Live music roundup - 2013 so far!

A quick round up of the bands I've seen this year. The list reflects my status as an old, well middle-aged, git I think.

Inspiral Carpets at Koko.
I love the Inspirals, they just made fantastically catchy pop songs with that characteristic organ sound and a front man with amazing energy.

The Wonderstuff at Islington O2
A truly great live band, the lead singer has a wonderful repartee of amusing, self deprecating humour.

Suede at Alexandra Palace
Suede were great, at this sort of event you often just want to hear the hits but the songs from their new album also sounded good. Alexandra Palace is a lovely venue as well.

James & Echo and the Bunnymen at Brixton Academy
I enjoyed Echo and the Bunnymen but James were slightly disappointing. Would've preferred more Bunnymen and less James tbh.

The Lucky Strikes at What's Cookin'
Fantastic band from the Thames Delta ... well Southend, Essex. Check them out if you get the chance.

The Stone Roses at Finsbury Park
The question is not were they good? The question is whether you've ever seen anything to compare. I saw them on the Second Coming tour in 1995 at Brixton but this was miles better. I am the Resurrection was worth the admission price alone.
The support acts were:
Miles Kane - very good
Johnny Marr - great, especially The Smiths songs
PIL - disappointing, lost the crowd and the energy that had built up with Johnny Marr dissipated.

The Snakes at What's Cookin'
Country rock band influenced by Exile era Stones. I've seen them on quite a number of occasions and they never disappoint.

The Who performing Quadrophenia at the O2
A truly magical show, I love Quadrophenia and to see Pete Townsend and Roger Daltrey, who's voice at 69 remains amazing, still going strong was fantastic and they did some hits as well.

Patrick Caulfield/Gary Hume - Tate Britain

Two exhibitions for the price of one can't be bad. I guess the Tate put them together because they have some similarities. I loved the Caulfield which was a broad sweep through his art life (he died in 2005). His work has a real quietness and stillness to it such as Window at Night from 1969 (below).

I wasn't so keen on Hume's work, I liked the doors that he painted for the exhibition but after I'd gone through them I couldn't connect so well with what was inside.

Palestine Film Festival 2013

The 2013 London Palestine Film Festival showed 38 works by Palestianian and international artists over a two week period at the Barbican and UCL.

I managed to get along to the following:

Blood of the Condor - billed as 'beyond Palestine' this is from the 1960's Bolivia and is filmed on crackly old 16mm. Seen as one of the classic's of '60's anticolonial cinema and a call for anticolnial revolution it tells the story of a young man trying to obtain a blood transfusion for his brother who was injured by government forces. During this search he uncovers a covert U.S. Peace Corps programme aimed at sterilising the indigenous poor.

The Last Friday - Set in Ammam, Jordan Youssef, a divorced taxi-driver, settles into a downbeat life until he is diagnosed in need of costly surgery. He is then compelled to take some decisions about his relationship with his ex-wife and son. A sombre but always enjoyable film.

The Stones Cry Out + Resistance Recipes - 'Stones' is a moving film about the centrality of Christians in Palestine throughout history. Covering the period from 1948 to the present day it explores the specific challenges they face today. It is often said that the Israeli/Palestinian problem is one of Jew against Muslim, funnily enough this film's central message, even though it is about Christians, is to refute that stance, it is a political problem about right and wrong.
Resistance Recipes as a documentary short about various culinary and agricultural projects inspired by the resistance. An account of a man and his family eco-farming their land with the most magnificient views but with the Israeli settlement land-grabs always in mind and view and another about a women's food cooperative were inspiring and engrossing at the same time.

David Bailey's East End Faces - William Morris Gallery, E17

A small, one roomed exhibition featuring some of David Bailey's photo's of London't East End in the 1960's. The portraits really capture some of the characters of the era, Bailey of course was famously born and raised just down the road from the gallery and as he says 'London's East End is in my DNA'.

I would recommend a look round the rest of the galley as well, especially if you haven't visited since it was renovated in 2012. It is a well deserved finalist in the Museum of the Year 2013 competition and all free to get in.

Gert & Uwe Tobias - Whitechapel Art Gallery

Gert & Uwe Tobias are identical twins born in Transylvania, Romania in 1973, they moved to Germany in 1985, aged 12. I found this exhibition hard to catagorise in my mind, I couldn't even work out if I liked it at first. It's in one galley of the Whitechapel and I just kept wandering round and round trying to work it out, wanting to look and re-look but not wanting to leave. It draws on modernist geometric abstraction which is what I was first drawn to and maybe some communist influence from their early life which I also find interesting but there's also something kinda surrealist about the works I think. The Tobias' work in various mediums from drawing to ceramics, they make huge canvas' and also many smaller works, often using the print of a typewriter...you have to see it really. I've been twice and as I sit here writing this I want to go again, the exhibition runs until 14 June 2013, I recommend you see it if you can and even better it's free to get in!

