Gavin Creel at The Jazz Cafe

On Wednesday we headed up to Camden to see Gavin Creel play a set at the Jazz Cafe. I've seen Gavin sing a few times in his role as Claude in 'Hair', but not seen him perform his own songs before, so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect.

On he came with a guitarist and percussionist (who also played the air trumpet) and launched into two new songs before alternating between songs from his album and ep, new songs and a smattering of covers (including a fun cover of 'I Kissed A Girl'). Gavin has a good stage presence, chatting away to the crowd, telling us his personal history with London, joking how some of our pubs are older than his country and then back into a song. His band were excellent too, creating a big sound with just the two of them. Gavin has a very natural and versatile voice, not stage-y at all, and his songs are what I can only think of as gentle. Here's a video of him singing 'Hot Ohio' at the Jazz Cafe:



We met him briefly after the show and he talked about the new record he was planning for late next year - the songs sound excellent so it should be good. He seems a very nice lad, willing to stay and chat to the many fans hanging around to meet him afterwards. It'll be interesting to see what he does next with his career.

Ari Up

I can't let today pass without recording the death of Ari Up of The Slits. I remember taping The Slits first John Peel session back in the '70s and playing 'Typical Girl', 'Shoplifting' and 'New Town' endlessly - they still bring a warm fuzzy glow of listening to the radio in my bedroom and thinking that these girls were the same age as me and they were up there doing something. Arianna was a couple of years younger than me so it's sad to realise she's gone.

'Cut' is their classic album but I like the EP that the rejuvenated Slits released a few years ago, 'Revenge Of The Killer Slits', and the latest album, 'Trapped Animal'. I am now, of course, kicking myself for not seeing The Slits last year when they were on tour, but they will always have a place in my punk heart.

Farewell Arianna and give 'em hell wherever you are - you never were a typical girl.

Paul Smith - 'Our Lady of Lourdes'

Here is the video for Paul Smith's first single, 'Our Lady Of Lourdes'. It's very dark and mysterious but it suits the song perfectly.

Boy George - 'Pentonville Blues'

Boy George's new single (with Glide & Swerve) is now available to download and here is the video for 'Pentonville Blues'. George has been playing this live for a while now so it's nice to have a proper recording. The video is a bit of a departure from his more recent videos but it's certainly noticeable.

Christmas Starts Early This Year

Anyone who's read this blog in the run-up to Christmas will know that I object to Christmas starting earlier each year in a bid for the capitalist dollar. Christmas in *my* reality doesn't start until 1 December when I might start looking at cards and stuff.

But this year that must be different. I must start talking about it early if only for one reason: Mr Fred Schneider has forced me to. His special brand of madness has infected Christmas and given birth to 'Destination ... Christmas' by The Superions! Oh yes, Fred has a new record out next week and it's a Christmas record!



Now, it's not The B-52's, but I wouldn't want it to be. I want Fred to have many outlets for his special insanity and The Superions are a good way to let it all out.

A few other Christmas records have already been announced by Annie Lennox, The Indigo Girls and Shelby Lynne, but all I can say is, 'sorry girls, Fred comes first...'. I fell in love with The Superions' 'Totally Nude Island' last year and I think Christmas might just be nude this year.

Gauguin at the Tate Modern

Last weekend we wandered along the Southbank to the Tate Modern to see the new Gauguin exhibition. Gauguin isn't one of my favourite artists but an exhibition like this doesn't come along every year so it was essential to take advantage of it. Of course, that's what everyone else thought and it was full to bursting with a surprising number of French and American voices in the crowd.

The exhibition is made up of a group of 11 themed rooms on the fourth floor of the Tate full of paintings, drawings, prints, carvings and even a few of his ceramics - he turned his hand to most things, did Mr Gauguin. That, I think, helped bring him to life, seeing doodles and rough carvings as well as great paintings, helping to fill him out a bit as a personality in his own right, not just some historical figure known for a few famous paintings. And I really liked a little ceramic vase (I think that's what it was) with two openings and a vague shape of a shepherdess on one side and some rough balls of fluff on the other as sheep - it looked rough and unfinished, damaged even, but it radiated magic to me and would look nice on top of my bureau at home...

