sailorette’s diary - a diary writen by a sailorette for her loved ones to read after returning safely home from sea

Photo from Steve Asenjo’s flickr

Last Sunday I went with Nico and Karl Ringman to see Ani Difranco at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. It was my first Ani Gig.

It was amazing.

She is an extremely good performer - not just in a musical sense, but with a stage sense that really engages her audience. Each song was mixed up with mini-monologues and her crazy laughter, which makes for the perfect environment to really listen to her music. I found I was hearing new lyrics with every song.

Leaving an Ani gig, you want to fill in the blanks of a conversation you started with her in your mind.

A little mind-blown. It’s all a bit like a whirlwind romance.

“If you get lonely you can share my bed tonight.”

That’s my flatmate, A, speaking. The week my boyfriend, nico, is away in sweden, she decides to try lesbianism. I think its all the stripes she wears, its driving her horizontal.

Yesterday morning she suggested we go see a band who’s hit song, “My Best Friend”, chorus’ the lyrics:

“Damn! I wish I was a lesbian
Damn! I wish I was a lesbian
Damn! I wish I was, and that you were, too
So I could fall in love with you”

Suspicious me? No. I asked Nico along.

*Annika Norlin, left, with Maia Hirasawa.

The gig was at The Water Rats, an old theatre bar by kings cross. A warm, friendly pub where I was the minority, and no one said sorry. The warm-up act was a half-japanese, half-swedish girl, Maia Hirasawa. She had a great voice, and I mistook her for the lead-singer in the band that we were there to see. The band that I have not named yet. A name that comes from a special taxi service run in the most heroin addicted city in america. A service that, when rung, the chauffeur answers “Hello Saferide”. And so we come to the 3rd line-up of the night, and the band we’d come here to see.

She* was cute, charastmatic, and funny. This came bubble wrapped in a very bad english accent. The songs sounded even better than on the album (the original reason why we go to gigs) and her small-talk added new stories around the songs.

My flatmate, A, didn’t even notice when they played “My Best Friend.”

How many times have you said great gig, shame about the venue? Those times when you go to see a band and stare at a digital face on a large screen. Its rare that you get to see the band, ‘before they were famous’, and those times are extra-special, not just for their rarebility but for their quality.

So you may have guessed, I’m a small venue kinda gal. Wembley arena sized gigs just don’t do it for me. I just crave the intimacy of a small venue, to see the face of the person who is singing in the flesh, to watch the sweat dribble from the drummer’s forehead, and hear the band’s sound reverberated from moist walls. So to be watching ‘The Veils’ at the 100 club, a club that has been around for over half its title in years, a club that has gone through over 100 genres of music during that time, a club where the top 100 bands like ‘The Clash’ and ‘The Sex Pistols’ performed before anywhere else, was intimacy of a fine vintage.

I’d seen The Veils for the first time at BarFly in Camden. Their supporting act, comprising of a girl screaming at a toy doll, proved strange for a second, then quickly moved over to very annoying and seemed to taint The Veils’ performance. This time, The Veils had picked a fellow Wellington, NZ band for the supporting act who sounded a cross between Ray Charles and The Beach Boys played at the wrong speed. The main singer was a blond haired boy who looked like he had just hit puberty and, thanks to a distorted mike, had a voice to enforce this. The double bass player was brilliant, with his taped up bass, long curly hair and grinning finger plucking. I really liked them.

The Veils themselves would probably, when standing side by side, take up the same room as an average american. The are extremely skinny. The lead singer has got the funeral omish look going on, with his black hat with large ironed brim and white shirt. He is perfectly complimented by his girlfriend/bass-player’s shy, hiding behind black hair, mysterious allure that reminds me of the girl from The Incredibles.

Their sound sometimes took on the voice of The Cure’s Robert Smith, broken, surprisingly, by a kiwi accent between songs. It may have been the venue, but The Veils were much better this time around. They seemed more comfortable with the audience and more at home in the dingy basement of the 100 times better club.

