More of wot I have seen…

Citizen Cope
We have been to a few gigs recently and the first was Citizen Cope at the Scala in London as he promoted is new album, The Rainwater LP.

Driving into town is a challenge that I don’t relish, and it always seems that there is an accident or incident set to hold you up when you need to be somewhere at a particular time that succeeds in raising the blood pressure and stressing me out. Nevertheless I made it and managed to throw some food down my throat before we went in.

The Scala is a great little venue with a mixed past as a cinema and ‘entertainment’ venue. It was well suited for this gig as Cope was performing solo and acoustic.

With an incredible voice and a charmingly rough-but-sensitive quietly strong presence he commanded the space very well. We estimated that majority of the audience must have been American, but there were a mix of youngsters and older folk throughout.

It was one of our favourite gigs so far.


Iron & Wine
One of my favourite American artists, Sam Beam and his country-folk-rock outfit was touring the UK and I saw that they were playing in Liverpool, so I bought tickets. They subsequently added dates in London, but by then it was a done deal, and besides Sue had never been to the ‘pool.

It had been many years since I visited there myself with friends from New Zealand when I first came back to the motherland. It had since been the city of culture that had brought attention and lot of investment to the place.

We were staying in a lovely apartment right on the new dock side development adjacent to the historic Albert Dock. It is long drive up, but we made it in good time arriving at lunch which we took at the docks before walking through the city taking in the sights of the Liver Building before looking in at the Slavery and Maritime Museums.

The gig was at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, a great venue with great acoustics and not too big. But before hand we had a pre-show drink at the Philharmonic Pub across the road, a popular place with fabulous décor (the gents loo attracts a lot of attention) and a couple of snug’s called Brahms and Liszt. I had been here before on my first visit and it had stuck in my mind since then.

The gig was very good and I was impressed enough with the warm-up artist, Daniel Martin Moore, to also buy his album ‘In the Cool of the Day’, a folkie-gospel-country vibe. I also bought the new Iron & Wine album, Kiss Each Other Clean, and was pleased with this too.

The next day we played tourist some more and walked around more of the city, passing by the Cavern Club and then picking up a tour bus to the Beatles’ childhood homes of John and Paul before driving to the spectacular Tudor Speke Hall and back home.

It was a great weekend.


Decemberists
Our next gig was to see the Decemberists at the HMV Apollo at Hammersmith, another American band who are hard to pigeon hole into a category… …rock, alternative, folk, Americana. They are many things to many people, but they are certainly very accomplished and sophisticated musicians. I think the Apollo is a little too big for my tastes and perhaps does not have the best acoustics for this type of music; nevertheless they were popular and put on a great show.

We came in part way through their warm up act as again we had nightmare journeys in, me by car and Sue by train. We had a quick and tasty meal at a nearby Lebanese café and saw the last half of Blind Pilot’s set which we enjoyed.


West Side Story
A different musical event we went to was the local amateur dramatic staging of West Side Story at the Dorking Halls. They made a good job of it but it wasn’t as good as some of the others they have done.