I've long learned to ignore the standard way of viewing exhibitions like this, shuffling from one painting to the next in reverential awe. I don't have the patience. I'd much rather stroll through the galleries looking left and right, viewing paintings without a crowd and just glancing over and between heads to see those with crowds, stroll the whole way through and then head back to the start to take a longer look at those paintings or exhibits I've made a mental note to take a good look at.

And that brings me to one the main annoyances about the exhibition - digital guides. Loads of people had little handsets displaying paintings and details while you listen to an audio commentary through headphones. Now, I do think that's a good use of technology, but I found it very frustrating to see a nice painting with a few people clustered in front of it looking down at the screen on the handset rather than at the painting while they listened to the commentary before moving on to stand vacuously in front of the next painting, take a quick look and then look down again at the handset. Why? I mean, really, why? The painting is there in front of you - look at it, not at your handset and if you are going to look at the handset, move away so others can look at the painting.

Mind you, it was nice to be reminded of paintings I'd forgotten about, like 'Bonjour Monsieur Gauguin' (above) that I remembered my old art teacher used to love as well as discovering some new paintings by Monsieur Gauguin that I've never seen before. One of those was a delightful still life of a bowl of fruit with three puppies lapping at a bowl of milk - all have their tails in the air and one has his tongue sticking out and you just know he's the cheeky one of the three, a personality outlined in a few brush strokes.

Another was a beautiful Tahitian landscape with palm trees reflecting the sun and colour around them by having orange, red and all-colours leaves - it really drew me in and made me want to wander across the field to inspect the trees more closely. I also liked the rough nature of his prints, with a room dedicated solely to his print works. I was particularly taken with a small print of a Buddha image, almost incomplete with faint lines but it caught my eye and kept it.

It's an exhibition well worth seeing but it's probably best to go during the week if you can so you can fall into the sumptuous colours and drift into a Tahitian pastoral scene. If you're a fan of Gauguin then you'll need your credit card for the shop outside the exhibition, selling everything you could imagine, including a knitting kit to knit your own puppy. I'll have the painting instead, thank you.

Buffy Sainte-Marie at the Beeb

The BBC has opened its vaults of old footage of singer-songwriters from the late 60s, 70s and early 80s and it's a trip down memory lane to see some of the singers that I only vaguely remember. Tonight's 'Singer-Songwriters at the BBC' show on BBC4 opened with Bobbi Gentry and included John Martyn singing 'May You Never', a song I always associate with the lovely Linda Lewis who was also on the show, Roy Harper, Joni Mitchell, Don McLean, Dori Previn and a host of others. The two things that all the performances have in common is the vast array of hair on display and a guitar.

The important clip, however, is of Buffy Sainte-Marie singing 'Until It's Time For You To Go' from 1971 on a show I've never heard of called 'One In 10'. Buffy was not only singing live but was wearing the shortest pair of hotpants putting Kylie's golden hotpants to shame. I've never seen that clip before and, although it's not the best of Buffy, it's just nice to see her included in the array of singer-songwriters from yesteryear. Of course, she's one of the few people on that programme still making and releasing new music and touring - she's playing a gig in Canada tomorrow night.


Now, if the BBC has one clip of Buffy, it means they have more. I know for a *fact* that it has a half hour show all about Buffy because I saw it in 1975 or 1976 and I've never forgotten it. C'mon Beeb, hunt out all your clips of Buffy on shows over the years and give us a DVD or, at the very least, repeat it on telly. Even better, invite me in to curate a season of Buffy at the Beeb. My rates are very cheap y'know...

Here's a photo of Buffy in concert from January 2010 at Shepherd's Bush Empire:

Kim Wilde - New Album

I seem to be the last to know anything these days, but it's *important* for you to know that Kim Wilde has released a new album called 'Come Out And Play' and here's the video for the first single from it:



I'm not entirely sure what the pole dancers have to do with it, but it would be churlish to mention it. Oops. Would it be churlish to say that Kim's looking good? Cos she is!

The album seems to be just available in Germany at the moment and I can't find a legitimate download, but I'll continue my hunt. And I'll watch out for any shows - wouldn't a gig by Kim be wonderful?

National Film Theatre (or BFI if you insist)

I don't often go to the National Film Theatre but have been twice in the last few days and enjoyed each visit. First off was a black and white double bill of 'London Terminus' and 'A Window In London' on Friday and then 'The Chalk Garden' this evening.

