Gigs

So – I’m about to start a new engagement with a new client… which will be at least six months long, and is out in Kent.  My commute is about to switch from a 25 minute walk, to a 1.5 hour bus/train/bus – or hopefully, a 1 hour motorbike ride.  Which I guess means 1 hour less sleep, plus 1 hour less free time – 5 days a week.  Not cool.

Also – it means I have to try and finish, or hand off, the 6 other projects I’ve got going on currently.  Which I figured was impossible when I was supposed to be starting the new job last week.  Now – I’m due to start next week – and it’s looking feasible, but only if I essentially work through the weekend.  And somehow learn how to “get off the fence”… I’m supposed to be writing a document providing an independent review – essentially I’ve gone and audited another company which does what we do.  Their customer is hoping for me to write lots of nasty things so they have an excuse to either switch companies, or get a refund, or something.  But, I am most certainly not the right guy for that particular job.  What doesn’t help, is that the only thing the company in question has done wrong – is be “too nice” for the customer.  And the customer now has unrealistic expectations.  And I’m trying to figure out how to say that – in a way that the customer will actually take the whole thing seriously.  Okay – I’ll try to stop whinging about work.

Gigs – the day I wrote my previous update – about not having many gigs scheduled for the rest of the year – I then went and bought a whole heap of tickets… my calendar now has 27 gigs in the 2nd half of the year.  One of those was the very night I wrote the last update… I bought a ticket at the last minute, and headed along to M. Ward at Koko.  It was good – I can only find one video from the night.  I guess the kind of people who go to see M. Ward are typically intolerably ‘hip’ tweesters who like to think of themselves as music afficianados – and wouldn’t ruin a gig by holding up a phone/camera through the whole thing.  And he is known to discourage that sort of thing, and nobody wants to disappoint M Ward.  But it was a good gig.  The video above doesn’t do it justice… he’s got a rather good voice, and some rather good songs.  I was a little disappointed there were no special guest appearances… I believe it was the final gig of his tour, and having Zooey Deschanel, or Conor Oberst, or Beth Orton, or Cat Power, or Jenny Lewis, or Neko Case, or somebody come out for a song or two would have been a nice bonus.

A little while after that – was Of Monsters And Men.  I actually bought a ticket to this via one of those legalised/legitimised scalping websites – for about double face-price… just because I was so damn keen to go.  I had kind of heard the name, I think – maybe on the avclub… but hadn’t listened to them… until I spotted the CD at Keflavik airport – leaving Iceland.  I bought quite a bit of Icelandic music while there, as it tends to be rather good.  And this album was really, really good.  Check it out – I guess it’s kinda like the Icelandic equivalent of the Naked & Famous.  An ensemble of intolerably young, unfeasibly happy, talented musicians.  I believe they won the Icelandic version of Rockquest, or whatever it’s called… and have started getting a bit of an international following since.  They are good.  This gig was at Scala – which is tiny.  I suspect it was booked before they started getting any recognition, and this gig was sold-out long ago… they also announced a date at Electric Ballroom later this year – much much larger venue.  Which I’ve bought tickets for also – but with extra, to drag some people along to see them.  It’s worth it.  Oh – and the support act was fairly good also – Bear’s Den – I think I bought their EP.

