Frank Ryan bought you whiskey in a brothel in Madrid

A belated post about The Pogues gig at Brixton Academy the other week, in the company of Mr Cook and Mr Ward. The three of us last went to a Pogues gig together on St Patrick's Day 1988 - pause here for deep breath and morose reflection on the passage of time etc...



Last year, Graham and I saw the band at Nottingham Arena. Despite having a good night out and enjoying the gig, the venue is terrible, and we decided to skip it this year in favour of the vastly more atmospheric Brixton Academy. Meeting Jim in the Trinity Arms for a lengthy warm up of pints of London Pride, we made our slightly unsteady way to the venue.

There's an inevitable anxiety when waiting for the Pogues to come onstage; will MacGowan be capable? Apparently the Nottingham gig was ropey, largely because of our man being 'excessively refreshed'. Tonight, he was on terrific form (insert the word 'relatively', if of cynical bent), and kept up the pace admirably. Phil Chevron was missed, but MacGowan sang a creditable version of Thousands Are Sailing (albeit with lyric sheet in hand), which is always a highlight of Pogues shows.

Graham made his customary excursion 'down the front', and despite losing a shoe in the ensuing melee, was relieved to have it handed back to him by a considerate fellow reveller.

Twenty years on from that first gig MacGowan is now 50, and although showing an increasingly portly decay, it would be unwise to bet against him being back next year.

Flight of the Conchords

ATP - The Nightmare Before Christmas

This time last week I was at Butlins in Minehead, listening to an Australian experimentalist grind mechanical throbs and drones from a guitar and a laptop. Just the job for blowing away the cobwebs from Saturday night spent skanking to the Jah Shaka Soundsystem til the small hours...

It was a good weekend - Portishead played their first gig for 10 years, the old stuff sounded immaculate, and the new material sounds good, especially the closing krautrocky, repetitive number.

Saw Malcolm Middleton for the fourth time this year, he was terrific, his new stuff also sounds very good.

My main disappointment of the weekend was Julian Cope, I was really looking forward to seeing him, but his set was dreary metal by numbers, just boring.

A Hawk and a Hacksaw were fantastic - at one point they formed a procession through the audience with drum, trumpet, huge football rattle type device...since I had seen them in Nottm the week before, I nipped upstairs to see GZA who was on at the same time. I didn't stay long, the sound was rubbish and it was basically a large man in a track suit shouting unintelligibly (apart from the odd 'Motherfucka!') over background beats.













Aphex Twin played on Saturday and Sunday, starting at 1.30am, which is something of a challenge for old dogs like me, but we made it in time to see the man himself standing in front of a bank of machinery, churning out increasingly frantic techno...

Other bands we saw over the weekend - Seasick Steve, who was just as great as he was at Green Man, Black Mountain, John Cooper Clarke, The Heads (who deafened me) and OM, and doubtless others which I will recall later, a great weekend.
photos by Jim.