Its wonderful that both times i’ve been to see Death Cab they have put such emphasis on coming from Seattle. Slogan: “We are Death Cab for Cutie from Seattle” …a town that is famed for its rain and that terrible film starring Tom Hanks. I think this topographical origin influenced the band’s first performance that I saw at the Astoria. The band seemed a bit shy and overwhelmed but far from effect their performance, this added to the band’s onstage personality.

This time they rocked the house! Maybe it was the Brixton atmosphere, but they rocked the 13 year old girls, the 40 year-so mums and our 20-so’s cotton socks off. Mr Gibbard, with his voice that sits on the corner of your mind, was on top form, jumping up and down to every song. The little guitarist, Nick Harmer, was also rocking with his bass like a drinking bird.

One thing.
The drum duet was the highlight of the set. Ben and the drummer, Michael Schorr, did a lovely jam to ____________ (to fill in the name later). Interesting how I keep seeing these talented singers who can also drum.

Death Cab is a very accomplished band. Their lyrics are crafted and full of visual imagery, and their music is anti-decorative, bringing the visual lyrics into the audial world.

Go see! It’ll rock!

Found
above the begger spot,
outside the garage,
along shoreditch high street,
on 28th June,
before the Death Cab for Cutie gig.

I first heard these lads when I got a hold of their song ‘I will be there when you die”. A lovely song, the lyrics and the singer’s voice exhale a haunting sweet-bitterness through the music. Since then I got a hold of another album, but it didn’t seem to ring true to this first song I heard.

Now I’ve slowly been collecting their complete disography and it is, without being to understated, rather good. I have heard they are even more rather than good live, so heres for another gig.

I think this will be a very hard post to write. Mainly because my writing style lacks the lyricall power to explain just how staggering, word-taking, mouth-drying, flesh-tingling, stunning and wondrous the foo fighters acoustic gig at Victoria Apollo really was. I still haven’t gotten over it. On the bus ride home, me and nuzz sat in euphoric silence, the only way which can trully express what the gig was like. So far from offending the gig with my juvenile inexperienced words, I will instead talk about my discoveries, that many will know, but that are rather shiny in their newness to me.

Chris Shiflett
The lead guitarist of Foo is Chris Shiflett. While Grohl was off moonlighting with the queens of the stone age, Chris released an album with his brother in their band Jackson sometime before the Foo’s One by One came out. Chris also played guitar in a favourite punk band from my youth - Me First and the Gimme Gimmes.

Taylor
The tazmanian devil of drummers. I do believe he always drums in shorts and a bare chest. When he sang, on Cold Day in the Sun, his voice secured his tazmanian devil origin.

Rami Jaffee
Then there was this dude who played the acordian and piano and cigarette (a constant part of his stage get up). A proper character he conjured up images for me of blackface and Al johnson

Pat Smear
And the rather characterly dressed bleached blong hair guitarist turned out to be Pat Smear, the guy who played with Nirvana in their last 6 months. A complete hybrid, Mr Smear has an african american/native american mother and German Jewish father. Supposedly this was a big deal he was touring with the Foo’s as he has been keeping a really low profile.

Mr Grohl
And then there was Dave. what a lovely person this guy seems. One who laughs with life and with a glowing ego that doesn’t rule the band. A true talent and like all trully talented individuals, a workaholic, he has this rolling almost mid-east accent so it wasn’t surprising when I found out he was born in Ohio, nextdoor to where my mom grew up, and now lives is Virgina.

One song they played that I’d never heard (apart from on the new album) was actually a really old song from Grohl’s pseudonym ‘late’ first solo album, pocketwatch. It was really lovely, and with lyrics like:

“He’s never been in love
But he knows just what love is
He says nevermind
And no one speaks”

makes you wonder if its about Kurt, and it probably is, but more based around the time when Grohl moved in with Kurt, who he didn’t know all that well, and the two spent a rather lonely depressing winter with Krist. This was before nirvana became big. It was the first acoustic song Grohl wrote.

And theres much more to write.. but words are falling now. So I suggest you take a pop over to nuzz’s blog for a much more indepth and educational account.