A Gig of Two Halves and a Tale of Two Singers

A reminder of how things should be...

A matter of days after the experience of high security at Brixton Academy we simply stroll into Union Chapel, although there is an embarrassing moment when we pause, offering ourselves to be searched, and the people on the door just look at us! It somehow feels good to be entering a building on trust; a reminder of how things should be!

It also feels good to be heading into a wonderful venue with an old friend from back up north. We claim a space on a pew with our coats and head to the bar. After picking my mate up off the floor  - he has paid for a couple of drinks what we used to pay in our local for a round of 5 drinks - we find a space and catch up.

Like some modern day Rapunzel...

The last gig we went to together I went to hear the support band (British Sea Power) and he went to hear the headliners (Manic Street Preachers). Tonight is only slightly different. True, this time we are both here for the headline act (Billy Bragg) but although I am looking forward to seeing him again, I still can’t wait to hear the support, Duke Special.

He does not disappoint. Behind his keyboard on a table are old gramophones. As the lights dim a gentleman walks majestically on stage and, with white-gloved hands, places a disc on a turntable, carefully positioning the stylus and lowering it. Towards the end of the track Duke Special appears and standing behind his keyboard leans forward to play, like some modern day Rapunzel, with his dreadlocked-hair falling far below the instrument.

The support set is beautiful and theatrical. Discs and cylinders are changed and played as introductions and backing tracks. Yes, he could programme the same effects into a MacBook (ubiquitous at gigs nowadays) and achieve the same audio effect, but the theatre of the assistant and the live nature of the engagement between artist and recording lifts the performance. A performance, which ends with a fantastic rendition of Salvation Tambourine, and we are glad he has come to London!

Time for another round…

A fresh cup of Bovril - so rock ‘n’ roll...

We return to our seats just as Billy Bragg walks out and launches into ‘A Lover Sings’. For all Duke Special’s theatre, Bragg is the stripped back rebel with a chord. Both approaches suit the individual artists - neither could pull off what the other does. For this reason this is a gig of two halves and a tale of two singers but it works as a whole.

The exceptionally talented CJ Hillman, who adds finesse to the raw nature of Bragg’s songs, joins Bragg for part of the set. But this does not take away from the power of Bragg’s songs and his presence as the voice of the people’s protest. Neither does the sight of his guitar roadie boiling the kettle and brewing up and mixing a fresh cup of Bovril - so rock ‘n’ roll!

Five days ago Brittany Howard, of Alabama Shakes, had thanked the Brixton Academy for coming out and braving a gig. Bragg, by contrast, uses the recent events in Paris, firstly to promote the collection he is taking for the family of the ‘merch guy’ who was first to be killed at the Bataclan, and then to push home the point about what it is like to live in fear for your life and that of your family. ‘Imagine if what happened in Paris happened in London, imagine if it happened regularly, imagine if it was a daily occurrence – its no wonder those who experience such violence and bloodshed in Syria want to seek safety for their family.’ As ever Bragg shows the bigger picture to us.

We’re a bit late to the party...

In between the political commentary Bragg returns to cheap and easy jokes about playing in a Church. I have seen Bragg a few times before and one of the best of his concerts I have been to was at Greenbelt (a Christian Arts Festival) in 2003 - his encore rendition of ‘Jerusalem’ was one of the most moving musical moments I have experienced. So I find his throwaway humour about church and faith annoying. It’s not that I have a problem laughing at faith, but  in front of that audience at Greenbelt he had said: ‘I’ll work with anyone who wants a compassionate society – you guys have been working on that for 2000 years – we’re a bit late to the party’. It would have been good to hear the same sentiment in amongst the jokes at the Churches’ expense. I’m sure I am not the only one in the audience who has faith, both  in God and  in the protest of artists like Bragg, believing together we can change this flawed society.

As he returns for the encore a member of the crowd heckles – calling for

‘Waiting for the Great Leap Forward’ by asking whether is Jeremy Corbyn the Great Leap Forward? Without even a thoughtful pause Bragg explains that no one person is that Great Leap forward but rather all those who joined the Labour Party to be part of the movement, all of us who call for a different, fairer society. Leaders will come and go, he tells us, but if we continue to stand together then we are the Great Leap Forward.

It has been a fabulous evening of music with bits of theatre and comedy thrown in. It has been an evening of friendship and beer. It has been an evening that fires the spirit to believe once again that this world doesn’t have to be like it is.  It has been an evening to be reminded of how things should be!

