Sunday 30 September 2007

King Creosote / Emma Pollock

Excellent gig tonight, well I guess it was last night now going by what time it's telling me it is. I do like the Queen's Hall as a venue, like everywhere in Edinburgh it should really have more bands on, but that's a story for another occasion.

Emma Pollock is so much better with a band, I've seen her a couple of times each solo and accompanied and her songs sound a whole lot better accompanied, fleshed out, fuller, warmer and her set, albeit only six songs, was delightful. I've had a wee rant about KC and his band on these pages before, but he really was terrific - focused, rocky (Pictish Trail especially seemed to enjoy wigging out on Twin Tub Twin), gnarled and, at times, quite, quite lovely.

Here's a couple of pictures. The full set can be viewed on my Flickr page. Some are a bit blurry, apologies for that.

Emma Pollock 02

Emma Pollock 09

King Creosote 05

King Creosote 14

Pictish Trail 07

Wednesday 19 September 2007

Chris's World Tour Of England

OK, so here's the deal. I have some time off in October, there's a league football-free weekend to be taken advantage off, I thought I'd do that and go on my travels once more. I'll be basing myself in London, but will be taking in a couple of other towns too, here's what the rough itinerary is looking like at the moment:

Updated plan -

Thurs 11 Oct - leave Edinburgh, arrive London. Set up shop in the Jerusalem Tavern in Farringdon and await folk turning up;

Fri 12 Oct - train up to Nottingham, meet up with folk and go to indie club;

Sat 13 Oct - back to London. On a train at 10.30am. Ouch. Train down to Brighton, likely to arrive around 2ish. Meet up with Jenny, possibly James if Bradford aren't in the Super League Grand Final and hopefully Tom and Reb if they're around;

Sun 14 Oct - Either a train back from Brighton or, if I came back the previous night, probably a lazy day before going to see Mark Eitzel at the Luminaire in Kilburn;

Mon 15 Oct - lunch with Kelly somewhere near Angel tube before getting the train back up the road.

Sound good? Who's in?

"You wouldn't say zotland would you?"

No, but I do pronounce it "coz-la". It's just the way of the accent. So there.

Kelly was in the house this past weekend. As always, it was great to see her and hang out with her for a couple of days. We met up on Friday after her conference and went for tea at the Mosque Kitchen. It had been a whole five days since I was at the Mosque, I had missed their veggies/rice/daal combination that much. If you're ever in Edinburgh, head for the Mosque and a cheap curry for your tea, you won't be disappointed.

John joined us and after a couple of drinks at Black Bo's we headed to the Bongo Club to see Rachel Unthank and the Winterset. I had caught them at Green Man, but as I was sitting at the back of the field, they didn't really register with me all that much so I thought it was only fair to see them from a better distance and without the threat of rain in the air. And I really enjoyed them, warm, homely, folk tunes, both Rachel and sister Becky are natural presences onstage and their cover of Robert Wyatt's Sea Song was quite, quite brilliant. We met up with my work pal Sean afterwards and after some good drink and good chat, got a cab back down the road.

Kelly, for some bizarre reason, foregoed (is that a word? Fuck it, it is now) a trip to the Fife Riviera to see the Rovers on Saturday ("that's just weird" opined FitbaJohn quite correctly), preferring to spend her time at Camera Obscura before putting in an afternoon of shopping. In hindsight, perhaps I should have joined her as the Rovers put up a listless performance against Ross County losing 2-0. I hotfooted it out the ground in order to get back to Waverley Station for 6pm and to meet up with K and the visiting Pamela from Glasgow. Pamela took one look at me and said I looked "scunnered". It's fair to say that the events of the afternoon left me in such a mood. However, that was soon put to one side as the three of us spent a delightful few hours in each other's company. It was particularly nice to see P once more, it's been a while what with one reason and another. There's nothing I like more than an evening like that, just hanging out with great folks and chatting away. P had to get back to Glasgow so K and me got back to the flat at a rock n roll hour of 10.30pm.

