Off My Rocker at the Kilburn Bop

From the ridiculous to the sublime. After last nights ordeal, tonight saw us visit The Luminaire in Kilburn for the genius of Luke Haines. The contrast between venues could hardly be greater. The Luminaire is up a flight of stairs on Kilburn High Road and the size of a small pub. Perhaps if more people realised how amazing Luke Haines really is he'd be playing in slightly larger venues, or maybe not, who knows. But this was a great show.

Support came from Vinny Peculiar who we hadn't particularly planned on seeing, but coming on stage at 9pm, we were very pleasantly surprised. Ex-Smiths member Mike Joyce was on drums, but the spotlight fell on who I presume was Vinny himself who led the quarter in half an hour of intelligent indie-pop, titles including "Jesus Stole My Girlfriend" and "Everlasting Teenage Bedroom". I shall be making futher investigations.

Luke took the stage around 10-ish and gave us 45 minutes of, as ever, sublime power-pop. The majority of the set was taken from the new album, Off My Rocker At The Art-School Bop, which mainly seems to address the 70's. Leeds United recalls the terrace atmosphere of the time whilst also referring to the Yorkshire Police's hunt in vain for the Yorkshire Ripper; the Walton Hop concerns itself with the (in)famous venue where Jonathan King met a lot of his "young friends" and paints an image of a time of perceived innocence , whilst also (I think, I've only heard these songs a couple of times) addressing the nature of the relationship between young people and the music business.

The highlight of what I've heard of the album is Bad Reputations, a song about Gary Glitter and how he "ruined the reputation of the Glitter Band", but it's not so much about the Glitter Band, but more how many people's memories of the whole era have been altered retrospectively, almost wiped away. In a similar way to how The Walton Hop refers to the youth discos of the time, which must have been great back in the day but have now become somewhat tinged.

We also got the Oswald Moseley referencing Mitford Sisters, with John Moore joining on saw, cult favourite The Dead Sea Navigators, Baader Meinhof, Upper Classes, personal favourite The Rubettes, the first airing I've heard of a new track which I presume is called "Freddie Mills is Dead" (Freddie Mills being a boxer and Krays associate), Unsolved Child Murder (always good to dance to!), the title track - Off My Rocker At The Artschool Bop, and the now traditional finale of Future Generations.

A fantastic show from probably my favourite living artist, a lovely venue, and Fosters at £3.00 a pint on draught!

Over-crowded, Over-priced and Over-there (in Camden)

It's been a while since the last post, so I thought I'd come back with a whinge. I'm just back from seeing The Rapture at Koko, what was once known as the Camden Palace - a venue I'd been singing the praises of to Dawn Right Nasty having previously seen both The Polyphonic Spree and Julian Cope there and loved it. Both these previous gigs were sold out so ... why was it so fucking crowded tonight?!?

Perhaps the crowd was just more laid back and spread out for those gigs. Presumably they sell as many tickets as they're allowed which for a club night with people mingling around, stood at the bar, spread around the balconies might be fine - when you're trying to see a band it's a fucking nightmare, and I'm over 6 foot 1 and not normally one to get that bothered by a bit of a crush at gigs.

And £3.90 for a can of fucking Fosters poured into a plastic glass ... you're having a laugh now.

Shame really cos the band sounded really good, up until the point I left just as the encore started. I'd like to see them again ... in a decent fucking venue!!!