GIG NUMBER ONE HUNDRED
Who
We spent the day itself in The National Gallery. The sunburn had gone to my head and I didn't feel like doing much in the afternoon beyond staying out of the heat, and we went over to Tower Hill just before the rush hour. We contemplated going to The Dickens Inn at St Katherine’s Dock for tea but it was as expensive as it was considered famous. Nice area though. So back we went to Wetherspoons for yet another cheap but satisfying meal, although I was foolish enough to try a pink cocktail which was not quite the refreshing beverage I'd anticipated. Doors were opening at 6:30pm and we'd already scoped out the site. We found that the stage was set down in the moat (rather than within the tower) and wasn't the scaffolding structure that had confused us from a distance. We walked past the site at probably the prime time, as Damon and Co were onstage preparing to soundcheck! The pavement was sealed off for the main show to stop peasants seeing it for free but we hit the jackpot here, and got to watch Damon's perfectionism in play. He was already in his full suit and we stayed for two (out of three) songs which he wasn't happy with, at one point walking out onto the grass to get to see the band as the audience would be seeing them later. Seeing this sneak preview helped to get us in the mood and, if it wasn't for the sun radiating down on me, we'd had stuck around longer. We decided to descend the stairs into the moat around 7ish to get into the action, but there was one more surprise first. A random guy shouted "Dennis!" and I looked around to see (wait for it) DENNIS HOPPER just standing there wearing sunglasses with a friend. All I could do was gasp his name and point, thinking that there was no point speaking to him as I didn't have a pen to get his autograph. An hour or so later, the obvious idea of getting a picture taken finally entered our minds but it was now much too late. I do wonder if he'd had obliged, but unfortunately I will never get another chance to obtain the greatest photo ever. Considering he was on the Demon Days album it probably isn't too surprising for him to be here, although he didn't perform for the Manchester Gorillaz tour, and I can only salute the star of such classics as Apocalypse Now, Super Mario Bros, Land Of The Dead and Apocalypse Now!
I tore myself away to enter the venue (or should I say moat?) down the one set of stairs that had been set up. I had been hoping for some nice souvenir tickets for such a special gig but it was just the standard ticketmaster cardboard ones. We walked past the portaloos, VIP bar and round the corner towards the stage. There were a lot of red seats right at the back for those foolish enough to have purchased seated tickets, and the whole place seemed to be nicely kitted out, with a cover over the front of the stage to shelter us from the rain which had started up. Already I believe a random rapper was on the stage (presumably K'Naan) and he has practically slipped from my mind. But I remember my reaction was negative - Damon Albarn is obsessed with black music and this was the kind of unlistenable mediocrity that I'd expected. However, the surroundings were nice and it was great to be sheltered, so we just sat down and tried to block him out. Harry Enfield then took to the stage to greet us and we then had some more pointless support from Hypnotic Brass, who just got repetitive with brass and I believe made some efforts at crowd participation. I can't feign any interest though and details again elude me, although some people seemed to almost enjoy it. Much more memorable was when a Beefeater took to the stage. He firstly pointed out that he is a Yeomen Warder, the Beefeater title being outdated. We were then treated to a light-hearted and informative speech about what the Yeoman Warders do. We learned that they have recently made their first female appointment, have no idea where the word Beefeater comes from, they live in The Tower Of London and you can only apply to become a "Beefeater" after 22 years of military service. It was amusing that an educational chat could be so much more entertaining than the first two support bands, and made me want to visit The Tower Of London properly. I wonder if it will happen though, as continually putting off our trip to The Tower is one of our ongoing jokes, and tonight was the closest I'd ever come to visiting.