Gig: 36 of 50

Date of Gig: Mon. 23rd November 2015

Venue

Union Chapel

Artists 

Duke Special

Billy Bragg

Running total of artists seen 75

Alabama Safe

Men and women are separated as they enter...
Less than a week after the Paris attacks at the Bataclan, and I’m heading to the Brixton Academy. It’s the first time that my 50/50 challenge has taken me the short walk down Coldharbour Lane to this famous South London venue. It is good to be able to walk to a gig, but it’s a miserable night, calling for a warm coat and hat.

As expected the security is not only visible but very strict. From the Police presence outside the gig to the barrier of Orange Jackets that greet us inside. Men and women are separated as they enter the venue and are patted down by an army of security guards. I stand with arms outstretched in the crucifixion pose of submission; the guard just stands there and eventually nods to my hat. I take my hat off to him. Then I am searched. He takes time making sure the bulge in my left back pocket is just a phone and the slightly bigger one on the right is… what is it… he has a bit more of a feel… do I feel him tense a little… what can it be… oh a camera – OK you can go through.

The sedentary air that seems to have settled...
I find my way up to the circle and a seat on the front row. I feel safe in the knowledge that security has been taken seriously. Is it just my imagination or is the atmosphere subdued? Maybe it’s where I am seated, but there seems little of the usual pre-gig chatter I so enjoy listening to. The support is greeted on stage with warm but disinterested applause. Michael Kiwanuka’s set is good but does nothing to lift the sedentary air that seems to have settled over us.

 
Even the arrival of a group of guys drinking heavily and speaking loudly in the row behind fails to break the lethargy of the atmosphere. I just cannot be bothered to sigh at how widely they miss the mark in their summation of the support act and the mix. It’s turning into a strange evening.

I remind myself during the break that I have been looking forward to seeing Alabama Shakes for a while now and I head back to my seat full of renewed anticipation.

As the songs are ticked off the set-list so I too become more ticked off...
They take the stage to a great roar from the mass of fans that have assembled in the stalls. And for the second time this evening I find myself taking my hat off (metaphorically not literally this time!) to someone. Alabama Shakes are tight and professional and I admire them for their skill. However, (and this is where my hat, metaphorically, is replaced) they recreate their songs with too much precision.

It is not often I come away from a gig feeling underwhelmed. All night, at the start of each new song, I find myself thinking that this is the one when they will let go, let rip, improvise, add a devastating new dimension to their tune. But as the songs are ticked off the set-list so I too become more ticked off, at how safe they play the gig.

Perhaps we took a risk, perhaps we didn't ...
Safety seems to be the order of the day. Security and Alabama Shakes' set both safe. Yet live music should never be safe it is the unpredictability of a gig that is one of it's biggest pulls. Gone are the days of bands like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin recording their first album in hours. We know that artists spend weeks perfecting the recording with endless takes and retakes. Live music, at its best, is about the fusion of the band not seeking perfection but seeking a one off interpretation of the song in that time and place and for that particular audience.

Brittany Howard thanks us for turning up tonight after what happened in Paris. Perhaps we took a risk, perhaps we didn't or maybe we were protected by the very strict and visible security. What would have been good is if we had been rewarded, not just with a vote of thanks from the stage but, with a little live risk taking by the band...

I grew up with that round yellow sticker adorning the instrument case of any self-respecting musician: ‘Keep Music Live’. The digital compression and easily achievable perfection of modern recording technology has done much to help sanitise modern music but the best live music has always been more about the performance than the perfection.
 

Expecting to be shaken, but unfortunately I was hardly stirred...
I reflect on the walk home. I am glad I went and it was good, but I had really expected so much more. I had expected there to be at least one ‘wow’ moment. I had been expecting to be shaken, but unfortunately I was hardly stirred.

Gig: 35 of 50

Date of Gig: Wed. 18th November 2015


Venue
Brixton Academy

Artists 
Alabama Shakes

Michael Kiwanuka

Running total of artists seen 73

How I long for a leader who is like a jewel...

Beery boys of Brighton... 
Rule Number 1 for new gig-goers:
Always get there in time for the support act.

You wouldn’t turn up at a friend’s house just in time for the main course when they have invited you for dinner, so why miss the support act? It is just plain rude and not very good manners! 

Rule Number 2 for new gig-goers:

Be prepared! The starter is seldom the best course of the meal.

That is to say, the support might not be very good! 

