Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Phil Elvrum live for the third time in London, this time at The Dome near Kentish Town, with High Places and Parenthetical Girls supporting.
I loved the High Places set; their music is incredibly invigorating and refreshing, with a strange sort of aggression and tribalism when played live - suffice to say I bought their self titled 12″ at the close. Parenthetical Girls were not really my sort of thing, some stand out tracks, an interesting vocalist and instrument rotation made it worthwhile though.
Phil’s set was, as usual, mesmerizing and wonderful, despite his obvious exhaustion from traveling.
Downloads
Just for good measure, here are two downloads of the complete performances the last time I saw him live - recorded with permission by Sonny (via MEPS); first at The Luminaire and the next day at the London School of Economics library. Yesterday’s show didn’t top these, but to be honest that’s pretty hard ’cause they were awesome; there was even singalongs and people sat cross legged around him on the stage; it was all very intimate and beautiful.
Living in St Albans I’ve recently taken the opportunity to see as much theatre as possible, and now I have a couple of spare minutes between all the shows, holiday and traveling, I’ll write a bit about them all.
Les Miserables
I’ve long been a great hater of musicals that sing every. single. word. ♫ I’m going to get the milk ♫, that sort of thing. By that logic I should absolutely despise Les Mis’, listening to the songs briefly beforehand certainly suggested I would. Our seats were upper circle front row, I’d bought them with my sister for my mum’s birthday; we had a good view and I sat back unsure what to expect, ‘Look Down and see’.
Ahead of me the stories of Valjean, Fantine, Javert, Cosette, Eponine et al unfolded; the repeating musical theme resounded deep and a phenomenal performance by Drew Sarich coloured me impressed, with ‘On My Own’ heartrendingly sung by Eponine (Cassie Compton) fully engrossing me, for the first time, within a musical love story. This was and still is the best musical performance I have seen and until that point I had very little faith in the genre as a whole.
I left wanting more.
Marguerite
I had already seen Miss Saigon, although I do believe it wasn’t one of the best performances, I didn’t overly enjoy it. It probably deserves a second chance with my now renewed interest. Marguerite was a new musical with songs by Michel Legrand (see Umbrellas of Cherbourg!) and the hook, lyrics by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg.
The show, music and performances were all bitterly disappointing; the leading singing male came across as an over zealous stereotypical stage fella for which we did not emote. It was all a little lackluster, and no doubt others agreed - leading to the shows premature end in September. Luckily an overly chirpy and entertaining train conductor kept us happy on the way home; if only they were all as happy as him.
Fat Pig
Jo, Sam and I saw Fat Pig in its first English incarnation at the Trafalgar studios with Kris Marshall and Robert Webb. The comedy has a simple premise; some guy begins dating a fat girl and must face his work colleagues and their taunts - the ‘obsessed with looks’ ex-date and the crude and womanizing buddy.
Big Spoilers now. The first half revolves around Tom and Helen, the librarian, meeting, laughs a plenty and smiles all around - an hilarious comedy as billed. With the second half comes the to and fro of a relationship, the ups and downs and inevitable questions about the future which revolve around Helen meeting Tom’s work mates; the comedy softens you up and keeps you content in the happy ending realm of positive message storytelling - before a long and quiet conversation on the beach punches you in the gut, rips out your heart and splatters it on the wall, bringing you straight back to reality and ending the show in darkness. Absolutely brilliant.
I heartily recommend this, though cannot vouch for the new lineup or venue.
39 Steps
Another comedy, we got tickets cheap for this one in the stalls, and thought why not. None of us had actually seen the movie, so we didn’t know quite what to expect, especially with only four cast members playing the role of many. It turned out to be a slapstick affair with very clever prop jokes, costume changes and role switching; a good laugh and another recommended night out.
Avenue Q
Sam and I saw this one on our weekend to the Hoxton Hotel,
Middle of the middle in the stalls we watched the well praised Avenue Q as the Gary Coleman references whisked over our heads and the ‘grab your dick and double click‘ line resounded. Though we enjoyed it, the abundant acclaim meant it did not meet our high expectations.
This adult puppet comedy, although making us laugh, really didn’t grab us as we had thought and hoped it might. A tad disappointing, it might have been the understudies but probably just all the hype surrounding it.
Rain Man
Another performance caught on the Hoxton weekend, lucky enough to get tickets on the day,
Neither of us had seen the Dustin Hoffman movie, we went in without any expectations and without grounds for comparison. We left absolutely stunned - wow; the play was brilliant with Godley and Hartnett supremely leaving us on tender hooks. This was the first straight up play we’d seen together and no doubt we’ll be back for more of the same.
It is very much a love story, a comedy and a drama. I must remember to now watch the movie (adding to my LoveFilm list). I’m not sure how we would have reacted to it had we seen the movie. To no surprise, a large proportion of the audience were female. I do agree that Hartnett is a stud, even in The Black Dahlia with its stellar cast, which I caught last night, a poor attempt at a film noir.
Zorro
Zorro is the most recent of musicals I have seen after Sam grabbed four tickets for £40; this opened earlier in the year and Matt Rawle plays the lead and once again I had no expectations or even a clue as to the story. The show is none too serious (despite the brilliant ‘Man behind the Mask’ number) and comes accompanied with flamenco gypsy dancing, heel stomping, sword fights, fire and The Gypsy Kings (see Bamboleo); ‘a fun filled romp’ some tabloid review might say and it certainly was. With a dance and clap encore I left with dancing feet completely satisfied with my night out, bar the Gypsy King tracks that looped around my cranium for the remainder of the night.
