… at work
Colleague #1: Going to leave early. Fatality on the line at Brentwood.
Colleague #2: Oh dear. Selfish idiot. Colleague #1: Yeah. The trains are all messed up now. Colleague #2: Glad I’m not going that way tonight.
Nice one guys. The very milk of human kindness.
Yesterday I went to have my nails done in one of my sporadic ‘yikes! I really need to get myself looking normal’ grooming fits. The ‘technician’ [for fuck’s sake] soon struck up a conversation with me about the music station playing, Magic TV.
I am a bit of a fan of Magic FM, often tuning it in on a Sunday morning, or when I am having a relaxing evening bath, or other occasions when the frenetic pace of Xfm, with their playlists of The Kaiser Chiefs et al seems inappropriate, or the calming drone of ‘Women’s Hour’ a tad soporific. I am not a fan, however, of dull, forced conversations, and have been known to spend a whole two hours glowering from under my fringe at hairdressers attempting to strike up a conversation with me with such original gems as ‘Are you going anywhere nice on your holidays?’, ‘Got any plans for the weekend?’ and ‘Weather looks like its going to turn out nice.’
I tried to let her outpouring of banality wash over me (under normal circumstances I would have been digging my finger nails into my palms in exasperation), and was struggling to contort my face into something resembling friendly attentiveness, when she commented on a Bryan Ferry song, saying ‘Now, play your average Will Young song in 25 years time and no one will feel this sort of nostalgia’. As she paused for breath, the song came to an end to be replaced by an ad for that little twat of a Crazy Frog.
I took the opportunity to vent some of the spleen and spume some of the bile her wittering had caused to build up, by directing it instead at the television, commenting that while I didn’t know how the cacophony could have outsold Coldplay four to one, I didn’t think much to Coldplay’s offering anyway. Her response caused me to have to exercise such control over my facial expression that my hands shook with laughter, and I still have a little chip mark in my otherwise immaculate ‘Notting Hill’ coloured nails.
‘It’s because most of our youngsters are listening to this that they’re all on ASBOs’, she said. ‘Take those kids who hung [sic] that boy up in Yorkshire….’ I blocked out her voice by paying full attention to the amphibian oddity.
I am so glad to see that, despite being bombarded with such music, my technician has managed to keep her powers of reasoning intact. The moral fabric of our society is safe.
Since I bought ‘Odelay’ back in 1996, I have always wanted to see Beck Hansen live. His shows are as well known for his stagecraft as his undisputed musicianship. At the Hammersmith Apollo last night, the support act was called Brendan Benson, and while both he and his band were accomplished, polished musicians, there was something worryingly bland about them. They resolutely failed to set the venue alight, and one of my two companions commented that the ‘Geography Teacher Couture’ of the bassist was more geek than geek-chic. To which I added my style diagnosis – that Brendan’s mullet made Craig from Big Brother look dapper.
When Beck and his band took to the stage, the difference in attitude was palpable. And there was an immediate acknowledgment of this from the crowd. Beck wore understated trousers and a seventies style shirt, and despite this and his diminutive stature, he filled up the stage with his presence. His geek isn’t chic. But because it isn’t trying to be, it is effortlessly, supremely cool.
His set list included well known numbers Loser, Where It’s At, and others from his 10 year career, and Devil’s Haircut – the second song of the gig – got the crowd revelling in an old favourite. But he didn’t take his foot off the pedal at any point, with the crowd responding equally well to the new songs. Even though his new album Guero has had fairly mixed reviews, everyone in the audience joined in the ‘naa naa na na na na naa naa’s’ of the recent single, Epro.
Beck is known for a sense of humour in the staging of his shows, having included in the past such capers as being carried off the stage on a stretcher having pretended to collapse and putting yellow police tape round the stage and trashing it. Last night in the middle of the gig, his band mates sat at a table and tucked into some food. On stage. Beck said that while his boys were eating some ’skewered meat’, he would treat us to some acoustic tracks. After the first, he promised us ‘another dirge’, and proceeded to give a beautiful vocal performance in his cover of The Korgis’ Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime, recorded for the soundtrack of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. During the acoustic set, the band slowly joined in by percussing on the glasses, crockery and cutlery on the table. All, of course, shown on giant backing screens in a kaleidoscope effect. I haven’t seen people laughing in a gig so openly since I saw Har Mar Superstar at Glastonbury a few years ago. And that was bemusement. With Beck, everyone gets the joke because it isn’t really a joke – it’s good humoured playing around. But because he has honed his craft so well, he can afford to play around without sacrificing the music – and that’s why his songs are so energetic and effervescent.
Perhaps I am enthusing too much. Someone told me this week, apropos of something else entirely that I am so enthusiastic about things that I bring to mind a puppy. But the thing is that I have recently (age? ennui?) found myself getting bored at gigs – more pre-occupied with the fact that being a bit of a short arse myself, I can struggle to see the stage, with people pushing past me to get to the loos, with a surfeit of plastic cups and bottles slipping around on spilt beer underfoot on which to do my very own version of crowd surfing – and sometimes wishing songs over. This happened to me at The Scissor Sisters’ famous Brixton concert last November, despite the mitigating factors of having a crush on both the front man and woman, thinking their songs some of the most exciting of last year, and finding their stage presence bold and energetic. But last night nothing distracted me – every moment was interesting, whether it was for the revelation during some of the slower numbers that Beck’s voice, left to shine without the bizarrely orchestrated instrumentation, is actually very beautiful, or the funny Bez-style dancing of a bloke dressed in a white shirt and black tie on one side of the stage. My one gripe was that he didn’t play Sexx Laws – a personal favourite of mine.
Three of us went together last night – and while two of us went in much more interested in Beck than the third, all of us came out with the same resounding conclusion – that the gig was way better than our expectations. I have always wanted to see Beck live. And now I have, I don’t think I will again. I want that to have been my live Beck experience.