Warning, this is Text Heavy
It’s a month on now and I’m posting late here and wondering if the subject of the Roundhouse gig has cooled right down, particularly when there’s been some great insight expressed by other forum members about the playing of the music, and some very detailed comment already posted, parts of which I find myself agreeing with, though in my own viewpoint there remain aspects of the evening that I was less enthusiastic about.
The Analogue show could not be described as a hugely atmospheric or even emotional event, but I sincerely enjoyed the experience of being there, and maybe that’s ultimately what it was all about, it was not a great gig, but it was a good experience.
It was undeniably amazing to see John on a large stage with a band for the first time since ‘83, and the bonus of having a superb projection screen behind him pumping out a barrage of images to accompany the music. Benge almost looked like he’d always been by John’s side and was a part of the history, (or maybe that’s just the power of suggestion taking hold over me), and the sight of Serafina Steer on keyboards really had impact. The ‘synth-lady’ (as she will be forever known) brought a new dimension to the old ‘two-blokes routine’ that’s been the format for the last decade, and she also brought back for me flashes of John’s ‘perky’ Europe After The Rain appearance on T.O.T.P’s when he had a female pianist accompany him. Thinking of all that though, It’s a great shame that no Garden era tracks were allowed to break out into the evening’s set-list and spread their romantic wings into the air, or indeed The Golden Section, and the much neglected In Mysterious Ways, and why not John? In Mysterious Ways is not an album I’d ever have asked for in a Foxx gig, but with the acoustic presence of Robin Simon, and Serafina Steer’s own particular sound, who knows what interesting musical arrangement’s could have been made of the music, and maybe this was a missed opportunity for John to have played a few track’s from each of those ’81 to ’85 albums which show just how wide and colourful his analogue field really is.
I think that a definite downside with the evening was the decision to have so many DJ’s. Perhaps this seemed okay during the planning stages as a way to fill the gaps before and after John’s appearance, but at the venue we were just left standing around with nothing to focus on, other than to hear them doing more or less the same thing without any real performance element, it all eventually started to fall flat. Surely a few fringe support acts in the field of electronica would have been a better idea rather than all the juke-box DJ’ing, but maybe there was a cost or practical factor in staging the show that prohibited having any other artists performing?
I entered the venue as Jori HulkKonen was playing his set, which was quite good, and the sound fuelled my anticipation of the evening ahead. I was not so fussed about Mark Jones though, and it really felt like we started marking time at this point. He had to step in early of course, as for the second time that day a guest of John’s had failed to appear on time, so just what was Gary Numan’s excuse? Well, none was given, and at the end of the evening as the majority of the audience left to get the last tube, suddenly, and without any announcement, a guy appeared onstage, oh, and there it was, we had Ade Fenton, and wait, there to his right, there was actually a second guy, crouching down and partially obscured behind something set up on a table. This mystery man was almost leaning into Ade, like he was quietly asking him to show him what to do, and here I imagine Ade saying to him:
”Just press those button’s on your MacBooks for Gawd’s sake Gary”. If it wasn’t for having Ade’s shoulder to lean on then I’m sure that Mr Numan would have fallen over from being lost up there, and If you were one of the people who left before this sad sight then I can tell you that you missed nothing.
I’ve sung Gary’s praise as an artist here on the forum, but as a DJ he was rather abysmal. I went down to the front for a closer look and he seemed to be working very hard in perfecting his crouching act, implying that he was doing something musical on two Macbooks, but I think he actually had the Word application open on his desktop, and he was really busily writing a letter of apology to John:
”err, sorry I was late earlier mate…”.
Gary, from 60 feet away you might have fooled us all, but at 6 feet it’s quite another matter.
Somebody is going to have to help me out here regarding the Alex Proyos film: Parallel Lives/Groping, was that the whole thing we got at the gig? I think I’m stupidly confused about this, I thought I’d previously watched a ten-minute clip online, and I’d assumed that we were getting an even longer film at the show. Also, with hindsight I think it would have been more effective and rewarding for the audience that evening if no preview had been released online beforehand at all.
My assumption about getting a longer film would have been impractical in this context in any case, as screening anything much longer from the stage would probably have alienated some of the audience. I had actually expected the film to be playing on a loop in a separate theatre area where we could wander through, much like at an art exhibition, but what planet am I on thinking that, where on earth did I get the notion that Analogue was to be a kind of ‘happening’, like some 1967 Technicolour Dream event, rather than the straightforward gig we actually got.
The huge screen conveyed how cinematic John’s work can be (or is), but in truth the Proyos film just washed over me, and was hardly anything to rave about, sorry Alex, much respect for the fantasy of Dark City, but I wasn’t captured by this. kicking off with the Metamatic section it was great to have that screen and the visual scale that John really deserves, but while Jonathan Barnbrook and Karborn’s visuals certainly added to the impact, they also often detracted for me, and I assume that Jonathan was mixing in the text elements whilst Karborn was providing the visual mash-up, and what we got onscreen was the mostly live result.
