found myself a spot leaning on a railing, and listened to some indie-folk. And yeah – decent gig. Good music, not much more to say.

Two days later – another guy with a ‘nickname’… Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry at the Jazz Cafe.  And again, too tired to enjoy it properly – with my thoughts running distractedly over things like how many people in the crowd looked/acted like their mothers did drugs while pregnant.  At one point, a chap I’d picked earlier as almost certainly a dealer – pushed me aside at the bar – then looked at me, and said “Sorry – I’m a c*$%.”  Without thinking, I immediately responded simply “I know.”  He laughed, and there was no “shankin’”.  Anyway – I describe that mostly to relate how distracted I was at the gig – even though it was good.  I find myself doing that at all gigs now – I’m absorbed for the first couple of songs, then the mind starts wandering.  The wine?  A 21st century attention span?  Old age?  Dementia?  I don’t know.  Although the only video I can find of ‘the Upsetter’ is of terrible quality – it really was quite a good gig.

I had the weekend off – and tried to use it to get back into some kind of routine, do some housekeeping, and catch up on sleep – with one eye on the upcoming ridiculous schedule of gigs and work.  I half-succeeded with pretty much all of that.  Except the sleep – which I nearly accomplished, and then dashed all the good work by staying up until 4am Monday morning – doing nothing but reading and a terrible cycle of “another wee dram before bed”.

On the Tuesday, it was my wee sister’s birthday.  I stayed up on the Monday night in order to give her a call – then realised the time difference is currently actually 13 hours, or 11 hours, or something – so I could have called much earlier than I did.  And when I did – I only got voicemail anyways.  Tuesday night, her birthday in local time – I celebrated the way I know she would have wanted (or maybe not).  By seeing some classic hip-hop.  GZA – in the rather small Islington Academy.  He was rather good – much better than the gig with the rest of the Clan.  Red wine and Wu-Tang – classic.  There’s a series of videos from the event here – 1, 2, 3, & 4 – but they seem to be taken from the mezzanine, and focused on the DJ rather than the rapper.  (For some shimmy shimmy ya action – start of clip 3.  In clip 4, I’m in that crowd somewhere, near the top of the screen – and no, I’m not one of the people bouncing the W symbol.)

I then had a night off (which actually turned into tapas and drinks with workmates) – and then last night was the first night in a schedule I’m really starting to regret.  11 nights in a row of gigs (although last night was not strictly a gig).  And looking at my calendar – that is followed by a 3 day training course, and then another gig.  And during that 11-day marathon – I will be be spending a week on-site at a new client, where my full wits (and patience) will be required.

But to get it out of the way – last night’s not-strictly-a-gig.  The Long Count.  Ummm… not sure how to describe it.  So I’ll plagarise:

Acclaimed rock band The National’s twin brothers Bryce and Aaron Dessner conceived The Long Count in collaboration with video artist Matthew Ritchie as a multimedia concert, which explores the ‘time before time’; the indivisible moment before creation is expressed.
Inspired by the ‘hero twins’ of the Mayan creation myth contained in the Popol Vuh – of which the Long Count calendar is an important part – the show presents a mythical song cycle of subtly interweaving guitars, solemn a capella, layered sound structures and scintillating rock.
The Dessners team up with a 12-strong ensemble featuring members of the Heritage Orchestra, surrounded by an impressive installation designed by Ritchie, and singers/performers Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond) and Kelley Deal (The Breeders), plus special guest Tunde Adebimpe (TV On The Radio).

Yeah – so it was that.  I didn’t really know what to expect – but I think that the NY times summed it up the best:

The multimedia orchestral-rock song cycle “The Long Count” is theoretically about the prehistory of time, ballgames and twins. Practically, it’s about a semipopular indie-rock band with some contemporary classical-music experience not embarrassing itself in a multimedia commission with an extremely convoluted theme and text. The practical part is what you want to focus on.