If you want some plain old fun in London, I recommend Zorro the musical!
Raise your arms the highest you can, so the whole universe will glow…
Last night I had the privilege of seeing M83 live at Scala in London, with The Domino State supporting; and oh how superb it all was. Of course there was a strong focus on the new album, Saturday=Youth, but they didn’t forget the old songs, mixing it up beautifully with Dead Cities and Before the Dawn Heals Us. As the rising drums, guitars and rhythm of “A Guitar and a Heart” crashed through the venue with ever increasing furor and energy, a shiver shot down my spine and I hoped it would never end.
Here is some crappy footage I shot on my camera just for my own nostalgic purposes. Note how the camera can’t hold its auto focus in the light levels, giving the impression I can’t focus anything.
Normally the words shoegaze, pop, 80s, rave and enjoyable shouldn’t be put next to each other, let alone used to describe the same 90 minutes. However, those are just the words I’m going to use to describe last night’s M83 gig at London’s Scala.
Taking to a stage covered with enough cables to give even the most seasoned of electricians a heart attack, Anthony Gonzalez (who’s much smaller and more elflike in real life than I had realised…) made it clear it was his night, and with the help of a few supporting artists ploughed through an impressive selection of his work from the past 7 years.
Naturally, the focus of the evening was on new album Saturdays=Youth, with tracks like Couleurs, Graveyard Girl and Kim & Jessie getting some of the biggest cheers of the night. However, whilst his new pop direction was the reason Scala was so packed, he didn’t forget the diehard fans from his early days (and there were a few…), throwing in some harder dancier numbers which culminated in the encore with an almost full-on rave. Well, for about 5 minutes.
Shoegaze was the theme of the evening really though, with many songs blurring into one, and for the casual fan (like myself) it was easy to lose yourself in the music for 10 minutes, totally entranced by the teamwork and the skills of everyone.
The HoxtonHotel (’the urban lodge‘) in London recently had a sale, where a lucky few could purchase rooms for £1 a night or £29 a night. Most came away with nothing, but Sam was lucky enough to not only get a room, but two consecutive nights on the weekend of her birthday! Fantastic!
Said weekend started last Friday, we each took the day off and took our quick and usual route into the centre; meeting outside Leicester Square, cases in tow, ready to be tourists for a couple of days. After apple juice and lunch in St James’ park we took the Northern Line to Old Street and checked in, electrified by the overwhelming trendiness that is both the hotel and surrounding area.
Ah, its been a week now since I returned from the US, UTAH and the Westgate Resort in Park City. I’ve just about recovered from the 7 hour time difference, which was compounded by a 24 hour day of traveling including a harrowing down the mountain drive in heavy snow, two flight connections (Detroit and Minneapolis) and a 2 hour coach trip from Heathrow back to St Albans. I’m also not a Mormon.
Heading over appeared easier on paper, short flight to CDG, Paris then an 11 hour Air France flight to Salt Lake City (do not go to the Travelodge near Heathrow and certainly do not taste their food - if you must there is a nicer looking pub just around the corner). Looking online beforehand we noted the movies we wanted to watch, etc. Unfortunately the flight was with an Air France partner, Delta, without a sophisticated in flight entertainment system - instead giving us in the aisle airings of the awful “Little Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day” and “Kung Fu Panda”, leaving 7 hours to spare. No doubt the complimentary Kronenbourg 1664 helped the trip go a little faster. All in all it felt like a short haul flight - just really really long. Leaving the dull London 12C we were treated to a basking 88F on arrival, where we picked up our 4×4 Suzuki rental and proceeded towards Park City in the mountains.
Now that I have made my mammoth 5000 word Greece holiday post, which has been waiting around for a month or so to type up, I can move onward to new blog posts in this new and improved MrFofR.com blog, happily within Wordpress.
Importing 5 years worth of posts from Blogger and then categorizing them was not a pretty task. Though I did notice a gradual descent into immaturity as I worked backwards. In celebration of this achievement, and bringing this blog inline with my other projects, the site has changed hosts and lives on its own domain as a separate outlet for unprofessional blurbs, rants and whatnot; www.mrfofr.com. The Mr. bit is new, I’d be pretty lucky to bag a four letter domain name.
After 5 years, my AMD Athlon 2700 XP with 1.5gb of RAM and LG 17″ screen was growing weary. Time for an upgrade, and the new 24″ iMac model took my fancy - I grabbed one from John Lewis in July and its now sitting pretty as the focus of my front room, coinciding with a big rearrangement of furniture.
Good timing really, considering that I had multiple and simultaneous hard drive failures on my PC shortly thereafter as I tried to transfer 40gb or so to the mac.
Having been through the old posts, I noted that, in hindsight, screenshots of my projects are very helpful for when the original source material has since vaporized into the mists of some internet purgatory. And on that note:
As with our trip to Sozopol, Bulgaria, I’m taking a quick moment out of a few days to recant our recent tails. Those lucky enough to find this rare and valuable hard copy will note the delightful Molyvos image on the front of this book.
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