Metamatic Forums John Foxx John Foxx and Louis Gordon CARGO - October 16th

Spot the back of your head time . . . .

Cargo Photos

Nice photos you got there.

Cheers

Thanks for sharing your photo's of last nights gig

Gary
Gary Hunter Myspace Music Page

Woo! You know, I've been to see John pretty much annually now since whenever that Mean Fiddler 'Pleasures of Electricty' gig was (I think I saw him THREE times last year, lol!) and last night's gig was the best one yet!

Why? Mostly cos there were 4 people on stage, all doing stuff, including Steve D'Agostino on some REAL analogue synths (a Roland System 100M modular, fact fans, and what looked like a Roland SH1 or SH2...) - this just all added an extra layer of spit, blast and sizzle to the proceedings - live music is at its best when it's live, not when a couple of blokes mime to a laptop
So who was that lad at the back? He looked like John Foxx Jnr! He had a laptop and a MIDI keyboard, I dunno if he was just on visuals or was playing music too, I couldn't really see.

Louis has grown his hair into a Kevin Kegan footballer perm!

Frankly I think we were all getting a bit BORED before the gig finally started ... most of us had been hanging around Cargo since not long after 7, and we were let into the stage area a little after 8... but we were left to bob our heads to the DJ and watch the same 20 minute video loop in there until a quarter past 9!
But when the lads did finally come on, they kicked ass!

BURNING CAR, for instance, was bloody sh*t hot, if you'll pardon my French - compare it to what it sounded like when they first began all this again in 1998 - no more d*cking around with "modernizing" it, just stick to the original searing arrangement and crank it up to 11! With footage from the original video flaming on the screen behind them. Excellent.

If there was one criticism of the proceedings, I might say that sometimes the arrangements were actually *too* "turned up to 11" - they'd start the songs with Louis & Steve making the nastiest ear-shredding bowel-troubling sounds they could, and that doesn't leave much room to build for the next 4 minutes! lol They were making a very full-on racket at times But that's all part of the fun.

The "encore" was a bit odd - John said "goodnight"... then about 30 seconds later they came back and played for another hour! /laughs/ Most amusing.
Then when they really DID end, the audience were well up for an *actual* encore, and we had a full on slow hand clap going for a good 3 minutes, before someone obviously told the DJ to send us shuffling out.

The new song they opened with was pretty decent;
THE GARDEN was lovely (although I couldn't help giggle at a stray raspy note on the wrong sound at the beginning: "We've been waiting in the Garden - THWWWARRRP!" lol )
"YOUNG SAVAGE" was very welcome although be honest I felt it didn't quite come off - probably cos the main bit is the 'blistering' guitar riff, and that just seemed to be sequenced rather than anyone play it, which made it a bit less exciting - whilst John was a bit out-of-breath on the vocals (not that there's space to breath in all those lines, but that's the way he wrote it!) - still, cool to hear them do it.


Basically a smashing gig.

nice pics--wonder if we'll get a screen thing in Marghera..

Just got back.Shattered by going to bed late then the roar of the London traffic on Old street waking me up at 5.

What a brilliant night.Nice to meet old friends & meet some new ones.

Gary sorry you couldn't make it you must be gutted.

I have pictures & maybe some video to post later.
I took along a new HD camcorder but I think the sound being cranked up to 11 may be too much pressure on my camcorders mic.I had a quick listen before my battery gave out & the sound was distorted as hell.

A friend of mine told me that last nights show was being recorded for possible future release.Thats what the Apple G4 server was doing on the righthand side of the stage with one of the Chris's working on it.

Looking forward to this.

Listened to the new CD Impossible before I went to bed last night.I think its brilliant.

Cheers for posting the set list Martin so early,nice to meet you & share a sandwich run to Tesco express

Brian

Can't argue with feline's review of events last night. Thanks for drawing attention to D-Agostino's role. Tucked away at the back it was hard to see what he was up to. It looked like a mixing desk to me, which explains my hesitation. I know little of these things.

