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| Berwick-upon-Tweed - beautiful |
I had a few doubts as John Cleese means so much to me (too much?) and has been known to be a bit rude/bigotted etc. Which I've always defended. I know he's somewhat messed up but geniuses (and I don't mean Apple employees!) often are. I don't care if he's not perfect; I have loved him ever since I was about eight and I can't imagine not loving him. Having said that I also knew that a bad experience with him would be heartbreaking. But I would never know if I didn't go! It was certainly a risk worth taking.
Our arrival in Edinburgh co-incided with the launch of the Fringe programme (one of the best, most exciting times of the year!) so we saw a bit of street performance and R grabbed his programme direct from the shop (mine was delivered on Wednesday as I'm a Friend of the Fringe). We had a nice recce to make sure we knew where the theatre was so nothing could go wrong in the evening. Then we checked in and had a lovely lie down on our hotel bed (I don't know why we both so knackered but it was lush to just relax!)
We went out for a nice meal (luckily, while I was excited I wasn't so bad that I couldn't eat!) and then walked to the Festival Theatre. On the way, I reminisced about crying when I saw James Marsters in 2005. I said that I wouldn't cry when I saw John Cleese.
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| Very excited! |
And...I was wrong! But it was a different sort of crying. With James Marsters it was mad, hyped up gratitude for getting me through a lot of heartbroken teenage stuff (unbeknownst to him, of course!!). With John Cleese, as the sounds of "The Liberty Bell" (the MP'sFC theme) filled the theatre my eyes filled with tears of pride (and perhaps the closest I've ever came to patriotism) as John Cleese strode on stage to raptous, glorious applause: thousands of people, young and old all saying thank you and we love you as one. The applause lasted ages. Then the show started:
The beginning of the show was Cleese's explanation for him touring (which of course we knew as it was called John Cleese's Alimony Tour) and tore into his ex-wife for a while (hilariously and not too savagely!) saying that she hadn't so much as contributed a two-way conversation to the marriage.
Then he began at the beginning of his life and told us about his childhood and the best bits of his career. He used clips (some of which I'd seen; others I hadn't) to punctuate his talk (it was a talk. It was funny and lovely but not stand up) and when he showed his speech at Graham Chapman's funeral I couldn't help crying. I love GC so much. I had a dream once where I magically got to meet him (I was about five or six when he died, Simon Mayo played "Always Look on The Bright Side of Life" - I remember being sad but not really knowing why or who he was.)
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| I snuck a picture at the end so it's not great! But it IS John Cleese!! |
When he spoke about Fawlty Towers he did impressions of the real hotel owner, Mr Sinclair. It was as close to Basil as I'll ever get. Marvellous.
The whole evening was simply lovely. Cleese remembered the Pythons with love and not anger. He sounded like it had been the best time of his life. He gave the audience exactly what they wanted and it was an entirely perfect night. I know that sometimes when your dreams come true it goes a bit wrong and isn't at all how you imagined. This was what I wanted and needed. He is, was and always will be absoutely wonderful. He's still got it.
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| Yay!!! |
The next day we got the train home. This time it was raining. Boo. Anyway, I got home and had a little rest in bed listening to Jon Ronson On...Jon Ronson is great. R got me into him recently and I haven't looked back. Before too long I had to leave and head to what Barry Hyde himself called the most confusing gig in Sunderland ever.
Now, this gig started its life as the Skinny Twins Festival. It was an all-dayer with the following line up: The line-up includes The Stranglers, The Boxer Rebellion, Neville Staple, The Rifles, The Blitz, The Generals, 12 Dirty Bullets, Detroit Social Club, Leatherface, The Beat, and The Sunshine Underground. It was £35 and in Houghton.
At some point it changed its location (to Sunderland's North Shore which is the Uni's Students Union at St.Peter's Campus) and the price dropped to £25 and The Futureheads jumped on board as co-headliners (and most of the line up changed!).
The time was also a confusing issue with tickets saying doors at 3pm, two seperate facebook events (one starting at 7, one at 3!), Hyde and Beast tweeting they were on at 7.45. Eventually (bear in mind this was on the day!!!) we heard doors were at 6pm. We assumed it'd be kicking off around 7pm. It wasn't. We arrived and everyone was in the bar but the partition doors (to make two rooms one big room) hadn't been opened. It was all really loud (old punks and no background music) and I don't think there was a great atomosphere but it may have been partly due to confusion (I really hope no one arrived for 3pm!!). Also we were both really tired from our mini-trip.