K's train on Sunday was just before midday so I got her up to the station and made sure she didn't get lost in Waverley. Having got to the right platform, we said goodbye and as is usually the case the time had gone by too quickly. Good friends are always something I want to be a big part of my life and it can be difficult when mine are spread around the country like they are. I think of them all a great deal and how I wish we could be a little closer geographically but I know it's not to be. However, it seems to work and I know I'll see folk at regular intervals during the year.

The rest of the week has been spent mostly at work and then on the couch catching up with TV after a long day. Lucky Luke are playing in Glasgow tomorrow night at Radar Mark's Drunk At The Pulpit club night. If it was tonight, I wouldn't have been there having put in nearly 8 and a half hours of solid achievement today and left in a bit of a daze after a busy afternoon. I'll see how I'm feeling tomorrow and whether I'll make it along the M8. I'd like to for Mark and to see the great Lucky Luke once more. We'll see though.

Monday 10 September 2007

T'Weekend

It was a funny old weekend. My sleeping patterns recently have been, for want of a better word, fucked. There have been nights where I've pretty much seen every hour on the clock at some point or where I've taken a couple of hours to finally drift off. Thursday night was particularly bad for the former, by around mid afternoon on Friday I was somehow getting by, almost running on fumes. The right thing to do of course would have been to get in from work and not lie on my bed and have a nap for an hour and a half. Oops...

So I did nowt much else on Friday night. Saturday was one of those league football-free days because of the Scotland game, because of the afore-mentioned fucked sleepness, I didn't get much done that day either, preferring to laze about on the couch with sport on the telly and I really didn't have the energy to do anything but that. And it's frustrating as I don't know what's keeping me awake (here's where Kelly will chastise me for drinking too much diet coke at nights! It's not that...) - the obvious question to ask is "are there things on your mind?" And the answer is "nothing more than normal". I think back to the night I got back from Green Man and the, frankly, magnificent 12+ hour sleep I had that time. Riches indeed... Maybe camping in the rain in the Welsh countryside surrounded by bongo-playing fuckwits for 4 days and nights is the way to a good night's sleep? Answers on a postcard...

You'll see below I managed to get out of the house to see Devon Sproule and Charlie Parr (and Chris Garneau, who, it's fair to say, was a bit lacking in the old dynamics department) last night and it was good to see John and hear the tales of his trip to London and Brighton. You know it's not a good sign that the gig promoters are expecting a crowd when you walk into a usually all-standing venue and see tables and chairs laid out on the floor, which was a shame as those absent missed a good night. As I said earlier, Charlie Parr was the star of the evening, haggard and grizzled, maybe not your complete blues guy archetype at times but with songs of real quality. I was pleased that the photos I took turned out they way they did. My previous camera was pretty hopeless when it came to gigs so it's nice to have one that appears able to do a job in lower light while also avoiding using the flash. I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I know I always enjoyed taking photos of bands (the best one of which was a picture of James Canty of the Make-Up at King Tuts, I managed to capture his pretty intense facial expression quite well. Alas, I think it's gone, swept away in a left behind box in the parentals' clear out when they moved house earlier this year).

I digress slightly. Tonight I hope to sleep, and every night for the foreseeable future. Kelly arrives on Thursday night for a visit from London and is staying over from Friday (note to self: do the bloody washing up, and move those CDs from the living room floor, and hoover the rug. Hmm, can ye no just stay a couple of more nights in yer hotel K? No? Oh well...), the weekend appears to be taking shape, just need to get the Saturday night plans sorted after I return from another hopefully fruitful excursion, 3 points safely secured for the Rovers, to the Fife Riviera. But yeah, please let me sleep, I think I could do with it...