I really like Jonathan’s Clicktrack film with his minimalist typographical approach, which doesn’t come across as being merely literal in its visual message, and it works because it ‘speaks out for the sounds’. However, with the Analogue visuals it was completely different, and having the words ‘appearing’ just resulted in the spelling out of the lyrics of the songs that were being played, it quickly bordered on being a sing-a-long, and I actually found it breaking the spell of the music.
With Karborn (and I’m assuming it was all his visuals) we had the too easily accessible shots of buildings and flyover’s, and all that kind of clearly defined urban stuff, which surely it’s really time to move away from. I think that John’s music needs less visual underlining of it’s content in what has become a cliché, and would benefit from more unusual and off-kilter images being set against those precisely stated lyrics. Do we really need to see a burning car when John sings about a burning car? Let’s put more thought into it, or perhaps less compulsion to simply go with the surface meaning.
I can’t fault the choice of the six Metamatic numbers that formed the first section of the gig, they were well executed and got things off to a great start. Its debatable as to whether we should have had more or less from that period, and although I can certainly live with a lot less Metamatic my feeling is that if we’d had more then it would have gone down better with the majority of the crowd. Maybe that’s why the transition from starting off with a band playing that classic sound to having just the music of John and Louis was such a jolting moment, and consequently it snuffed out the high pace we’d arrived at. It’s impossible to ignore the logic of Metamatic having prominence at this event, but was it too obvious having it at the beginning, could it have worked better coming later on, although I suppose the chronological fact’s of John’s solo career determined that the show began in this way.
With the John and Louis section it was the song selection that needed reigning in a bit here and not Louis. Shadowman was a cracking number, and followed on very well after Underpass, its beat really went to my gut and I’m glad I was down at the front to enjoy it. The contrast of Louis’s free energy to that of John’s reserved stance was really interesting when seen in this venue. Previously in all the smaller gigs that I’ve watched them in I’ve often thought that Louis’s performance bordered on the OTT, but here on this large stage he was completely in his element. It was almost a reverse of hierarchy, with John in the minor role as Louis really went for it big time, he was a joy to watch, this was his moment, and why not.
Sadly though, A Million Cars was the death nail to all the excitement, it just sounded repetitive and was hardly going to set the house on fire, not a great choice, and next up was An Ocean We Can Breathe, a gently meditative song, and an even worse choice at that moment, bringing everything to a halt. I can appreciate that John likely wanted to show a range of style’s with the three songs he’d set aside for him and Louis to perform, but I was shocked by my own decision to choose to leave and go to the bathroom during that last number.
When I returned I stood at the back, and this is when the gig went completely downhill for me with the playing of the five new songs, but once again the logic of it all steps in, as this show was a great way to promote the forthcoming album, and you can’t ignore that opportunity. But sadly those five songs left no impression on me whatsoever, apart from maybe Catwalk which really stuck out, but only because it sounded quite out of place. I’m amazed that I say this about the new work played live, as I’m Hugely looking forward to the John and Benge album, but it left me cold, most of it sounded like B-sides, and all around me I couldn’t fail to notice that people were just standing motionless during this part of the gig, hopefully though this was just due to unfamiliarity, rather than to disinterest.
Originally posted by feline1:
if I was picking a bunch of songs that showed off Robin Simon's talents, it would NOT have been these ones
I completely agree, Robin Simon’s guitar skills should have been better employed, it wasn’t a set-list that really drew on the power of the guitar, if only he’d got to storm the stage with a song like Walk Away, how uplifting would that have been.
In the last section of the gig I really enjoyed Quiet Men, and Slow Motion, and I was very impressed by that lovely song John sang about Shadows, which had me scratching my head as to what Cathedral Oceans album it came from. Of course we know now that it’s called Good Shadow, and if it’s a taste of things to come then I’m happy with that one. Destination played live left me unmoved as much as the earlier five new tracks, and I really cannot see it as a classic, but strangely in the days that followed after the show I couldn’t get Destination (along with Shadowman) from out of my head, so something must have worked there.
“BBC INTERVEIW QUOTE – Thursday, 13 May
Foxx wants his festival of electronica to capture the spirit of a concert he attended as an impressionable 15 year-old in 1967.
"It was like a glimpse of the future," says Foxx, who hitchhiked down from his native Lancashire to attend the 14 Hour Technicolour Dream at Alexandra Palace.
With its art displays, video installations and DJ sets, Foxx promises Short Circuit will be "a sort of hallucinogenic musical afternoon"I really expected something very different from what we actually got at the event, I expected to be blown away and I wasn’t, perhaps I believed the hype, or more likely I fell into a self-deluded daydream about what would make for the perfect Foxx show.
However, when I was standing there under the Roundhouse dome prior to and during John’s set, I knew deep down how amazing it was to be there in that interesting venue where John had carefully assembled his fellow collaborators and musicians, and I felt like I was bringing some of those long years of appreciation for his music along with me, and it was not unlike paying some kind of quiet homage to a great artist, and that this was the right place and time to feel and do that.
Probably a good time to write a review a month after the event. I enjoyed your thoughts. 