Summer has officially started. This means I have now stopped wearing a jacket/coat to work – except when I have to be all suited up. On Saturday afternoon, I sat outside the pub alternately shivering uncontrollably and shivering slightly in a rather cold wind, soaking up sporadic periods of sunshine. And this morning, walked to work in the rain. With less and less sunshine from now until December. Summer… gotta love it.
The first evening of summer was spent at Brixton Academy, to see Jack White. I hadn’t bought tickets to this, assuming I was going to be in South-East Asia, but luckily Jess had bought some – so all’s good. Unfortunately, my expectations for Jack White were infeasibly high. Having seen the spectacles which were Jay-Z/Kanye-West and Elvis Costello; and holding Jack White high as an example of innovative genius – I probably would have only been happy if he’d brought out David Bowie on stage to do a duet version of Seven Nation Army. Alas – this he did not do. So – I was a little disappointed. Which I shouldn’t have been – because looking back at it, it was a great gig. Jack White and his backing band doing versions of songs from the White Stripes, the Dead Weather, the Raconteurs, and of course his recent solo effort – all with significant variations from the album versions. There is no way anybody could complain this was a veritable lip-syncing of album songs. The man himself was energetic – prancing around stage in his ridiculous tight striped trou – and fell over a backstage monitor speaker onto his ass in a fashion which suggested it may have very well been a genuine accident. In fact – I’m pretty sure his encore was shortened – perhaps due to an actual injury done himself? Also – this was another in a recent spate of gigs where the crowd was aggressively warned “no cameras/filming”. The door staff were telling people, there were signs everywhere – and a guy announced it before the show, describing the rationale for this rather well… “You’re here to see a live show, it’s going to be a live show worth seeing, why would you want to watch it on a 3 inch screen?” Which of course makes it difficult to find a video to post here, but I’m more than happy to forego that if it means I can watch a show without dozens and dozens of brightly lit LED screens in my line of sight.
And that was the only gig of the month. With none more planned until the end of July. Although I checked upcoming stuff – and my current calendar of only 10 gigs for the 2nd half of the year – could very easily double… just trying to prevent myself from going on a spree [edit: I failed – number of gigs scheduled just doubled]. And looking at the first half of the year – I didn’t really go to THAT many gigs – maybe even less than 25? But I think they came in waves, which made it seem like heaps more.