Holly Macve is the support act for tonight’s gig at the Hammersmith Apollo. The pre-gig research seems to suggest we are in for a treat as the website reads, “BELLA UNION have recently signed the exciting talent of Holly Macve. Boss Simon Raymonde, “little is known of Holly other than she is a 20 year old from Yorkshire who appeared out of nowhere in Brighton late last year. I had a tip-off to go to a basement bar where she was playing. In a room full of beery boys chatting across all the music beforehand, the minute Holly opened her mouth the room fell silent. Hers is a rare gift.”

She wanders on stage whispers a greeting and plays her guitar and manages to play all her songs without once engaging the audience. I can only assume that I am too sober and too old to appreciate her gift, unlike the ‘beery boys of Brighton’! Yet no one seems to be under her spell. The applause is polite but the volume of chatter during the songs is louder. Maybe the venue is too big for her style of songs, maybe standing solo on the stage at the Hammersmith Apollo overawes her, or maybe they just see things differently through the bottom of a beer bottle in Brighton!

There is no doubt she has a fantastic voice but the songs all merge into one. There appears no light and shade within any one of her compositions, or in fact between them – although her dress does make up for this! There is no acknowledgement of the fact that we, the audience, are here. How is my experience so different to Bella Union Boss Simon Raymonde’s? It’s a conundrum! What I do know is that she would have been booed off at the gigs I went to in my teenage years! Perhaps the jury is out on Holly Macve but the proof is that today’s gig goers are a more generous lot than 35 years ago! 

From Birmingham to Reykjavik for a coffee... 
As she finishes her last song the audience are generous in their applause and as the stage is set for John Grant I look around and see the venue is filling up. There is all the usual pre-gig chatter yet a midlands accent sounds out of place; I tune into the conversation as the Brummie explains he comes to gigs in London from time to time. As he is listing the London venues he’s been to I marvel at what lengths people will travel to listen to music they love! As I tune back into his conversation I hear he was in Reykjavik last year and found the cafe on the album cover of John Grant’s Pale Green Ghosts. Perhaps Birmingham to London isn’t really that far for a gig, when you are prepared to travel from Birmingham to Reykjavik for a coffee! That is true dedication!

Just as Raymonde got a tip-off to go and listen to Holly Macve I was blissfully unaware of John Grant until earlier this year when a friend tipped me off and sent me ‘Caramel’. I fell in love with the song in an instant. The beautiful depth, tenderness, longing and loving in the lyric, tune and accompaniment is a wonder and just gets deeper every time I listen to it.

The concert is a big event with every number a big number - sweeping ballads, psychedelic pop and pseudo rap – nothing Grant does is understated except his dress! In this respect he is the exact opposite to Holly Macve. The only light and shade in her set was in her dress, the only understatement in Grant is his clothing!

 
The depth of human inhumanity...

There are great anthems of love, songs of derision, choruses of challenge underpinned, and sometimes totally overridden by, a musical score of such intensity that it’s almost possible to hear the lack of natural light – that Grant finds so conducive to writing and the reason for him choosing to reside in Iceland – in every chord.

A review in the Financial Times (is it just me - but why are the FT reviewing gigs?) mused, “John Grant has the perfect voice for imparting bad news. In a previous life he could have recorded the four-minute warning of a nuclear attack, telling the nation in warm, deep tones that it was about to be destroyed. Panic would not have ensued. His show at the Hammersmith Apollo opened with a recording of New Testament verses about love, recited in both English and Icelandic: the Colorado-raised Grant now lives in Reykjavik. The passage is often read at funerals; tonight it preceded a song about Grant’s discovery that he is HIV positive, 'Grey Tickles, Black Pressure'”.

Now I know one or two clergy and I have been to one or two funerals in my time, and a quick straw poll found that no one had ever heard 1 Corinthians 13 read at a funeral. What do journalists know? The FT should stick to finances and not music or religion.

Yet within 24 hours of Grant’s gig, the news of the murders in Paris starts to flash up on my phone. The plight of those at the Bataclan concert venue strikes a minor chord in my heart in particular, and the easy FT journalists’ description of Grant’s voice seems hollow, misplaced and misjudged. This is gig 34 of the target of 50 I have set myself for this year and I have never once thought I might be in any kind of danger.

How can music - which unites people in a shared chorus, an explosion of applause, an experience of spirituality in lifting of the soul above the mundane, the sinful and the plain evil - become the backdrop for such shared pain, explosions of hatred and an experience of coldblooded violence? You could argue that shopping or travelling on a tube should not mean an encounter with such violence either and I whole-heartedly agree, but because music is God-given and brings people together in a way that shopping and tube travel doesn’t it seems to highlight for me the depth of human inhumanity.