Finally (after we'd had a little rest on a bench) they opened the doors and we made our way to the front. There were very few people right at the front (most were up a few stairs and behind some bars) in fact everyone other than the two of us who were occupying the area directly beneath the stage seemed to be die-hard fans of the first band:
Spray On Jeans
Well. Now. The thing is that I don't really know if they were good or not. I think they were all right. They were pretty low-key acoustic-y (four of them on high bar stools, one standing, lots of guitars) and had a couple of songs that were catchy but to be honest I was pretty distracted throughout by one of their fans who would not shut up, stay still or stop filming (not just filming the gig but filming the crowd reaction which as there was barely a crowd and there was not much to react to [it wasn't as if it was a Flaming Lips or Sufjan Stevens kind of atmosphere; people were just standing, listening, maybe nodding their heads, perhaps smiling] and it felt very intrusive having some child (I think he was seventeen-ish) thrusting his phone in our faces.
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| Spray On Jeans - could barely hear the band over the hype! |
I tried to be empathetic and told R that SOJ must be his ONSIND. Everyone has their ONSIND and if they don't then I hope they find it soon. It's exciting to be at a gig when the band playing live right in front of you means so much to you. However, it's pretty selfish to let your extreme excitement ruin someone's chances of falling in love with the band. I don't think this was a band for me to fall in love with but I would've looked on them more favourably if I'd not been hounded by this kid.
He didn't even seem like the sort of fan for this kind of band. The guys on stage were calm, cool and quiet. The fans all seemed like they wanted to shout along (which would suit something heavier) and jump about. It was bizarre. Then the annoying one kept shouting right in our faces 'fucking mint! Look them up on facebook', which, as my friend Cat later pointed out, was really daft as we were seeing the actual band right then. You don't need to tell someone that a band's good or how to find out about them when they're right there!
Next up were the increasingly enjoyable Hyde&Beast who R apparently enjoyed more than the Futureheads!!! Well, I may not agree there but they're certainly great and I'm all ready looking foward to the album release (and also to their set at Split Festival which I'm fairly sure I'll be going to!)
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H&B |
Strangely, towards the end of the set a burlesque dancer with feathers began perfoming in front of the stage (and off to one side). She was on stage properly later on so I will discuss that in just a moment!
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| Katrina Darling |
Barry Hyde introduced the first band, not sure about H&B as I'd popped to the toilet as between sets (shows how brilliantly quick the change over was!) but he was on stage in his beautiful coat a lot sorting stuff out and setting up and whispering (presumably helpful!) things to this very young band (or two-thirds of them) before they began. The band in question were The Blitz. Before the gig I'd looked them up and really enjoyed them. Live they seemed ridiculously different - quieter, less confident, less sure. One of the members was absent but even so, I couldn't believe it was the same band. It wasn't. There appear to be numerous bands called The Blitz; two of which hail from Sunderland.
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| Words of encouragement from Barry Hyde |
These boys were young. Babies! Much younger (I think) than We Beat The System (also good, also returning to Split) and they seemed very nervous. They only played a couple of songs and didn't do any banter. They didn't even seem to say when their set was over they just awkwardly got off stage. I'd like to see/hear more from them. They appear to be doing well and gigging lots in the area. (Actually having listened to a bit of their stuff on MySpace they do seem like they were not at their best on Saturday which makes sense if the entire band weren't even there!)
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| The Blitz |
Next up - The Futureheads! Miraculously, no one had pushed us off our lovely front centre spot by the stage! So I had a perfect view of the boys. It was great to see them but the sound sounded a little off at first. I'm not sure that it's a great venue but still The Futureheads are great! They started off with "The Chaos" and "The Connector" then played some of the earlier stuff: "Man Ray", "First Day" "Robot", "Decent Days And Nights", "Meantime" and of course "Hounds of Love". They also played "Skip To The End" (as Barry Hyde describes it 'the bouncy bounce song'), "Heartbeat Song" (in which Barry beat his chest to make his voice go all viverberate-y, it was amazing) and "Beginning of the Twist". As I've written them all down, it seems like loads but at the time it appeared to be over in a split second!