And those were the only two gigs of the month.  I have Eddie Vedder on the 31st – but it’s been a rather quiet July.  I guess I’m supposed to be going to festivals and the such – but the only festival I was bothered with got cancelled, innit?  So instead – I’ve spent the last couple of weeks finally following through with trying to get my full motorbike license.  My ‘CBT’ expires next Thursday – and unless I get my license by then, I have to spend another hundred quid or so, and a day of my time – learning the basics all over again.  So – I hired an instructor last weekend… rode around for a couple of days.  Did my ‘Module 1′ on Tuesday… where I had to prove I could ride very very slowly, around figure 8s, and doing a U-turn – without putting my foot on the ground, etc.  And that I could swerve quickly, or stop quickly – when travelling at 50km/h.  My one fault I picked up was that the speed-trap put me at 49km/hour before my ‘emergency stop’.  Also – I very nearly failed – when the tester chap said he was happy with my figure-8s, and called me over to him to get ready for the next test… as I changed direction to slowly ride over to him, I lost balance, and put my foot on the ground.  Was rather angry with myself – but he came over and said “don’t worry mate – as far as I’m concerned I’d told you that test was finished, you’re all good”.  Hugely relieved.  A single foot on the ground during any of the ‘slow riding’ stuff is an immediate fail, and needing to rebook the test for another day.  But – I passed, and only hurdle left is the “Module 2″ – essentially riding around for half an hour with a tester following me – making sure I don’t do anything stupid, and that I’m constantly checking mirrors, looking over the shoulder, etc.  Which I’m pretty good at – as I can’t understand why people don’t do that shit everyday anyway, even when walking around the city.  If you’re going to suddenly change direction/speed/anything on a sidewalk used by other people – be aware of what/who is around you!  It’s pretty easy.  Somebody asked me a while back what really annoys me – and my answer was “lack of social spatial awareness” – or something like that.  I’m still trying to tie down an appropriately wanky way to describe it… but yeah, people who just walk around completely unaware of other people around them… stopping to extend suitcase handles at the very bottom/top of busy stairs; suddenly stopping to talk with somebody in the middle of a busy sidewalk; turning off suddenly in front of me; or even just meandering in wide lazy zig-zags closing off huge portions of the footpath.  People…. argh.  Pete and I had a good old-fashioned old-man whinge about this very thing when he was last in London.  I was relieved to find I wasn’t the only person to get in such a rage about such things.  And Pete’s from Arsetralia, where there aren’t even any busy sidewalks – just outback.

Anyway – suggestions on what kind of motorbike I’m going to be buying?

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.

Haven’t found the time to write anything for a while – too busy crossing my fingers waiting for my visa extension to be processed, and my passport returned to me.  Applied on the 30th April – the day my original visa expired.  It was delivered to the authorities the following day.  It then took a little over two weeks for them to open the mail – and send a letter confirming it had been received.  Not a good sign.  A couple of weeks later I got the letter asking me to submit my “biometrics” (fingerprints, photo, signature) – which I thought was a good sign.  But nope.  My flight to Siem Reap leaves in about one hour.  And I’m sat at work – swamped with a dozen different projects which piled up while nobody was sure if I was going on holiday or not – writing this instead.

Anyway – the last month’s worth of gigs and general life:

Doomtree – 14th May.  Justin & I had been looking forward to this one.  They were actually the support act – for some terrible “good ol’ boy from Alabama” rapper.  But it was worth the ticket price to turn up, watch Doomtree for a short 45 minute set, then leave.  Doomtree are good.  If you don’t know them – check it out.  A hip-hop collective – but with a wide range of talents – P.O.S., a punk rocker turned hop-hippist; Dessa, lady-rapper; and a few other emcees & producers who deserve more than this passing reference.

Following night – checked out Flip Grater – a young kiwi lass who’s recently moved to Paris.  Very very small quiet low-key venue/gig – downstairs below a pub around the corner from my place.  But good gig – nice girl, perhaps a little crazy – but in the good way which ensures we get music.  (Good crazy in that she chucks everything in, gets on a plane, and deliberately lives the poor struggling artist lifestyle.  In Paris.  I’d do that if I had just a little more crazy.)  Had a drink and a chat with her at the end of the night.

A couple of nights later – some more hip-hop.  Shabazz Palaces.  It was good – but I was tired, and I nearly walked out about two-thirds of the way through.  But then – just a slightly different view of the stage, and I was revitalised again.  Or maybe I was just bored by the mid-innings slump.  But anyways, a decent gig.  Fans of slightly different hip-hop – give it a listen.  Similar super-deep thumping bass, and vocal style, as Tylah the Creator would have if he grew up, and stopped relying on over-synthesised shock-lyrics and fart-jokes.

The following week was essentially my final week of over-the-top-gig-attendance – before what was to be a week off, then Rough Beats, then three weeks touring potential war zones in South East Asia.  So – the week was a solid combination of over-the-top commercial showmanship, classic understated showmanship, repeat gigs, mediocre gigs.  Starting with Jay-Z & Kanye West.  And I had been suited up for being onsite at a client during the day down in Basingstoke – which dragged on into the evening.  Net result – me rushing straight to the O2 from Waterloo – attending some swagger-rap/hip-hop wearing a suit and carrying my laptop man-bag.  But I bought myself a bottle of red wine, took my seat – amongst several groups of young shrieky girls – and settled in for the show.  And yeah – as you’d expect from two massive egos – it was certainly a show.  Elevating stages with LCD screens on the side – impressive light shows, etc etc.  Good.  A good mixture of Kanye‘s stuff, Jay-Z‘s stuff (but no Takeover), and stuff from Watch The Throne.

