What a fantastic day out, I’ll never forget it. As the gig was happening ‘on my manor’ so to speak, I made it a big day out. An espresso at The Eagle on City Road, then a wander past Tabernacle Street and on through Great Eastern Street, Holywell Lane, Commercial Street and eventually on to Commercial Road.
It was really good to catch-up at The Queen’s Head too with Gem, Fons, Brigid, Tapio, Brian, Paul, Pippa and Phil among others – I really hope there are more days like this to come.
We lighted out for The Troxy under a blazing sunset – a good sign, the end of a perfect day and the evening had yet to begin. A few of us had heard the Mirrors album and thought it was better to remain in the pub and skip the performance, which from most accounts, was a wise decision. I caught the tail-end of Mirrors, and…well…maybe I’m just old enough to know where their bodies are buried, where their moves were studied, where their lines were copied. It left me cold with a sense that I’d been there before, such is their perfect identi-kit synth pop. The Pepsi challenge to end all Pepsi challenges.
The Troxy is a beautiful Art-Deco venue – the detail, the architecture, the paintwork etc all beautifully restored. All wonderful; even the very modern neon is subtle and follows the original elegant lines and curves of the place. The only oddities were; facing the stage, you had a nice long well-designed bar to the left and to the right a sort of trestle-table frenzy of drinks and food. At the back was even stranger – large circular tables with Numanoids looking as if they’d been left stranded in Pontins or a wedding reception styled by Tamara de Lempicka.
At last! The lights go down and Foxx arrives to a large welcome and kicks off with Shatterproof. There’s something immediately noticeably different (in comparison to The Roundhouse) from the start, and at first it’s hard to put your finger on it. Yes, immediately, it feels much more dynamic and BIG – but the sound-system at The Troxy is much better than The Roundhouse, and hearing all those analogue synths with a fantastic sound system does have it’s own shock and awe quality to it.
BUT there’s something else. And it only really dawned on me after the seriously bass’d-up über-boom of Burning Car – it’s Foxx. Well, obviously it’s Foxx, I mean – it’s his gig, but, well – this time it’s über-Foxx. His vocal performance tonight is electric. There’s a lot less FX processing (for much of the performance there doesn’t seem to be any at all) on his vocals and he’s all the better for it! And shapes! The man is throwing shapes, his voice is soaring – he’s really enjoying himself. And all played out to a backdrop of some wonderful projections by Johnathan Barnbrook, most notably The Running Man, where a blistering live performance is played out beneath 1960s cold-war Berlin with the Running Man Leslie Charteris-ing his way across the danger zones through the tunnels of Bernauer Straße.
And it continued. It’s hard to single out a highlight amongst a tightly packed and highly charged performance from Foxx and the Maths because it was all so good. All of it. Flicking through the memories, stand-outs for me; were Burning Car, The Running Man and Underpass but I couldn’t tell you why.
Robin Simon arrives, bringing with him a stellar performance with Dislocation, The Quiet Men, Walk Away, The Man Who Dies Every Day, Hiroshima Mon Amour, and Slow Motion. The Quiet Men was just perfect, but then so was Walk Away – Simon delivering that ‘hairs on the back of your neck’ solo that we all love. Hiroshima Mon Amour came in to its own with another fantastic solo by Simon and it all finishes too soon with Slow Motion. Hard to believe it was only an hour.
From the blisteringly sublime to the frankly ridiculous.
Motor. Oh dear. What a come down. If you; a) come from New York and; b) wear big shades and; c) are a synth-duo, then; d) you should be Suicide – the “Kings of the 212”. If you are not Suicide, if you can’t even hold a candle to Suicide then perhaps you should stop imitating them in such a flaccid and weak manner. When you make A.R.E. Weapons look respectable, it might be time to change your career.
Mark Jones was disappointing. I’d been to see Blancmange a few weeks before and he had DJ’d at that also. And tonight he played exactly the same songs, in the same order. Throughout the evening he’d do his best to flit between ‘Superstar DJ’ poses and Mockney Bingo-Caller. I didn’t even notice Daniel Miller.
And then Numan.
I’d be lying if I said I was looking forward to this.
I really wasn’t looking forward to this.
No way.
Not so much Numan himself, but the boorish behaviour of his fans at The Roundhouse last year left a lot to be desired to say the least. What a difference a year makes. Really. Numan was brilliant, his fans were brilliant – who knew!?
A great set from Numan – from memory there was; Down In The Park, Films, That's Too Bad, Crash, I Die: You Die, Zero Bars/Mr. Smith, Listen To The Sirens, Are ‘Friends’ Electric? and an encore that included Cars. The LED screens were great; and there was a wave of nostalgia seeing Numan with a light-show. He finished on a touching song that utilized ultrasound images of an unborn child, that in places was quite soulful. Yes, Numan. Soulful. Not in the Stax/Chess/Atlantic sense, but still…soulful. Yes, Numan.
I’m unlikely to join the Scientol…Numanoids by jumping camp or anything, but if tonight’s performance is anything to go by, I’d definitely see him live again.
An absolutely perfect day. When’s the next one?