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| I especially love their 'Chaos'-y drum! |
Barry Hyde and Sunderland
Barry said some very interesting stuff in the middle of the set. It relates to a lot of stuff that I think too. He was talking about how people say that there's never anything happening in Sunderland and that it's bullshit. Firstly, I will say that I don't actually live in Sunderland. I live in Washington which is in the borough of Sunderland but was once in County Durham and often aligns itself more with Newcastle. (Football team preferences are pretty split here too. Not that I care!) So all of my observations come from being not quite in the place but sort of there. (And especially from working with people from Sunderland.)
First of all, I don't think it's helpful or healthy to moan about how Sunderland is a badly done to place. Comparing it to Newcastle will not help anyone. People will say how Sunderland is bigger (it is) and so should have more of the amenites and opportunites that has made Newcastle more affluent. But I think the comparisons are never going to change things. Newcastle is a city I truly love. Sunderland only became a city when I was a child (I remember going to watch a big show with the Brownies that celebrated its new status) so it can't really compete! So rather than complaining about how shoddily the city is treated people should do the following:
1. Find out what's happening and bother to go! Baz is right. It's bullshit that there's nothing going on in Sunderland. The Sunderland Empire shows huge musicals. If you want to see a play there's the Royalty (amateur, sure but they're really good!). Now that comedy is back in vogue there's a lot of it everywhere (in pubs, in the theatre, you just need to look online. Google 'grinning idiot'), there's art in Sunderland too (I don't often find time to visit the art galleries there but they exist!) and of course there's a lot of gigs going on!
2. If you want to do something and it doesn't appear to be happening make it happen!! Put on your own shows.
3. Instead of bitching that the show/gig/play/whatever you so want to do is in Newcastle and not Sunderland, just jump on a bus or a metro! I'm always willing to travel for gigs (to London, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, wherever!) but I understand that it's expensive to arrange trains and hotels to travel that far away. But if you live in Sunderland or Washington it's extremely easy to get to Newcastle, Durham, Gateshead (for the Sage and the Baltic).
A brief note on Take That - so many people went to see Take That at the Stadium of Light recently. More people than even like TT! The reasons seemed to be twofold: one, it was on the doorstep and two, they'd 'put on a good show'. If I had to hear one more person say that to me I would've screamed. Where Lady Gaga's theatricality is an intrinsic part of who she is, TT seem to have just made that a part of their set as they are not good enough alone. I'd much rather see a brilliant band in a cupboard than see TT with whatever elephant/robot spectacular they may have to disguise their blandness. I don't think that proximity should ever trump talent or passion when deciding what to see!
Oops, got a bit sidetracked! The point is that Barry Hyde doesn't just make amazing music. He makes things happen. (I really admire ONSIND's Nathan for this too. He is responsible for so much of what's going on in Durham.)
After the Futureheads' set there was a very large gap where nothing happened. This is always disappointing at gigs. Before the final band of the night came on, Katrina Darling returned to dance to "God Save The Queen". It began as the actual National Anthem but turned into the Sex Pistols classic. She was dressed vaguely as the Queen. (It was only later I discovered she is Kate Middleton's cousin! Bizarre.)
I mentioned this burlesque bit to Tim at work who informed me that it's a usual occurence at rock shows these days. Is it? I've never encountered it before. But then I wouldn't at the lovely sort of gigs I go to! Now, I don't really want to get into a big burlesque discussion. Some might say that it's just stripping (and she did stip to almost nothing at all), others claim it's empowering. Well, Katrina looked like she was in control and happy, but I'm not a fan really. And one thing I would say is that perhaps burlesque should be kept for burlesque shows: it kind of jarred with the rest of the night and because no one there had paid to see burlesque I don't think they/we knew what the rules were. I took pictures (because I take pictures of everything) but I stopped when she got to a certain point. It felt intrusive. (I'm not sure that you would've been able to take pictures/video at a proper burlesque show!) Like I say, K herself seemed more than happy to take her clothes off for the drunk old punks but I felt a bit uncomfortable.
Eventually The Stanglers came on stage!! We left before the end but we did see them do "Get A Grip On Yourself", "Peaches", "Golden Brown", "Always The Sun" and a few I didn't rememeber from my lovely childhood where we listened to cool compilation tapes in the car on the way to picnics; so I associate The Smiths, The Jam, The Clash, The Stanglers etc with fleeing up and down the Northumberland countryside. Lush. (Once when I was seven I had the use the word 'cure' in a sentence in school so I wrote 'The Cure is a band', my Year Two teacher responded with '?' in red pen!)
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| A not great picture of The Stanglers; we were well back by then. The old people had got pretty rowdy! |
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