Following night – a bit more low-key, the Temper Trap at Koko.  I don’t think I’d even ever heard these guys before, other than maybe a track or two on the Triple J’s Hottest.  But I recognised the name when I was going through a ticket-buying frenzy, so there I was.  It was alright – the kind of music you can’t really dislike, but nothing I could really get excited about either.  The australian Coldplay, I believe I’ve heard them described as – although perhaps by myself.  (Actually – checking Triple J – they weren’t on the Hottest 100 – so not sure how I heard of them.)

Following night – back to some guaranteed good stuff.  Elvis Costello, at the Royal Albert Hall.  I had bought this ticket, to go by myself – and then had a request to take Pen, at which time I needed to buy two tickets – adjacent seats – so bought two tickets for the following evening.  This first evening I decided to go anyway, to practice for the following.  Which was worthwhile.  Both evenings were good – a fairly unique premise… in that there was not much of a set-list.  It was a return of what I gather was a gimmick he came up with on a tour a while back – for this tour was The Return Of The Spectacular Spinning Songbook.  In essence – the stage was set-up with a few little accessories to resemble a big-top carnival type set-up – including a giant spinning wheel – labelled with various song titles.  And a pretty young lady would go into the crowd, and select random crowd members to come on stage and spin the wheel.  And there was a cage for dancing in.  And a “test your strength” Hammer Of Songs – where if the crowd member could hit it hard enough to ring the bell, they could request any song at all.  And all that sort of thing.  Anyway – first night: a lot more chatter – anecdotes around each song which came up on the wheel.  Such as recording an album on Boxing Day with Nick Lowe and Johnny Cash, but it was crap so they threw it away.  And after admiring some signed album by Johnny Cash – Johnny giving it to him, then later finding out it was actually one of the first gifts from June Carter to Johnny, or vice versa.  And lots of political jokes, digs at Boris Johnson, Rupert Murdoch, David Cameron, the Leveson Inquiry, etc.  And a special guest: introduced as “he just arrived on the 3:10 to Yuma, he may be evil – but confidentially he’s got a beautiful mind,…” (at which point a dreadful suspicion came into my mind) “… he’s the romper stomper of love, …” (at this point I’m hanging my head, shaking it slowly side to side”) “… the master and commander of romance, …” (certainty floods me with dread) “… the rockin’ condirella man, the gladiator of guitar, etc etc”… and sure enough, Russell bloody Crowe walks out on stage.  Wearing a tuxedo, with black bow-tie seemingly casually hanging untied around his neck.  What a prick.  And then he gets to jam with Elvis Costello, at the Royal Albert Hall – doing an Elvis Presley song & a Johnny Cash song – and revelling in it.  What a prick.  But this video of it (fairly rare – as the Hall staff were stopping people from filming when they could) – also has some decent coverage of Elvis by himself afterwards.  And the second night – went with Pen, had dinner at one of the Royal Albert Hall restaurants – then the gig.  It was good seeing it twice, as I could figure how much of the “Spinning Songbook” was actually fixed, and how much improv there really was.  And pleasantly surprised – the whole Spinning Songbook, improv stuff was entirely genuine.  There were components of the gig where he just played a normal set-list – as would be expected for a tour – but all the crowd-interaction stuff was genuinely off the cuff.  And the second night – nearly every spin was a ‘jackpot’ category – meaning he had to play three or four songs.  Which meant a lot less time telling anecdotes/stories about the songs.  A lot of his political commentary was the same jokes, retold, but that’s fair enough.  The real question – would the special guest be Russell bloody Crowe again?  It came time for him to invite out a special guest – and this time – introduced “the UK’s greatest living songwriter and singer…” (at which point I was pretty sure we weren’t going to be seeing “the romper stomper of love”) … “Nick Lowe!”.  Well done Elvis, you certainly improved with your choice of friends.  All in all – a couple of very good gigs.  Some lovely classics, some invigorating classics, some obscure stuff from the Spinning Songbook, some brilliant covers, and some good solid showmanship.  Highly recommended – Elvis Costello’s Return of the Spectacular Spinning Songbook.

