----- Original Message -----
From: "Tristan Watkins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <313@hyperreal.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 2:19 PM
Subject: SPAM-LOW: (313) Last minute Amp Fiddler action in London tonight
(maybe) guesting for Tortured Soul + Osunlade and Pharell
I can't guarantee the authenticity of the Amp Fiddler claim as it just came
through from a Tortured Soul email and isn't listed on the Neighbourhood
site or myspace page, but I'll be there anyway. Tickets available at Ticket
web
http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user?query=search®ion=xxx&category=misc&search=osunlade
and as of a couple of hours ago also on the door.
Quite an odd night. Really lucky we got tickets because the pay-on-the-door
queue was 100s deep by 8:30 and they didn't start letting people in until
9:00 (when pay on the door prices magically jumped in price... Hmmm). It was
my first time at Neighbourhood. It's got two massive Funktion 1 stacks and
some tinier Funktion 1s scattered beyond the dancefloor. Bacardi crap was
everywhere - on a projector the whole show, drink specials, you name it. It
felt like DEMF in more than one way.
Osunlade was hit and miss. After three jam songs where the saxophonist went
totally spastic (not in a bad way - just a bit overwhelming to kick things
off; oh, and he was way too loud), Osunlade plucked Nadirah Shakoor from the
front of the crowd and they did a three-song medley with 'Tree of Life' in
the middle of it. She's ridiculously cute. Really short with a massive afro.
One helluva voice too. After that it kinda meandered between slow and
mid-tempo jam songs (presumably all from the new album, which I haven't
properly heard yet). Actually there was one track near the end when he
pulled Nadirah Shakoor back on stage and had her join this Parisian woman
who's name I didn't catch. That tune was pretty sweet, and at a nice housey
tempo. To conclude he told us he was going to sit down on stage with the two
ladies and play one last song. It was a cover of Radiohead's 'Everything in
it's right place'. WTF!?!?!!? I'm not sure if he was singing it or not (he
had been singing backing vocals and one duet throughout the show, showing
pretty wide range) but if it was him, his voice really trasformed. That was
completely unexpected... Kinda cool. Reeeeeeeeeeealy weird.
After about 45 minutes Tortured Soul came on with Amp Fiddler on keys. I
can't recall if Tortured Soul is usually a three-piece where two of them
play just bass and drums, but that's what it was last night. The first song
and part of the second were slightly marred by feedback from Amp Fiddler's
Nord Electro through a microphone, which may or may not have explained why
he wasn't singing. One thing I got a huge kick out of was seeing Amp Fiddler
in the Tortured Soul Blues Brothers-style uniform, except he was wearing
black track suit bottoms instead of the usual black slacks. I'll post a
couple of camera phone pics later if anyone wants to see (actually, there
will probably be 19 million online later today, because there were stupid
amounts of very invasive photgraphers on-hand). Anyway... when they finally
got over the sound problems they rocked it. The singing was excellent
throughout, and you could see Amp Fiddler singing along without a mic, just
because he was feeling it. Towards the end he had a massive solo on two
Nords that was seriously sick. He was chopping up these really tight
arpegiated distorted rhodes keys. It was sick, probably the highlight of the
night. They weren't on for long enough.
Then there was about an hour wait on a crowded dancefloor for Pharell. The
crowd (it must be said) by this point had shown how horrible they were
(although for most of the first two acts they'd just been fairly annoying).
So many robots (in the Kool Keith sense), but I guess this is West End
clubbing... 90% of them were definitely there just to see Pharell. This was
fairly excruciating. The DJ pulled out all sorts of Tribe, De La, KRS, Lords
of the Underground (big party hip hop classics) in order to keep the crowd
at bay. There were a number of times it felt like it could kick off, and far
too many people trying to do MTV spring break grinding and genero-dancing on
a dancefloor with no space. Annoying... So when Pharell finally came on and
played a bunch of generic, bland hip hop, with none of the character of his
better work, it was pretty damned disappointing. I certainly wouldn't
recommend him to anyone if he can't pull off something better on a night
like this. We stuck around until he played 'Frontin' (after waiting that
long, we couldn't really leave before it) but it lasted probably less than 2
minutes, as did most of his better tracks. I'm the kinda guy that wants to
hear someone expand on their ideas when they play live, not to hear
sub-radio-edits. Anyway... disappointing end to a once-in-a-lifetime night
with a lot more potential than was delivered (mostly because of the shorter
set times for the first two acts). I'd still make the effort to go catch
Tortured Soul and Osunlade tonight @ Cargo if I hadn't gone tonight,
although the Friday-night Cargo crowd will surely be horrible. I just wish
last night had gone off without the addition of Pharell, because that crowd
on that system could have made for a very special night. Wrecked today. 3:30
bed time is too late for a school night. The sun was coming up as we walked
back from the bus stop.
Tristan
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[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.phonopsia.co.uk
