“My god, it’s full of stars”
The other day I went to a gig – hardly earth shattering news is it, but it was my first gig for what must be 18 months, in fact I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed making sure the front door key was looped into my belt for bouncing around to a particular favourite track. To tell you the truth I haven’t been to a football match since 11 May 2008 which I have tried to blot out of my memory as we lost 8-1 to Middlesbrough. Yes I have finally succumbed to a life of Sky Sports and the purchasing of albums based on recommendations from Amazon – with the ability to listen to 3 seconds of a track just so I know what I am letting myself in for. I know I should visit my local independent record store, but the nearest one is in Newcastle and that isn’t that near. Darlington houses a HMV, but that involves paying to park and the cost of petrol – I think I am becoming a credit crunch muso.
Actually I went in HMV the other day and was confused about the music arrangement, for those who haven’t been recently you walk into a phalanx of CDs and DVDs on offer for various bewildering price combinations (3 for £20 or £5 each), the charts appear split into album and then compilation chart (the latter mainly made up for Ibiza Banging Solid Gold Mashed-Up Classixs or words to that effect) and then you enter the maelstrom of the racks. It seems that the days of being able to pick up anything that isn’t in the NME’s top ‘100 Albums you must own now’ is now a distant memory. Although to be fair you have to work your way through a mind boggling combination of computer games before you find the CDs; ah for the days when it was a row of tapes and you just checked if Daley Thompson’s Decathlon would work on your rubber keyboarded 48K Spectrum. Once located the CD racks seem a little smaller than what I remember and it isn’t long before you’ve managed somehow to find yourself staring at Special Interest DVDs as you’d taken a wrong turning at the end of the aisle when looking for the artists beginning with ‘N’ – least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
I guess that the same adage is true though, that bands make their money touring and not through album sales – although royalties I guess are still worth something, hence all the bun fights about who wrote what once a band split up. So in order to lift myself out of a responsible family orientated life, back into a mosh-pit maniac with total disregard for a torn knee ligament, I ventured out to witness Doves in action at the O2 Academy in Newcastle, or the Oz Academy as I prefer to call it, inspired by a pub that was called ‘Bar O2’ least I thought it said O2 and was rather confused by the décor, which didn’t feature mobile phones or blue and white bubbles, but instead directions to the ‘Duny’, the odd boomerang hung on the wall and warnings about kangaroos / koalas crossing the road ahead…Actually the last time was in the Oz Academy it was still branded as the Carling Academy and a friend of mine kept on asking the barmaid for every brand of lager other than Carling – oh how we laughed as she really struggled to stick to her customer service training, with a smile that belied the fact that the joke wore thin, even before the lips opened to express the brain’s most brilliant humorous statement.
Supporting Doves that night was Malakai, a quite interesting support act that had something to do with Portishead – either the ex-manager or member of Portishead produced / managed Malakai – I forget now, but they are from Bristol so there’s something in that. What was really interesting was that their album (I’ll come back to that in a minute) notes that the band is a two-piece, yet I swear there was four of them on stage, plus the album (yes I will comment on it) is a lot less accessible than the live version. For example I had my brother with me for the gig and he embraced the live act, but will not be enamoured by their album (yes I still haven’t forgotten) when I finally play / lend it to him. This is a bloke who still believes that an Oasis album release is the major highlight of any year, without the mantra that just because something is popular doesn’t mean it is any good.
Mind the traffic was bad in Newcastle that night and I apologise for anyone I cut up whilst attempting to work out if it was my turn off near the RVI. In fact whoever was in the red car who let me slip into the queuing traffic thumbs up mate – although I was doing you a favour as I heard afterwards that the match was nothing to shout about.
Ah yes Malakai’s album, now can someone answer me this one. Their album entitled ‘Ugly Side of Love’ was available at the Oz Academy for the princely sum of £10, now via Amazon (I guess to some the online representation of Starbucks) it is priced at £7.98, the moral question is are the band making more by selling it at a gig or does it not matter they still get a pittance from album sales and would I have been better off buying a t-shirt? I’d rather the hard working band were sat stacking the cash rather than some faceless corporate suited types, but where does the money really go? Ooh I feel a proper journalistic expose of the CD market coming on….or possibly not hmmm…anyway answers on a postcard, posted below or just write some blithe comments on the MM Mouth!