Harry Enfield then took to the stage for what turned out to be his main stint (apparently he'd run out of time for later). I've never been a fan but in his 5/10 minutes he proved quite amusing in a shambolic way. His utter lack of preparation was obvious. The main topic was pointless benefit concerts, observing that he no longer worried about his carbon emissions as Bono had now solved global warming, as well as making poverty history. The "centrepiece" though was in deciding that the point of the Diana Tribute Concert had been to bring her back to life, that they'd succeeded and that she was here tonight! He then produced a box, pointed out she'd been cremated and went into a bizarre ventriloquist act. He asked Diana what was her favourite Good, The Bad & The Queen song, the answer being The History Song, and got her to sing a bit! It was no doubt in terrible taste but this was an open-minded crowd that hadn't even booed the two previous supports, so everybody laughed and Enfield had enough charisma to get away with it. The rain was starting to pour now and therefore everyone was trying to cram into the small covered part we were in. We thought we saw Dennis Hopper hanging around stage right but couldn't confirm, so decided to concentrate on the final support act as John Cooper Clark took to the stage. He appeared to be a skinny Jarvis look-alike and it soon became apparent that he was a "punk poet" rather than a musician, as he riffled through his notebook to treat us to some disjointed snippets of amusing poetry. I'd had preferred some more Harry Enfield but this certainly beat another mediocre band, and the time was passing by rather nicely. Clark spent half his set talking up to a punch line, then lost his thread and started talking about something else. It showed how little most of us were following him that it took a good few minutes for someone to heckle that he'd forgot to finish the joke! He also told a poem/rhyme about Lydia with chlamydia, and revealed the three advantages of Alzheimer's - (1) you can hide your own presents, (2) you meet new people every day and (3) you can hide your own presents! The other one I remember is his attempt at a haiku (something along the lines of "trying to sum up how you feel in seventeen syllables is very diffic!) He also taunted Damon Albarn fans, declaring us all to be marine biologists. The time whiled away very nicely, and the second he finished, Harry Enfield rushed up to introduce The Good, The Bad & The Queen - clearly they were running to a tight schedule!
The whole crowd randomly surged forwards but no moshpit followed - it just wasn't that kind of show. I looked around and saw that it didn't seem to be anywhere near sold out. Not quite sure why, as London is a big place and I'd had thought so many potential Damon Albarn fans would have sold it out in weeks. Maybe I overestimate his personal popularity. Although achieving wild success in Gorillaz, he maintained such a degree of anonymity that he has earned almost no knock-on effect to boost interest in his other projects. Even the last Blur album wasn't particularly successful. I've noticed that Damon favours a very structured performance. With Blur, he has performed the entire 13 album and played all the singles in chronological order despite his dislike of some of them. With Gorillaz I saw him play the whole of Demon Days. I had little doubt tonight that he would play the entire album from start to finish and was proved correct. The band were wearing the expected suits and had a nice industrial backdrop with bunting. The sun was now going down and umbrellas were out - the rain wasn't continual, but it made the morons sitting down at the back look even sillier, as they could have got into the standing area with no fuss and been much more sheltered. There's not too much to say about the gig. The very structured setlist and technical proficiency required didn't leave much room for spontaneity. The drummer and the guy from The Verve just faded into the background, as did most of the other musicians who appeared - at one point there was a small choir. Paul from The Clash was quite interesting, stalking the stage with the confidence that being in a legendary band can bring. All the songs fitted the atmosphere nicely: History Song, 80's Life and Northern Whale were all lovely openers. I'd had thought Kingdom Of Doom would be the one to get everyone going but the atmosphere continued to be much too chilled-out for any real movement. The only thing I didn't like was that the lights coming from the stage were too intrusive. Otherwise it was all rather nice. The album didn't gain quite the new lease of life I'd wished for, but that comes down to the inevitable lack of spontaneity again. The Bunting Song was especially nice, and the way Damon emphasised the word "country" made me wish for a certain celebratory Blur song. However, Damon keeps his different projects separate and there was no chance of this tonight.
