'Biddley, diddley dee / Two Ladies...'

Don't you hate it when people push in front of you at gigs? You know, you've found a convenient spot, as close to the stage as you can get, when - a couple of minutes before the headline act comes on - some blaggart pushes their way through the crowd only to stop right in front of where you are. What rotters!

"Hey, we've been standing here for an hour!" the American woman said at the Patti Smith concert at the Roundhouse last Thursday.
"Madam, it’s a gig", I replied, "this is what people do!"
"Well, its not cool" she grumbled.
"You should get out more" I replied.

I know, what a meanie, eh! PM and I shuffled to one side but so that she retained her view of the stage, thereby annoying the person who we were now in front of and who then proceeded to wedge his elbow in my back for the next thirty minutes. Honestly, it’s happened to me enough times over the years and its not as though we're talking seat reservations here! Anyway, as a result of our belated shuffle from the outside terrace to a couple of yards back from the front of the stage, we had a superb view as La Smith went on to deliver an absolute top-notch show. Personally, I've never been much of a fan over the years but I saw her perform as part of a Bertold Brecht tribute at Meltdown in 2005 and she blew me away. This was the first time she'd toured the UK since and so I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see her with her own band first hand. And excellent she was too, from the opening salvo of 'Gloria' through to the frenzied encore of 'Rock and Roll Nigg*r', she delivered a gusto performance as she flitted between tracks from her current album of covers, 'Twelve', and crowd-pleasers from her own back catalogue. She might be sixty and - at times - have the kind of stare that could curdle milk, but she oozes presence.

The previous evening I'd been to see a very different female performer, Lou Rhodes, at the Union Chapel in Islington. Accompanied only by an acoustic guitar and a percussionist, her unique voice - full of yearning and sorrow - sounded sublime in such an intimate surrounding. This was the first gig she'd performed since the death of her sister and so the church setting gave the performance an added resonance as she stood motionless, barefoot and wearing a long green ball gown which seemed three sizes too big for her. As riveting and distinctive as Patti Smith, and as equally distinct from the general milieu as well. Her second album is out in September and, on the strength of the material she played from it, an improvement on her patchy debut.

Dark Side of the Moon

Back in 1980, my friend Nick asked me if I wanted to see Pink Floyd at Earls Court with him. The tour was to promote their most recent double album, ‘The Wall’, a record which had been slagged-off unanimously by the music press as being depressing and self-indulgent: cold, unwelcoming and gloomy. My punk rock credentials still firmly pinned to my chest (although warmly embracing the emerging electronic movement; the following June my synthesizer trio, The Voice of Reason, would play their one and only gig supporting Depeche Mode at the Bridgehouse in Canning Town), I was having no truck with any prog dinosaurs (as they were being labelled even back then), and certainly not ones who thought it was terrific fun to build an entire wall across the front of the stage so that the audience couldn’t see them, let alone go and watch them at such an enormodome. No sirreee! Music is about passion and intimacy; you’re not going to get that watching Pink Floyd at a 16,000 seat venue. I’m off to see The Revillos at the Marquee.

However one’s tastes change with time and whilst I can still excited when listening to late seventies New Wave (as opposed to punk, which was always a hugely limited genre), or indeed still obtain a thrill when hearing the early analogue synths manually played on those first Human League albums, Pink Floyd CDs now sit snugly in my music collection, sandwiched on the shelf in-between The Pine Valley Cosmonauts and Placebo, and those 1980/1981 concerts are now seen as historical gigs, the live recordings of which (released as ‘Is there Anybody Out There?’ in 2000) are documents of fierce performances all round as the off-stage bickering as the group were disintegrating creating a tension and electricity to their performances. Indeed, a superior version of the song cycle to the original release many people’s opinions, including my own.

I mention this because last night I went to see Roger Waters at the very venue I dislike so much, where he was performing – in it’s entirely, gentle reader – ‘Dark Side of the Moon’. How times change, eh? And what a splendid show it was. With the exception of a new unrecorded tirade on George Bush, ‘Leaving Beirut’, Waters ignored twenty years of solo material in order to play nothing but Floyd favourites, including several songs from ‘The Wall’ such as ‘Vera’, ‘In the Flesh?’, ‘Mother’, and, of course, ‘Another Brick’. The lighting was splendid and yes there was an inflatable pig. When it came to playing ‘Dark Side’, a second drum kit was brought on stage as Floyd drummer Nick Mason joined Waters band for the remainder of the evening. Mason’s presence seemed to notch the performance up a gear (and not through his playing which was, as ever, simple and steady), so that by the time they got to ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ with Carol Kenyon recreating the album’s wailing, it was actually – dare I say it – quite magical. Waters is one of most awkward and un-rhythmical bass player I’ve ever watched, but he was beaming throughout the show and the whole band seemed to be enjoying themselves. The evening ended with a lively rendition of ‘Comfortably Numb' in which guitarists Dave Kilminster and Snowy White traded solos whilst Waters grinned at Mason. A splendid evening. However, even with seats reasonably close to the stage (albeit to one side), I felt I was too far away. Lord alone knows why people go to Wembley Stadium to see concerts.