Actually had a break for lunch and did some proper research, it turns out that it is Geoff Barrow from Portishead who promotes, mentors and has the band on his label, although all reviews of the album talk about Geoff Barrow, in fact they mention Geoff Barrow so much, it would make you wonder if they hadn’t made it if there wasn’t constant references to Geoff Barrow. Although there is one song called ‘Only For You’ that was co-written by Geoff Barrow so I guess Geoff Barrow has quite a bit of input. That isn’t to say that the album is totally influenced by Geoff Barrow and I understand that the band are a little bored of the ‘trip-hop’ references. However, I can categorically say that the album is challenging and blends such a mixture of influences that you can’t be hard pressed to be impressed, as Jilly Goolden used to say “I’m getting elements of Bob Marley, Geoff Barrow, Rolling Stones and Love”
Back to the gig, so after the emergence of Malakai who sang about being a warrior, a blackbird, a snowflake and past time that branded them sh!tkickers we moved onto Doves. Now no matter how many times I see Doves there is always a technical problem, this resulted in them walking off stage during the intro to Jetstream only returning once some bloke had presumably fiddled with a few wires before being handed his P45. A cracking but less than lively gig, I must have been 3 off the front and almost in the middle, but the crowd were less than boisterous – maybe it was because people were at the match or possibly the fact that Doves aren’t real purveyors of rock, plus there wasn’t the ubiquitous Sub Sub track Spaceface to end the evening – note to self only watch Doves in Manchester to avoid disappointment of non-Spaceface setlist.
Now what entertained me at the gig was the reminder of a conversation I’d recently had with a friend in the Dun Cow in Durham – the name of the pub is unimportant although it has an old fashioned snug and I once spent the best part of an hour waiting to meet someone (I hadn’t met them before – no it wasn’t a blind date as it was a bloke I was meeting – no not for that purpose either – I don’t know some minds) and then realising they were sat the other side of the bar which was obscured from view whilst I was seated in the snug. Would have helped if I’d realised ealier, seeing as how I nursed a pint for the entire time staring at locals who at least weren’t sailors back after a voyage overseas!
What amused me, not for a second time but to get to the point, what amused me…why is it that I start entering Ronnie Corbett mode every couple of months? *haha* What amused me, was that there had been a discussion about bands of our youth (or more likely before my youth!) reforming and touring again and how venues must be designed for a certain capacity of people. Now that’s fine when your fanbase is lithe, nubile, fresh faced teenagers *pauses whilst the thought of anything lithe, nubile and female passes*, but imagine your fanbase is now slightly padded around the edges *pauses for a thought shudder* surely this means that your venue capacity decreases until there is a point at which it is safer to have chairs. I have a feeling not only have I some undercover journalism to do next time, but I have an academic mathematical research topic through which I should be able to produce a formula that dictates the need for chairs dependent on the BMI of your fanbase, although seeing as how you can now do a degree in Beatle Studies (or whatever is it titled) I guess I’ll find someone has beaten me too it.
This column has been brought to you by two albums and only because I am trying to recreate the gig whilst sat in my loft trying to work from home and produce something for the two people who bother to read this column. Yes I implore you the reader to at least find somewhere that will let you listen to Malakai as in my opinion it is a fine album, which defines description so I won’t bother (plus it is mentioned further up the column and there’s plenty of reviews online that use the phrase ‘trip-hop’ and dubstep!?!). Follow up the ‘Ugly Side of Love’ with ‘Kingdom of Rust’ which is the new offering from Doves. Now I would go so far to say that it is the best album the lads have produced since ‘Lost Souls’ and is my contender for the Mercury Music Prize, although with Elbow winning last year it’ll probably end up going to some Jazz Fusion act. What makes ‘Kingdom of Rust’ a finer album than the proceeding ones is that it isn’t solely traditional Doves territory, there’s the slower burner of Jetstream that I covered in an earlier column and then it mellows a little through the title track, before ‘The Outsiders’ quite literally wakes your senses up and by the time you reach the track titled 10:03 (that isn’t how long the track is, but is probably some train that they catch / caught / missed) which starts off with pleasant vocals before assaulting your ears with some quite fantastic blend of drums and guitar (see Doves can rock), also must make honourable mention to Compulsion which gives an 80s disco slap bass intro that you’re sure you heard back in your youth, but can’t put your finger on who it was by.
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