Green Fields was nice and everything but was mainly a sign that the epic The Good The Bad & The Queen wasn't far off. Damon acknowledged with a flick of the wrist that he was playing The Tower Of London before starting that lovely introduction. The song finished with an energetic bit of jamming and was with little doubt the best tune of the evening, which I'd pretty much expected. As this was a special occasion, I was hoping for a celebratory cover version to round things off. But perhaps the event of the day now followed as Harry Enfield returned, asking us if we'd like to see an execution. We screamed yes and then recently departed Prime Minister Tony Blair was dragged up (or it may have been a guy in a mask?), thrust against the block and decapitated with an inflatable axe! The head was then thrown into the crowd and flung around, but the thought of having to carry it back through the underground system put me off the idea of keeping it, and the fact it continued to be thrown about for quite a while indicates that others were thinking the same thing! I barely even noticed the band returning for Back In The Day, an instrumental which was dragged out forever. Definitely a sensible move to play a jam as we were more interested in the decapitated head than the music at this moment. Polling Day would have been a good b-side to fit in but it was Mr Whippy, with guest rapper Eslam Jawaad Auteru from Syria, which closed out the show. It was nice to see the set finishing in a randomised, slightly anarchic manner, even if the macho attitude of Eslam was annoying - we don't know who you are, so don't act like you're the star of the show - ego like that makes you a dick! It was now around the curfew of 10:30pm so we all made our way out, which took quite a long time as there was only one set of stairs. This was my first of three visits to London for top-flight gigs and I had little doubt it will go down as the weakest. But it was still a good evening, making me wonder whether there is enough mileage in The Good, The Bad & The Queen for a second album. The first one seemed to be such a perfectly concise piece of work I just can't see where they can go from it, or even if they should attempt to follow it up. They may not be a patch on Blur or Gorillaz but there was still much to admire. Moving on, this night was intended to be the first part of a great week of live music, thanks to the aforementioned FREE Godiva festival. I was severely sunburned, exhausted and bankrupted but would not let anything like that put me off going - I'd even booked two days extra off work especially for it. I was therefore supremely fucked off to be skanked at the last minute by my friends, with a combination of justifiable illness and an utterly inexcusable change of mind preventing me from going. I may love the SFA, but I could never go to a festival by myself. However, this had been such a great week up to that point which sweetened the blow, and the fact that I had genuine reasons to not go to the festival myself (yet I'm not the one who pulled out and would have persevered and HONOURED my commitment, as always!) stop me from being even more angry. Not going to a festival is one thing, but not going to a FREE festival with SFA and The Cribs is disgusting. Thankfully though, I had got a somewhat enviable run of shows in the second half of the year to more than make up for it!
Mark: 8.0/10
The Good, The Bad & The Queen
Support
John Cooper Clark
Hypnotic Brass
K'Naan
Where
The Tower Of London
When
9th July 2007
Price
£32.50
Who with
Matt
Position
Towards the front
Comments
Almost ten years after my first concert, I finally reached the magical figure of one hundred gigs. I was determined to hit this milestone in a respectable manner, but it wasn't easy. Some so-so gigs such as Nine Black Alps were rejected purely because they were not worthy of being number 100. Most strangely though, Beyonce Knowles of all people almost pipped The Good, The Bad & The Queen to the title, when my idiotic brother had won a competition for two tickets, failing to check if anybody wanted to see her before entering for it, and not even wanting to go himself! As I did not find out about it until the very evening, getting somebody to come along was impossible, and I sure wasn't going to go by myself, so £110 worth of Beyonce tickets just ended up as a very expensive poster. Hence my respectability remained intact, although I'll never forgive the utter waste of two tickets which, with a little bit of advance warning, could have been sold on for a tidy profit! I'd got tickets for The Good, The Bad & The Queen months in advance, incorporating it into a nice weekend to London to be followed by the Godiva Festival in Coventry, hosting Super Furry Animals and The Cribs for FREE! More on that story later. I heard the album over and over but it never came across as amazing. This was more about seeing an entirely pleasant show in great surroundings, it being undoubtedly the pivotal show in the career of Damon's side-project and my first-ever outdoor gig. It was unusual that the band had been allowed to play The Tower Of London, as their name is clearly implying that the Queen is ugly and is somewhat anti-monarchist. Perhaps an imaginative explanation of the title from Damon to the authorities led to the show being allowed to go ahead? The whole weekend was, barring some intense sunburn, a great success. I went to check out Wimbledon with no expectation of actually going and, not only succeeded in getting in very quickly, but got to see Jamie Murray win the mixed doubles quarter finals - he would later win the final and become the first British winner in 20 years. I also scaled the dome of St Paul’s, explored the HMS Belfast, was overwhelmed by the size of The National Gallery (featuring works by all four of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), underwhelmed by the mediocrity of the Tate Modern and paid a visit to the indie hangout pub The Hawley Arms in Camden. I also checked out the Star Wars Exhibition, had my photo taken with many of the major characters and had to jump out of the way of a terrifying Darth Vader! Considering this was my eighth trip to London I had a ridiculously enjoyable, and also staggeringly expensive, time. Due to the terrorism scares at the time I'd half expected something bad to happen, making an incident-free trip an even sweeter pleasure.
Setlist
History Song
80's Life
Northern Whale
Kingdom Of Doom
Herculean
Behind The Sun
The Bunting Song
Nature Springs
Soldier's Tale
Three Changes
Green Fields
The Good, The Bad & The Queen
Back In The Day
Mr Whippy