Devon Sproule + Charlie Parr, Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh

Went to see Devon Sproule and Charlie Parr at Cabaret Voltaire last night. Good gig, Charlie Parr was excellent, proper old school blues and unaccompanied on guitar, something I know you know I like! Devon Sproule was OK, I preferred her solo stuff, when she was joined by her band they made it all a bit soft jazz/easy listening/Radio 2 ish. But, her voice was lovely and she was an engaging and kooky character.

Thanks to my new camera and its gig-friendly setting of "natural light", I managed to get some photos to turn out OK. Here is one of Mr Parr and one of Ms Sproule -

Charlie Parr (5)

Devon Sproule (4)

You can find the rest at - http://www.flickr.com/photos/chris_ps/

Thursday 6 September 2007

I Was The King, I Really Was The King...

Sometimes I wish people should really take a different path than the one they're currently on. For the second time tonight, I'm listening to the Radio Scotland programme Thank You For The Music featuring King Creosote in conversation with Janice Forsyth and playing songs unaccompanied on the accordion and guitar and it's absolutely brilliant.

KC, I wish you would give up the clunky live band and sing these songs on your own, they're full of depth, honesty and beauty and they kinda get lost in the big arrangements and when they're totally stripped down like they are in this programme then they sound so much more powerful. The version of Snakes From Single Socks he plays (about 34 minutes in) is up there with the one I saw him play at his "secret" request gig in Edinburgh last year (he's just said in the programme that he wants to have songs "bedded in truth", would they be more truthful if they were completely bare?). Anyway, you can hear the programme yourself by clicking on the link below, scrolling down to Thursday and clicking on "Thank You for the Music" -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/radioscotland/programmes/features/

His new LP is out on Monday, I know I'm going to buy it, there's a song on it called Leslie, which I found out is the song he opened his set at the Green Man festival last year and I remember it blowing me away, pure simplicity, him and his accordion. That set I remember really enjoying, I had never seen him live before, solo or otherwise, and it was great seeing him have so much fun. I mentioned the secret solo gig last year and that was extraordinary, those glorious, gorgeous tunes completely and utterly played from the heart, it was hard not to get a lump in your throat as he strained in the voice at certain points.

But, I know why he does what he does now and there's enough quality in what he does to draw me in, I probably shouldn't like the new single but it's quite a lovely little pop song and I'm sometimes a sucker for lovely little pop songs. (don't worry, I go and listen to Melt Banana or Slayer right afterwards to get that balance back...) I'll probably buy a ticket to see him at the Queen's Hall later this month, I left his set at this year's Green Man early to go and see Bill Callahan on the main stage, mainly cos I was annoyed at the lumpy version of Not One Bit Ashamed he and his band did, but it could have been an off-night. I'll go in hope that he strips it down completely, but I know that's unlikely to happen so I know I'll just enjoy those songs for what they are. He's not perfect, he does have his flaws, but that makes him all the more rounded and real and true.

Monday 3 September 2007

Luxe & Reduxe?

Hello. I kinda ran out of steam with the last blog and couldn't get it together to post regularly so I thought I'd try again in a new place, to which you've hopefully arrived.

The "ps" part of the title is pretty self-evident, I'll take those initials where ever I go and those go back over 10 years to when I had my fanzine on the go. The "reduxe"? Well, Dictionary.com tells me that "redux" means "brought back; resurgent", I guess the former of that is true, whether the latter is remains to be seen! The "e" is a little nod to the re-issue of Slanted and Enchanted, but I guess you may have picked up on that already.

So what's new? Nothing much I guess, I'd like to get writing again, it'll give me something to focus on and while I'm not pretending that you'll find anything particularly earth-shattering or ground-breaking on these here pages you will at least find what it's like to be me.

Some things you'll need to know. You'll pick up other things as we go

32 years old;
I live in Edinburgh in my cosy one bedroom flat in the east end of the city;
I quite like Raith Rovers FC;
And Yo La Tengo;
I really need to get the washing up done;
No, I really do!

Until the next time, which it will be soon! Happy reading.