Great to meet everyone last night (Craig, Peter, Mark, Matt, Brian, Mike, you, erm, Andres, Sarah, him, thingy - one of the best pre-gig Foxxgates I can remember. I had a great day - spend the two hours between Waterloo and Shoreditch visiting ten or so of London's beautiful historic churches, including the crypt at St Bride's and listening to a woman play a charming broken piano in the Romanian Orthodox on the Strand.

It was indeed a good gig.
But not a GREAT gig, if my 19p ASDA notepad is anything to go by.
Here's my take on it.

Short Circuits and Golden Glows

By 8.30, crowds were gathering and the venue was pretty near full. 300-350 people?
A loop of film on a large screen backdrop. Fragmented super8. Grainy and broken. Shaky and blurred. Big colour movies.

Worked well as a VJ piece with the Dubterror remixes early on, but less so when backing the Chemical Brothers, Ladytron or Siouxsie (aptly Cities in Dust) and when Kate Bush started Running Up That Hill(??) the images seemed entirely superfluous. Perhaps because some of us had watched it through four times by then...

Steve D'Agostino appeared first, closely followed by the tall, big-haired figure of John Leigh Karborn taking up a discreet position back left behind a laptop-on-a-stool. While we are all going "oooh?" and "who's that" etc, Louis Gordon bounces up stage right, unpacking the intro to "Walk This Way" for the main man to walk on waving and take up the new track's vocal.
A Million Cars kicks in straight after, bringing James Stewart and Kim Novak to the screen. They keep cropping up in scenes from Vertigo throughout, juxtaposed with clips of The Swimmer and Some Like It Hot. Lancaster and Monroe. By now the air is filled with electricity and bass - all that's missing is the rising cigarette smoke in the filmbeams.
Seamlessly we slide back in time, through scenes of Dislocation. Behind the guys on stage, the Man Who Dies Every Day walks through verdant avenues and bustling city streets.
The mood change induced by Camera (oh camera...) would have been enhanced better by some stills. Angles and frames. But instead we're taken back to where we've been before. It's becoming a little unclear where this is going, and John's new vocalisation on this track doesn't help. Careful with those 'lalalaas' Eugene... Did I cringe just then. Can't read what I wrote down at this point. Probably a good thing. The whole tone of this piece has changed from how I remember it...
Cargo is bathed in white light, bursting with incredible booming rumbles, squeaks and shivers delivered from all angles. Its a wonderful venue - the sound here tonight is better than I've heard at one of these shows for a long time. But John is oddly uncomfortable. His vocal isn't quite there. Is that a technical thing, or is he tired? Uptown/Downtown would suggest the latter. There's an awkward pause before the track starts proper, an ill-timed 'thank you' and a wave to fill the space. Reassuring nod from D'Agostino and some gesturing from Louis when Foxx comes in at the wrong time with the lyric. And I'm talking over it. Questioning the pleasure of electricity in this kind of situation.
I'm not alone. Lost and bewildered - no-one is moving?
Bring the confidence back and return to more familiar territory. Good plan. The Big Three chart singles are the perfect vehicle for this, and there is audible relief in the crowd. Now there are stills, and Mike Barker movies. Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable and Bogart smiling and waving, as cars of all ages blaze away behind them. Louis jumps, as if his keyboard too is on fire, launching in the powerhouse of Shadow Man - a full on eight minutes of ryhthm and intense activity all over the stage.
Goodnight.

Wha...?
We all know this is a 'special' extended remix of a show. Where are you going?
Oh, you're back. Already?
Perhaps there was a queue for the toilets...