Monday – went to watch/support Jess (I have been corrected…) The Hat and The Cat at an open-mic night.  She was They were on last – after an act who was obviously brought in to provide the “main act” – so not an ideal slot – but she they did rather well.  The engineer apparently failed to record it – so no evidence of the evening, but she they managed to do 5 or 6 songs – a lot more than the previous acts.  One benefit of playing last, I guess – nobody pressuring the engineer to adhere to slot times.

And since then – no gigs.  Just a dozen different projects, sales people, directors, clients, etc – trying to get a slice of my time before I was supposed to be leaving on holiday.  And all of them pressuring me to give a solid answer on whether I was actually going on holiday or not – which I couldn’t do until yesterday.  But now – I’m stuck in the UK, and everybody is after their piece of Kruse.  I think I need to start doing my job poorly.  “Expectation Management”.

Oh – and there was a Jubilee recently.  Extra long weekend – so I hired myself a motorcycle.  Went for a couple of long-ish rides – down to Tonbridge on the Sunday, while the rest of the country was lining the Thames watching some boats go past.  Me – motorbiking out to some random small town, failing to find any decent food, and then biking back in the rain – too tired, cold, and hungry to make sensible decisions like pulling over to put on my waterproof overtrousers.  Tuesday – went out to Whitstable, famous for oysters apparently, so ate some oysters and other seafood – then headed onwards out as eastward as Margate and Ramsgate – then back to London – again in the rain.  This time, I pulled over at a country pub – which just happened to be having a “family friendly Jubilee Day” – and was crammed full of townfolk.  All of whom were white.  And I suddenly had this image of Easy Rider – my being an ‘outsider’, and ‘foreigner’ to boot, in this small insular english village pub.  I gulped down two thirds of a pint, put on my overtrou, and headed out of there before I got thrown in a cell next to Jack Nicholson.  And discovered riding back to London in relatively dry conditions was much preferable to the option of just letting myself become soaked.

And that was the last month.  My flight to Cambodia just took off.  And I’m not at all bitter about not being on it.  And grounded in UK until my visa is processed (or declined).  With the only timeline I have being “95% of applications will be processed within 6 months”.  Awesome.

A couple of weeks where I should really have remembered the concept of a list.  I like lists.  In fact, I really like lists.  But recently I’ve had so much I need to do/organise – that I never got around to making a list of it – so nothing’s been done/organised.

First up – a couple of gigs, bands I’d never heard of – but the brief in the gig-spam I get caught my attention.

Toy – at XOYO – pretty much your stock-standard London indie-rock.  Not bad at all, but I wish I’d remembered to take my book.  Stuck in a basement with a couple of hundred young ‘alternative’ camden-types without anything to distract me – not an ideal evening for a grumpy old man.  And yeah, that’s about all I have to say about Toy at XOYO – I had to find a youtube video to remind me of the gig (although that’s becoming more of a common requirement.  Grumpy old senile man, perhaps.)

The following night – Arthur Beatrice at The Lexington.  Pretty much your pub with a small venue for up-and-coming acts type set-up.  I arrived early, had myself some dinner – then headed upstairs to the venue.  Found myself in a very small venue, with the barman for company.  And not another soul.  Set myself up at the corner of the bar with my bottle of wine and my book, and waited.  Finally more people started arriving, and eventually some music was played.  One of the support acts was a guy with two turntables and a microphone.  He seemed to want the crowd to dance and engage.  The crowd didn’t seem to want to.  And then Arthur Beatrice.  I’m not entirely sure if that is the name of a person, or the band, or what.  But anyway – rather good.  Their keyboard was broken – and apparently that is normally a core component of their music – so many profuse apologies from the young lady who would presumably normally be playing that.  But they made do.  I discovered that another consequence of my arriving so early was that I had more time to drink, and drink I did, and therefore became a little intoxicated – and was struggling to concentrate near the end.  Which was a shame – because they really were rather good – and I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for their first album.  No videos of the gig itself – but I recommend checking out what is available out there.

