Tea and cakes and things I like

Oh my, what a day Saturday was. Somehow the Dublin Riots passed me by, despite being in the city centre relaxing over lunch with a friend while cars were being torched 5 minutes walk away on Nassau Street.

We had tickets for the cinema that night, and the plan was to stay in town until then, but there was a bit of an edge to the place, and a banger being set off just in front of us on Grafton Street put the wind up me a bit (yes, I am a coward). So, we headed to a local safe house for tea and knitting and a bit of rugby before heading back into the city centre to the cinema.

Anyway, we went to see The Proposition as part of the Jameson International Film Festival, and it was excellent. I highly, highly recommend the film. It’s sort of an australian revenge western. The director, John Hillcote, and John Hurt were there for questions afterwards, which was pretty fucking cool, I have to say.

Anyway, I’d been too full at lunch to have any cake, so I decided to make up for it with an ice cream at the cinema (Cineworld, up on Parnell St). This was an interesting ice cream. The Caramel Crisp is caramel ice cream wrapped in a caramel coating (sort of hard, like choc-ice coating texture, but caramel). So far, so good. Deliciously cool, creamy and sweet.

Unfortunately, in their wisdom, the good people at Haagen-Dazs decided to add wafer to the top and bottom of the caramel coating.
Now, this may sound ok, but the wafer breaks differently to the caramel coating. This means that sometimes you get some wafter in your mouth, sometimes it just falls off and lands in your lap. That’s just the way it goes, I guess.

Last FM is a sort of online radio station I was directed towards by a wise person. You have to register and stuff, but it’s free. Then you enter in music that you feel like listening to, and it plays you music like that - some from the bands and some from others that it feels you might like. You can skip songs you don’t like, ban songs totally, or say that you love a song, all of which helps it work out what you want to listen to.

Here’s what I entered:
Belle and Sebastian
Isobel Campbell
The Cardigans
A Camp
The Kings of Convenience
Beth Orton
Jim Noir
The Boy Least Likely To

So far it’s played me a selection from the above (good choices too - the Cardigans track was from Emmerdale, their first album and my favourite), plus:
Everything but the girl, which I banned as I don’t like them.
Air
The Shins
Architecture in Helsinki
Erlend Oye (the O should have a vertical line through it)
The Cranberries (skipped that one)
Databoy78

I hadn’t heard any A Camp before - it’s Nina from the Cardigans solo project, but the one track I heard was excellent and I shall be buying the album from amazon as soon as my credit card says I can.
The boy least likely to and Jim Noir I haven’t heard either, but they’ve been recommended by a friend with excellent taste in music who always steers me right.

Another fantastic gig. She has an amazing voice, and is just, well, really sweet and down to earth. Add to that excellent company and a great venue (I do like Vicar St, it’s intimate but not squished up), and it was a wonderful night.

I do however have a few messages for the good people in the audience.

1. To the people who insisted on clapping along to everything:
Some songs just aren’t suited to clapping - the quiet, melodic ones for example. Please shut up. Also, if you do insist on bashing your hands together to make noise over the performance, do you think that possibly, maybe, next time you could try to do it in time with the music? Maybe if you practise really, really hard before she comes to play again.

2. To the lady who sat next to me:
You smelled. I suspect this was down to your bulk. I recommend purfume, or a better deodorant. Also, if I happen to be sat next to you again, please keep your fat ass on your seat, not mine. I appreciate I’m not the largest person in the world so may not have been using the whole space, but really, it’s just not polite.

3. To the audience members who felt that they were having an open conversation with Beth Orton, and could tell the punchline to her jokes, heckle her, and generally behave like arses whenever she stopped to re-tune her guitar:
Seriously, show some respect. There’s a bit of banter between the performer and the audience, and then there’s just acting like pricks. You were the latter. You’re not funny. I don’t want to hear you.

4. To the woman sat behind me, singing:
I did not pay to hear you sing. You aren’t that good. Yes, I recognise that you know all the words - so do I, it’s not that hard. I don’t want to hear you sing. If I want to hear badly sung Beth Orton I can create my own performance in the comfort of my own home. If you have such a burning desire to perform, get a fucking record deal. Oh, sorry, what’s that you say? You can’t? Because you’re shit? Yes, that’s what I suspected.

Anyway, those are my messages. Just little things really, I had a fantastic night overall.

Now, I was always going to enjoy this gig. There was no way they would disappoint me, I just knew it. And, white jeans aside, they did not.

I used to go to loads of gigs, mainly when I was a student living in Sheffield, where there were lots and lots of bands playing. I enjoyed most of them a great deal. One or two were a little disappointing, but that’s what comes of seeing bands play live, and I really shouldn’t have been suprised that Evan Dando was totally wasted and couldn’t remember the words to his songs.

Anyway, most gigs I’ve loved. Some bands/performers are good: it’s nice to see them live - there’s a great buzz about it. Some people (Bowie for example) have this awesome stage presence and energy. I’ve been to three gigs where the performers have sounded simply amazing: Lamb, Beth Orton, and now Belle and Sebastian. I generally figure that bands have the noise they make tidied up in the studio so it sounds all pretty for the cd - these guys sounded better live.

Everyone last night was just, well, nice. The band are so talented - everyone seemed to play a selection of instruments and 12 musicians all paying at once could have gone horribly wrong but didn’t, it sounded beautiful. I could have listened to them all night. They have a really broad repertoire, but even the slower songs sound cheerful on the surface, and even the faster, more disco like songs sound fucked up when you listen to the lyrics.

Anyway, go see them if you get the chance.