Unfortunately, I was so tired that after the initial bemusement wore off, and the wine and very comfy/roomy seats took effect – I actually dozed off a few times.  This despite the fact the entire show was only a little over an hour long.  But it was pretty good.  That NY Times review really does get it right – they “didn’t embarass themselves” – which isn’t gushing praise, but in such a concept – it’s pretty good.  A lot of the crowd left very confused – I think they’d just read “The National” in the description and thought they were going to see some side-project gig.  And then got confronted with all this artsy theatre buuuulllshit (here’s the ‘trailer‘).  Me – quite pleased I went, slightly upset I was unable to appreciate the whole thing – and struggled to follow what (if any?) narrative there was – but I probably should have read up on the subject material beforehand.

Right – been too busy and lazy and sick to write for a while, so now I just have to skim over it all.

First gig of the year – Ani DiFranco at the Union Chapel.  Cool gig, talented lady – did an improvised song with a crowd member playing guitar for her – after somebody requested a song, and she claimed to not be able to play it anymore.  A crowd member reckoned he could, so he did – and it turns out she remembered how to play it fairly well also.  But yeah – cool.  Legitimately improv’ed?  Not sure – the crowd member turned out to be a fairly successful musician himself – Declan Bennett.  She seems fairly genuine, and it didn’t happen the following night – so I’m giving the whole episode the benefit of the doubt.

And then – France.  Caught a train over to France on the 14th, and spent the week there – helping Dom celebrate his 40th.  This was done by learning to ski, then doing actual skiing, interspersed with large amounts of food and drink, and very little sleep.  But now I can ski.  By the end of the week, I was going down red pistes comfortably, and trying stupid things like jumps and off-piste which I really had no right to be trying.  Amazing weather – clear blue skies for the entire week, until the final day which was pretty much constant snowstorm, with zero visibility, and lifts closing all over the place (doing red slopes).  Here’s a video of my new skillz (warning, the music might not be to everybody’s taste, and has naughty words):

And then we came back to London, drinking the bar dry on one of the trains, and discovering the tube between Kings Cross/St Pancras and my place was closed. I eventually crawled into my place at about midnight, drunk and exhausted – and immediately came down with a terrible cold or influenza or something. Bah, London.

So – another year gone.  A year in which I spent a stupid amount of money on rent, visited the southern hemisphere twice, successfully got myself littler, saw a whole heap of live music, and not much else.  40 gigs, according to my records – not including festivals.  And all but one of those were actually in the 2nd half of the year – so yeah, too much to recap them all.

But breaking down into some rough categories:

Best: I’m now undecided – Portishead or Flaming Lips – both amazing gigs, and contenders for top gig EVER.

Awesome: gigs which were just really really cool: PJ Harvey, The Roots, Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears, George Clinton & the P-Funk

Homegrown: I was thinking earlier that of all the gigs, only one was a NZ band, but then remembered nope: Liam Finn, Pajama Club, Phoenix Foundation, Naked & Famous

So 2011 – a mixed bag: bests gigs ever, best wedding ever, most gigs ever, most money spent ever, least accomplished ever (maybe?).

2012 – it’s looking like it’ll start as a continuation of 2011.  But there are plans for this year – all the normal stuff like ridiculous resolutions, etc – plus some actual ambitions.  But that can wait until another day.  Spring begins on 20th March – and a clean will be done.

Well – December has pretty much turned into just treading water, waiting for the New Year – which will hopefully provide enough symbolic ‘new beginnings’ to provide an impetus to get moving again.  Not sure if that makes sense to anybody – but I have talked to a few people who agree… we’ve had enough of this year, it’s time for a new one.  There’s not been anything particularly bad about the year – in fact it’s been rather good in a few ways – but it’s just gone on long enough.  Mostly – I’ve fallen into an apathetic hole, and am using the upcoming New Year as an excuse to not do anything about it until then.  Which just means I’m going to have to actually get up and do quite a lot in the New Year, so that I don’t fall into a guilty spiral back into inactivity.

But – what has been breaking up the monotony of December?  Since I last dragged myself up enough to type… a couple of gigs.  Firstly – DJ Shadow.  Rather an odd show – due to the stage set-up.  It was just an empty stage, with a big white background, and a big white ball – which he sat hidden away in most of the time.  But he used the background wall and the ball as projection screens – creating a rather spectacular effect, especially when the whole 3D nature of the projection space was used cleverly.  And once in a while, the ball would spin around – showing him inside on “his decks”.  All in all – it sounds rather boring, just a stage with a big ball on it – but his lighting/display/video guy used it to spectacular effect.  There’s a series of clips on youtube, showing the whole gig – which show the visuals quite well, but the audio is utter shite.  Which is a shame – because he was rather good.