Saloua Raouda Choucair - Tate Modern

Saloua Raouda Choucair is a 97 year old Arab woman artist. She is virtually unknown outside her native Beirut and France, where she studied art in her late twenties. I must admit to never having heard of her but as is so often the case I found this small, four roomed exhibition to be more interesting and stimulating than many of the blockbuster exhibitions that I have been to.

I read in the Financial Times newspaper that Choucair fits the profile of the sort of artist that the Tate likes to put on following on from 83 year old Yayoi Kusama last year and 96 year old Louise Bourgeios in 2007 and that she is not 'a significant figure in the history of 20th century art' as if this exhibition has been granted as some kind of politically correct affirmative action. Personally I think the Tate should be applauded for hunting down interesting artists that are not well known - how many 97 year old Arab woman artist's get shown in internationally renowned art galleries? How many Arab woman artist's get shown in internationally renowned art galleries come to that? Having said that how many woman artist's get shown in internationally renowned art galleries? More than there used to be certainly, but surely that's because of galleries that are willing to take a chance and push the boundaries like the tate has done here.

Lichtenstein: A Retrospective - Tate Modern

I do like Lichtenstein, best known for his comic strip paintings, but the downside of this large exhibition, apart from the usual problem with Tate blockbuster's - the crowds, 'hell is other people' indeed, is you will already know the good stuff. There is lots to look at and enjoy here but not much to take you by surprise. I did like Lichtenstein's reproductions of well known works by other artists but in his own style though, those based on Van Gogh and Mondrian shown below.

 

Public Service Broadcasting at Rough Trade East

Public Service Broadcasting are a musical duo comprising drums and guitar/banjo/synthesiser who sample old public information films and other assorted archive material and blend it with their  music to come up with an orginal and interesting sound. They played at Rough Trade East (a great record shop near Spitalfields market, if you like that sort of thing) as part of 'record store day' (a day to celebrate and promote record shops) so we trotted along with assorted other hipsters (or possibly nerds depending on your point of view) to check them out and rather spendid they were too.

Further information on PSB can be found on their website - http://publicservicebroadcasting.net/

Dorothy Iannone: Inncoent and Aware - Camden Arts Centre

Dorothy Iannone is a self taught artist, orginally from America, who met Swiss artist Dieter Roth on a trip to Iceland in 1967. This meeting transformed her life and she moved to Europe to be with Roth where she has been ever since, she is now based in Berlin.

Her work is tremendously vibrant, reminding of indian erotic art and psychedelia, she documents her relationships giving free expression to this celebration of her (erotic) life.

A life affirming exhibition, only slightly spoiled by the arts centre attendants continually popping up as you move around, like the shopkeeper out of Mr Benn. They are very friendly and helpful but I prefer to be able to look around an exhibition without the feeling that I'm not to be trusted and need to be watched.

Gaiety is the Most Outstanding Feature of the Soviet Union: New Art from Russia – Saatchi gallery

I found this a varied show, at times moving especially the portrait photographs of poor Russians by Boris Mikhailov, and being a Saatchi show it was also at time rude, horrific but always interesting. I liked Dasha Fursey's jars containing pickled traditional Russian food's.

 

Like a lot of this exhibition there is always the spectre of the history of Russia and the Soviet Union and it's shortages in Fursey's work. The USSR also looms large in Sergei Vasiliev's photograph's. He was a prison warder under communism and he continued a project begun by a collegue to document the tattoo's of the prison inmates. Tattooing was illegal, so the images were made using scalpels and melted boot heels, these were hard men who often did not expect to ever be released. The tattoo's were a form of defiance to the state.

On the top floor of the gallery there was another, related, exhibition which has now unfortunately closed, Breaking the Ice: Moscow Art 1960-80's. As much of 'Gaity' looks back to, and is informed by the Soviet period the two exhibition's complemented each other very well but to be honest I prefered Breaking the Ice. Things somehow always become more interesting when they are from the Soviet period as questions always occur such as 'what were the artists permitted to produce?' 'how careful did they have to be to avoid censorship?' etc. Having said that perhaps I'm not the best judge as I'm always more interested by anything from the Soviet period ... wouldn't wanted to have lived there but always fascinated by it.