Occasionally I get frustrating days like Monday (with due respect to my son's fledgling clarinet playing), scuppered by cancelled gigs and phantom venues, when enthusiasm for the project temporarily droops. More often, however, I get good days like today.
My plans fluctuated. I decided quite late to check out Acoustic Suicide at The Glad in Borough. We, myself and my Mum still over from Toronto, went to the nearby Royal Oak pub first and bumped into Graham, the chap who kindly sang a couple of risque folk songs in The Hand and Shears two days before Christmas. He told me that he occasionally sings here too, often with his concertina. In fact earlier, when the bar staff saw him walk in, they asked if he was playing tonight. He said he wasn't. "How about Wednesday?" they asked. "Okay", he said, "See you then."
The Glad was unexpectedly packed. So little spare space did there seem to be that I initially wondered whether there was in fact any music on tonight. A couple of mic stands at the back of the pub...more a largish room...reassuringly poked out above the sea of heads. Ultimately we managed to secure a couple of stools in front of...well, The Glad doesn't have a stage. It has a section of floor along one side of the room cleared for music. As a result, on a busy night like tonight, the audience stands nose-to-nose with the musicians, or in the case of the first artist, seated guitarist Jess Bryant, nose-to-belly. Jess told us that she'd had no sleep. There wasn't much chance of her catching forty winks right now. Quite apart from the fact that she was performing, there was a crowd circled tight around her, ready to give her a nudge in the ribs at any sign of droopy eyelids. When she played, the hushed and reverential mood created by her dark, fragile music (and the compere's request that everyone be quiet) was given further intensity by the arc of straight-faced, pint-holding men standing within pouring-on-head distance of her. The warm applause between songs, however, suggested that their serious mood was more a result of appreciative contemplation, and a certain amount of self-consciousness, rather than an aversion to sleepy young folk singers wearing black dresses lined with a white lace collars.
Jess completed her set of rather beautiful and hypnotic songs and should have gone home to bed, but didn't. She stayed with the rest of the packed house and soon we found out why they were all there. The man announced the next act, "Coming up next, and I expect the reason why most of you are here, Viv Albertine!" "Aha," I thought, "That name rings a bell...wasn't she the guitarist in The Slits?"
The Slits were the premier female punk group (veering towards punk-reggae) from the original punk era, though by the time their fabulous first album "Cut" was released in 1979, New Wave had set in. The band have recently re-formed around two of the original members and, amongst others, the daughter of The Sex Pistols' drummer. Viv, having picked up the guitar again for the first time in twenty-five years (though presumably during that time she picked it up when it had been left lying at the bottom the stairs) played two gigs with the reformed band, but decided going back wasn't the way forward, so she wished them all the best and decided to re-commence her musical career under her own name.
So, for an old punk-head like me, what an unexpected treat. We were due to go our separate ways after the first act, but I had to stay for at least a few songs and so subsequently did my Mum, which gave her the chance to commend Jess on her white lace collar.
I need to catch up on other posts, so I'll just finish by saying that Viv looked fabulous, the three songs we were able to stay for were angular, tight and catchy (and funny, said me Mum) and she, her bassist and her drummer sounded great. And I'll try to catch a full set some time after April 18th...or 19th...or whenever this ends.
Oh, one more thing. Andy Hankdog, proprieter and performer of Easycome in Nunhead was there. He had his guitar with him and told me he was on the way to The Betsey Trotwood's evening of music. That was were I was originally going to go before plans were changed. My musical world is getting smaller.
Syd Arthur (three-quarters of whom appear in this murky photo -they're a band, not a person) and The Boot Lagoon at The Gladstone in Borough.