I then had nearly a week off of gigs, but not off work – instead working on a new client, spending about a week of waiting for the client to get all the things ready that I’d asked to be ready before I wasted their money by being on-site.  Oh well – it’s their money.  Oh – and over that time, I also decided on several occasions to NOT stay up overnight watching cricket, because it was obvious that NZ was going to get thrashed by the arsetralians.  Which was the correct choice considering I had to go on-site at a client the next mornings, but the wrong choice considering the eventual result.  Oh well.  Now I can get my hopes up, and stay up all night while watching South Africa thrash us.

Next gig was one which I went to only to see the smallest support act.  HMV is doing a series of gigs in February – 11 nights in a row, of their picks for the “Next Big Thing” – £10 per gig.  The first one I checked out on youtube, and decided to go see – was We Are Augustines.  But it turns out they’re playing on the same night as the Black Keys, which I already have tickets for.  But – I saw they were playing support for some shitty rock radio station’s “Winter Wonderland” event.  So – I got tickets to that, and headed off extra early to be there in time to see the very first support act.  Which of course meant scoffing down junk-food on the way, getting there at 6pm, and then essentially spending 6 hours at a bloody gig drinking red wine.  And regretted that pretty quickly.  We Are Augustines were fine, but re-affirmed my initial impression from their videos – slightly too earnest young rock’n'rollers – bordering on cringeworthy.  If they were from any other country, I’d think that was fine – they’ll grow up, become cynical, their music will become better, and yay – more good music for the world.  But these guys are american – I suspect they’ll grow up, become more earnest and self-important, and start churning out earnest well-meaning soft-rock.  Anyway – I’ll shelve my cynicism and enjoy them for now.  Meanwhile, back at Brixton Academy – loud obnoxious radio DJs (are there any other kind?) – came and went, introducing each band.  Next up was the Tribes – which I don’t really remember much of.  I guess they were fine, but forgettable?  I’ll check them out this afternoon on youtube.  After that – Band of Skulls – who of course I’d already seen this year.  I’m thinking maybe even more than once – but maybe I’m mixing up that I’ll be seeing them supporting the Black Keys, twice, in February.  And they’ve got their new album out now – so it was pretty much a set of all new songs, with only one or two of their old crowd-pleasers thrown in.  Then it was the Maccabees – whose name I’d heard a fair bit, but haven’t really listened to.  They were fine, and I’ll have to listen to a bit more of them.  I think the Horrors were also supposed to play, but they pulled a sickie.  And then the headliners – Kaiser Chiefs.  I’ve never really bought into the hype around the Kaiser Chiefs overly much, although I do understand that they are rather good.  So – I should have enjoyed it, but by this stage the Academy was packed full of young people – young people who listen to a rock station named XFM – and I was tired, old, many wines down, and cantankerous.  I slipped out before the Kaiser Chiefs’ encore in order to avoid the rush, and slunk off home for a good ol’ nap.

And those were the last gigs of 2011.  It will be time to draw up a “Best-of-2011″ some time – but in 2012, when I’m all re-energised.

Other than that – on the evening of the 24th, I stayed up very late, watching the entire Die Hard series, and chatting with family over this new internet jobbie.  Spent an hour or so just watching the niece and nephew over internetcam – which was awesome.  And eventually headed off to bed about 4:30am – having been reminded how tangential the downhill slope of those Die Hard movies really was.  And on the 25th, slept in, before heading North with half-a-dozen bottles of wine in my arms.  Eventually found a taxi, and went to visit Caro’n'Dom & Malachy.  And then a day of board games, roast lamb, wines, chit-chat, and a stroll up to Alexandra Palace.  And then an evening of wines.

And now – back at work, in a deserted office, killing time until 2012.  Not having even organised anything to do in order to welcome in the New Year.  It is looking like the least eventful New Year’s Eve since high school days.