 
Grant’s voice would not have kept panic at bay had it happened a day earlier and this side of the channel, at the Hammersmith Apollo, London. I should be writing about how I waited and waited for Grant to play Caramel with excited anticipation that grew and grew as I was swept through the highs (and occasional lows) of his set. Instead, I just keep thinking what would I have done, what would my response have been, if it had happened a night earlier in London at the gig I was at. Or would my only response be that I was paralyzed with fear as things became so rough (to misquote Grant)? 

A video-gamer rapidly hitting the fire button in blind hope...
The public response is fairly inevitable. Our leaders state the ‘War on Terror’ goes on. They called the First World War the war to end all wars – it didn’t work. The War on Terror has not worked either. For 14 years our foreign policy has failed to bring peace. Instead it has fueled radicalization and the world has become increasingly unstable. Yet our leaders seem incapable of changing their tune. They constantly repeat the ‘War on Terror’ mantra like a video-gamer rapidly hitting the fire button in blind hope they will kill all of the Zombies on their screen.

It appears there is no strategy to defeat this new wave of terrorism. Selling arms to unscrupulous leaders spectacularly backfired. Invading countries ended in failure. Hunting down and killing a figurehead had no effect. Flying drones and bombing suspected camps only fuels the fire. Not even orange jumpsuits and torture have helped. So instead, turn the anger at terrorist events into patriotism with lots of jingoism and at least your people are with you even if you have no idea what you are doing.

In this brave new world the people will call for retribution and revenge, the press will create villains and headlines to match: ‘TERMINATED’. People will talk of not trusting ‘them’ - tarring so, so many God-fearing, peace-loving generous human beings with the same brush as a few irreligious, murderous people. Add in a healthy dose of Social Media rife with rumor, reporting uncovered plots (the dangers of men in burka’s), advice on how to stay safe (reportedly from a friend of a friend’s relative who is in the police) and you can neatly hide the fact that you don’t know how to win this war on terror that you started in the first place.

The FT reviewer informed us that 1 Corinthians 13 is often heard at funerals. Closer to the truth is that it is often read at weddings. However, it can easily be argued that it has much to do with weddings as it has to do with funerals! The Ancient Greeks had many more words for ‘Love’ than we English have. The Love written about in 1 Corinthians 13 is not ‘Eros’ the love of lovers, or even ‘Philial’ the love between friends and equals. It is ‘Agape’ the love of God for humanity. God’s love for humanity is seen supremely in the life of God’s Son Jesus. A love that kneels at the feet of his friends and engages enemies in conversation. It is a love that gives of its self that others might know life, by turning the other cheek in forgiveness, and accepting that the world can (and will) change.

I believe in this love...
The passage we are talking about starts Grant’s new album and his show tonight. It talks of a love that is patient and kind, that keeps no record of wrong, that is not happy with wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. A love that does not insist on its own way. A love that is not irritable or resentful but rather believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things.

I have struggled to understand why Grant chose to use these words at the beginning of the album and the set but the reason surely lies in what follows. The title track of the album includes the heart felt lyric: ‘And there are children who have cancer and so all bets are off’. Such a line written by a man who has just discovered he is HIV+ is a statement of a love that does not insist on things its own way but bears all things. A love, that even in its own pain, seeks to kneel at the feet of those who also suffer and serve them. This is a love that never ends.

It is this love that we need in our response to terror. A love not insistent that we are right. A love that seeks truth not stereotype. A love that while enduring all things still hopes all things. A love that seeks a different way, not just perpetuating the spiral of violence. A love that crosses cultural boundaries and challenges those stereotypes built on ancient mistrust and hatred.

Oh for a leader strong enough to stand in this valley of difficult love and not on the easy soapbox mountaintop of retribution and revenge.

Finally Grant plays Caramel and I hear live the song that speaks of real love out of every note, chord, word and phrase. I believe in this love. And post Bataclan how I long for a leader who is like a jewel and who grounds us in love, who heals the darkest of years, revealing themselves in tenderness and grace, and who with their arms constructs for us the safest place… 

Gig: 34 of 50

Date of Gig: Thurs. 12th November 2015

Venue
Hammersmith Apollo

Artists 
John Grant

Holly Macve

Running total of artists seen 71