Following evening – Justin had talked me into seeing some “world music”.  Amadou & Mariam, whom I’d never heard of – but apparently really should have.  I did the normal research – and yeah, I really should have.  How good is Amadou & Mariam?  Really good.  Headed out to SheBu to watch that, and rather enjoyed it – except for the large number of antipodeans that come with being in SheBu.  Where else could somebody walking out of a gig say to his mate “Let’s head to the Walkie” with a straight face?  (For those of you who don’t know what the “Walkabout” is – it’s essentially a franchise of bars specialising in large sports-bar type venues catering to hundreds of drunken young kiwis, saffas, and especially aussies)  Good as a last resort when trying to find a place showing rugby rather than soccer on the TV – but nothing more.

I was supposed to return the motorbike at around this time – but called up and extended the hire.  One more weekend, I thought.  So one more weekend is what I did.  Saturday – went for a ride around south London – dropped off my tickets for Gomez to Chook’s place, breaking into his gated community to do so.  Organised to meet Caitlin at a pub somewhere – but discovered my phone refused to show me a map to get there.  But on a motorbike – no problem, I’ll just quickly come home, have a look, and then head back down south.  So that is what I did – met up with Caitlin and her crew at a pub where they were watching some football or some such.  Chook & Chris then came and joined us – and we watched some horses running around a track, jumping over stuff.  The Grand National, I believe.  I bought a sweepstake ticket – and managed to draw the 2nd favourite.  And then the 1st favourite went nuts – so all of a sudden I had a ticket for the favourite.  I hate gambling – but it doesn’t count when it’s a sure thing.  Anyway – watched the horses race.  Apparently this is the first year of a heap of new measures to make the whole thing less nasty to the horses.  I’d hate to have seen what it was like previously.  Horses went down all over the show – at least one was shot.  Anyway – my horse came in third, and I got myself a £15 return for my 2 quid flutter.  Which I believe, in the parlance, is called a “result”.  I took my winnings and ran, before I could be talked into starting a proper drinking session, which is what it looked like the day was about to turn into.

Made it home safely, and started pondering options for my Sunday ride.  Opted for Windsor – and headed out there in the late morning.  Got there in time to glance at the castle, and find a pub for a Sunday roast.  Soon discovered that the entire town seems to be a tourist trap.  Had another look at the castle, without bothering to go inside – and then headed home – just catching the start of rain as I re-entered central London.

Monday – first day of a 5-day course.  I was to spend a week learning “Oracle 11g: New Features for Administrators – Release 2″.  In reality, I already knew pretty much all of the new features for administrators, even release 2 – but Oracle loves to make money… and in order that all the exams I’d already passed to result in pretty certificates and a heap of letters to put on my business card – I had to also pay a couple of thousand pounds to do a course to learn the stuff I’d already proven I knew rather well.  Well – I’ll let my company pay the couple of thousand grand – seeing as it’s them that want me to have all those certificates and what-not.

Broke up that week with a single gig – Noah & the Whale – at SheBu again.  But this time I had tickets for the balcony – nice and civilised with seats and such.  I wasn’t really sure what to expect – I’d heard of Noah & the Whale quite a bit, but never really got around to listening to them properly.  I also had the impression that they were probably quite pretentious “poor-little-rich-folk” types.  After the gig – I now have the opinion that they are rather good, and I should really listen to them more.  And yeah – still fairly sure that they’re poor artsy rich folk.

Ended the week with drinks on the top floor of Centrepoint.  Apparently it’s quite hard to get in there – but Paul got us a reservation, and we sat on the 33rd floor, drinking wine, eating overpriced bar snacks – looking out over London.  I believe it was supposed to be super impressive – but I didn’t really get it.  33rd floor?  Come on – I used to live beneath the goddamn SKYTOWER!  But yeah, good for something slightly different to the norm.

And today – trying to organise myself enough so that I can at least catch my flight to Iceland this evening.  I’ll leave the whole UK work permit expiring in a week problem until I get back.  Let alone trying to get my motorbike A2 license before June.  Oh – and the whole needing a visa for Cambodia also – despite the fact that the UK visa people may very well hold on to my passport for weeks, or even months.  It’s looking very likely that my flight to Cambodia was pretty much just throwing money away.  On the upside, <warning: inside joke which will look like nonsense to those on the outer>, it does mean that I’ll be standing up Buzz – he’ll be gloating about for once being the first man on the moon, and then I’ll just never turn up.  Sweet.