Right – so after I foolishly did a hungover-still-slightly-drunk edit to last week’s post, I’ll try to make up for that with an ultra boring sensible post.  “Try” being the key word there.

Firstly – the one gig I made it to in the last week or so.  Das Racist – some alternative hip-hop.  If you’re open-minded about music, you should definitely check these guys out.  They’ve become popular because of their slightly gimmicky ‘joke-rap’ songs, and accompanying videos – but they are also actually really freakin’ talented, with a fair bit of ambition thrown in.  In fact, their best known song is probably their worse.  So yeah – it was pretty sweet to see them in a tiny venue – XOYO – just around the corner from my place.  Every gig I’ve seen there has had their ‘visuals’ limited to some smoke machine, and usually not too much of that – as the place is just too small.  But these guys had a full on light-show, with the backwall covered in images/videos, and all that.  And yeah – good show, with the crowd being an odd mixture of geeks there for the “joke” rap, homeboys there for the “proper” rap, and me – there for the good music.  Yeah – something like that.

The following night – I had tickets to Thurston Moore at Union Chapel, which I was really rather looking forward to.  I also had my work’s end-of-year dinner/party (known to some as “the Christmas Party”).  I left work in time to avoid the giving of gifts/etc – headed home, and got changed into my “lounge suit”.  I then headed back into town, to the “lounge” where we had drinks and dinner, while everybody enthused over my suit.  I really have to stop dressing so well – I get tired of compliments so easily.  Anyway – I took my tickets to Thurston with me, hoping to slip away at some point.  But – I got caught up in it all – a good dinner, free drinks, etc… and ended up missing the gig.  Instead I got drunk enough to ignore my promise to myself to not bring up the prospect of a payrise with my boss while drunk.  I knew I was going to do it – and had desperately tried to do it during the two previous days while at work – but had failed.  So – as was always destined – I instead did it in the midst of a drunken conversation with one of the company owners – how unprofessional is that?  But, it seemed to go well, as his response was “of course, yeah”.  I now just need to follow up while we’re both sober.  Or maybe – organise more drinks, and have some paperwork handy next time.  Anyway – more drinks were had, I did some breakdancing, drank plenty of wine – and eventually left everybody when the decision was made to go to a casino.  I don’t do casinos.  (The list of illegal stuff I’m fine with is rather long – but gambling… that’s where I have to draw my moral line in the sand.  Go figure.)  I think I got a bicycle rickshaw home.

And woke up the next morning with my first “proper” hangover in quite some time.  And proceeded to half-drunk-half-hungover babble all over this website.  And then crawl off back to bed, and spend the rest of the day alternately stumbling about trying to eat, drink, and sleep.  (And came very very close to whim-purchasing flights back to NZ/Aus for the 25th/31st respectively.  I was actually seriously considering flying out, landing in NZ on the morning of the 25th, spending a couple of days, flying to Melbourne or Sydney on the 31st, having a party, and then flying back to London on the 2nd.  Stupid hangover urge.)

Books – I think I was reading Pigeon English, by Stephen Kelman, at the Das Racist gig, and it has somehow lasted most of the week.  Quite good – even though – or actually because of – it’s rather gimmicky premise.  More qualified, if not better, people than I have called this book “overhyped”.  Perhaps it is – but probably because of this, it was quite welcome in the middle of all the other Man Booker nominees I’ve been reading.  It’s just trying so hard to be “literature” – that it perhaps pushes a little too far, but instead of becoming overly pretentious – actually becomes just bad enough to enjoy while being good.  I realise that makes little to no sense – but I can’t be bothered trying to explain it any further.  Essentially – a story written from the viewpoint of a 11-year old boy, in the middle of immigrating right into the middle of London’s much-publicised knife-crime.  So yeah – the expected attempt at a poignant mixture of wide-eyed innocence – facing normal childhood experiences, along with gangs.  And then just randomly throw in a mystical connection to a pigeon – seemingly just to justify the title.  Odd.

Oh – and I was also supposed to see the Felice Brothers on Tuesday – which was possibly one of my most eagerly anticipated gigs of the month.  But then one of them went and got facial shingles, or so they claim – and that’s been postponed until March.  Which has resulted in rather a quiet month – most welcome.