'London Terminus' is a 16 minute film about life in Waterloo Station in 1944 and I found it fascinating to see what was similar to the station as it is today and where it has changed. The thing that struck me most was the movement of people. It was incredibly busy back then as it still is, but the crowds of people were moving across the concourse in 1944 whereas my immediate memory of Waterloo today is static crowds blocking the concourse waiting for trains - the movement has gone. I also felt a slight swelling of pride when the narrator said that over one million people commuted into "the Great City" - London is a great city and it's mine. I found the film both fascinating and touching.

'A Window In London' was a proper film, with Michael Redgrave in the lead role, filmed in 1939 and related to the previous film since our hero is a crane operator building Waterloo Bridge. There's a lot going on in the film under the basic storyline such as the apparently sexless marriage of the lead couple since they work shifts and only have Sundays together, the temptations on the man but not on the woman and the class structure at work in the film where our hero has a posh accent even though he's a crane driver but his colleagues are (of course) common cockneys. Two things stood out for me - the way it was portrayed as perfectly acceptable for the men to push and pull women around as they saw fit and, in the wider scenes of travelling across London, the total absence of pubs! Where were they? I also liked the panoramic scenes of the Southbank without all the buildings we're used to today.

This evening's film was a different kettle of fish again, 'The Chalk Garden' from 1963 starring Deborah Kerr, Edith Evans and John and Hayley Mills and set in Sussex somewhere. It's a rather Hollywood-ized version of the stage play of the same name but I liked it. It was introduced with a short interview with Julie Harris, the costume designer for the film, which was a nice way to start it. There's something about seeing films on the big screen that makes them very different and adds to the experience of seeing them - I'm not sure I would've liked my first viewing of this film on DVD on the small screen. It's a slow burner, starting off tight and controlled and gradually becoming looser and more naturalistic and it's only in the final few scenes that we understand why. And I'm not saying why.

Maybe I ought to go more often? Or, more likely, it's that Chris knows his films.

'Five Guys Named Moe' at Stratford

Just before my trip to Athens a few weeks ago we went to see 'Five Guys Named Moe' at the Theatre Royal, Stratford, and enjoyed it so much that we went back again this week. Chris saw the original production, also at Stratford, 20 years ago but I've never seen it before.

It's the sorry tale of Nomax who's been thrown out by his girlfriend and he's holed up in a motel with his Louis Jordan records, drinking himself silly and he's a sad sight. Then he's swallowed by his record player (as you are) and ends up with his five guardian angels, all of whom are named Moe. They take him on a journey through relationships, understanding women and self-confidence through the medium of song and dance before he goes back to his motel room to, well, I'll leave that for you to find out.

The set was very simple, just a large podium for the six-piece band and lots of space for the Moes to do their stuff, all dressed in brightly coloured zoot suits, looking well smooth and cool. The story is told very effectively through the songs of Louis Jordan and others, with different Moe's taking lead vocals and dominating the stage, with Nomax sometimes joining in, sometimes watching. Nomax was played by Clarke Peters who also wrote the musical and starred in it as Four-Eyed Moe 20 years ago and it was great to see him on stage, especially giggling along with the audience a few times.

The Moes were all excellent - Ashley Campbell, Christopher Colquhoun, Carlton Connell, Peter Hazel and Horace Oliver - singing and dancing their hearts out and always in character, including during the conga line that took us up onto the stage at the end of the first half. I was particularly impressed by Christopher as Big Moe and he has some great songs with some audience participation, joining in the songs. My favourite moment was when the leaflets fluttered down from the ceiling with the lyrics to chorus of 'Push Ka Pi Shee Pie', my favourite kind of pie from now on!

As you can guess, I loved it! Seeing it the first time on the evening of my last day at work before a holiday was the perfect way to start relaxing, with a big smile plastered over my face for most of the evening - great stuff! It's a very happy and upbeat show and the cast were all excellent. We also met Clarke Peters after each show which was a great pleasure, a very gracious gentleman, happy to chat for a few minutes and engage with his audience. Here's hoping the show transfers to the West End - I'll definitely be in the audience for my share of push ka pi shee pie!