Roars of approval fill The Garden. Moments of splendour cast me back to the Dominion in '83, when guitars still roamed the earth. Now there's an idea. Retro-evolution. Some have said that John and Louis need to do something else now. They have a point. Video effects stunning, but what does Karborn's presence on stage really add? Should we have automobiles and crowded streets to accompany this hymn to natural wonders? Is there a there Fender in the house?
We're eager again now though, feeling secure and confident. Walking in the places we know. But for me, this is not the time to travel for the first time. Foxx moves obliquely and effortlessly through the years, celebrating the Broken Furniture that seems to support most of the kit. Now his timing is spot on, and the setlist suits the moment. Hungry and expectant, the opening bars of Young Savage are met with almost universal pogo-ing and leaps of youthful vigour.
The words are clearly a challenge and The Man does well, but now the sound system lets him down and its a mumble rather than a scream. Its a crowd pleaser, generates a buzz and a laugh, and yet.. what... Ah well, maybe, though. I guess..." Is that so? I see... Perhaps its the people around me continually drifting to the door like dust particles. Maybe the bar is magnetic?
Shame, because they missed they highlight of the set - the fragile acrobat that is My Sex.
It came as little surprise that this shimmering icon fused into the psychedelic, technicolour light show of Endlessly. There are flowers on the ceiling. Good touch.
Now would be a great time to leave the stage. We've all being 'laaing' along (again...) and whooping wildly during the warmest and most interactive of songs in the set. We want more and more - and we need to ask for it, beg you for it. Clap our hands in rhythm with each other, stamp our feet and shout "Foxxy" with varying degrees of sincerity. Wave our hats in the air - you know the kind of thing.
Call me old-fashoned, but isn't that what encores are for?
But this is the beginning of the end. Louis plugs in the electrodes and the robotic, lumbering monster we all know and love as Shifting City fizzes and splutters onto the set. The beast emerges from its quasi-retirement, and clangs and creaks its way into the enraptured consciousness. Lights wail and images blur. John screams and D-Agostino glows in earnest - everything seems fit to burst for the last ten glorious minutes.

I have posted this review without a conclusion on purpose. Somehow, I'm not sure how I feel about it after sleep. Would I Travel so far to see the same thing again..? Those that were they have made up their own minds, and those that weren't are encouraged to catch up with Foxx as soon as they can.
Easier said than done of course. Time maybe moving towards him, but there's a wonderful feeling that it will never quite arrive

Aye, what was that mix of Kate Bush? Is that a modern thing or did she put that mix of it out at the time? I quite enjoyed it anyways
They also played Add N to X.

The thing that makes me laugh a bit at all this "Super 8" footage stuff is that we're told it's all about the 'grain' and the charming limitations of the original media, but the reality is that we also get a TON of digital pixellation, slow frame rate and MPEG compression codec effects!

Yeah - and Camera did get a bit silly at times, didn't it? (in a *bad* way) lol

I suspect what went wrong was that John's vocals were meant to be 100% "wet" (i.e. all vocoder, or Digitech Vocalist, or whatever gadget he uses), but they were actually at least 50% dry...
this meant that instead of hearing a cool electronic pitch-shifed "camera!" or "la-la-la" thing, we could hear John's untreated voice trying to drive the machine, and it just sounded a bit daft! Bless.
But hey, this is live electronic music for you - one wrong knob twiddle and you're knackered (Quite possibly John couldn't hear himself clearly enough in the monitors to twig that the setting was wrong..... on the other hand, maybe I'm being too charitable and he *wanted* it all to sound like that lol )

Another wee point I'll make -
and I'm sure it's something most of us have noticed in the last 10 years -
John & Louis do have a bit of a tendency to run a song round in a loop and keep on and on vamping round on it for 2 or 3 or 4 or ... extra minutes at the end.
Sometimes I think it's clear that a little judicious editing (or just ending would be a better idea
This can be particularly heightened when they start cranked up to 11 and then just stay at 11 for the 3 minute werk-out ending - they've already let off all the fireworks by then and there's only so much soaring fuzzed vibrato & portamento Louis can splurge out before it begins to lose its impact because he's doing it the whole way through

Plus, if they didn't extend each song to 7 minutes long, they could play twice as many tunes


I will also just say this, in tribute to a certain grumpy keyboard player from Huddersfield:
whilst John's set exploded with sonic pyrotechnics throughout the evening,
I have a bootleg of Ultravox doing Man Who Dies Everyday in the Marquee '78, and I have to insist: Billy Currie letting rip on a real ARP Odyssey 30 years ago indisputeably sounded better than what Steve & Louis played last night! I'm not saying their version was rubbish, in fact it pretty much kicked ass, but I still didn't hear anything to top the brain-splattering Odyssey! And in fact Warren's syn-drums weren't really bettered either