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.

A Walk on Part: Arts Theatre, WC2

Very enjoyable adaptation of ex-Labour MP Chris Mullin's diaries of the New Labour era. The actor playing Mullin manages to keep the pace going throughout and the supporting actors can somehow capture the array of other MP's who make an appearance.

What was the feeling I left the theatre with? That Tony Blair, who let's be honest none of us ever trusted, was an outstanding politician with the gift of being able to communicate and connect with people on a personal basis and on the big stage. He also had the advantage that no Labour leader has ever had before of a huge majority in parliament... and what did he do? He blew it by being too conservative, and more tragically, by getting into bed with the most right wing president in America's history! And after taking us into a disasterous war that costs hundreds of thousands of lives on the back of dodgy evidence that had been 'sexed up' we now read in the Financial Times weekend magazine that he feels it is time for him to return for a big new role. Tony, do you honestly think so? At least it makes you appreciate what Harold Wilson achieved in the 1960's by managing to keep the UK out of Vietnam, even though, no doubt, he was under huge pressure to join in a 'coalition of the willing' or whatever stupid phrase they would've come up with, especially as the UK at the time still owed the USA a huge debt from WWII. Blair didn't even have that as an excuse.

Attila the Stockbroker at What's Cookin'

Birkbeck Tavern, Leyton, E10

With Michael Gove threatening to bring back O levels and then seeing that poet/musician Attila the Stockbroker (who’s 1^st album I bought many years ago) was due to play just down the road from me it felt like back to the 1980’s. I was hoping to hear ‘Russian’s in the DHSS’, Attila’s ode to cold war paranoia in order to take me back to my days in the ‘department’. A long time ago, since when the Russian’s who were our enemies, have become our friends and are now back to, I’m not sure, wariness on both sides I think – an Orwellian shifting of alliances. It turns out however that worringly it’s me and the odious Gove who have nostalgia in common, Attila on the other hand is always moving on, tackling the latest outrage such as 'Bye Bye Banker' about the recent financial scandals . His poems are still angry, political and above all humorous, the subjects are often personal, for example moving poems about his mother’s dementia and subsequent death and then moving onto his aunt coming to visit his mother, ‘Poison Pensioner ‘ which magnificently deals with the difficulty of dealing with a relative whose views he finds abhorrent and then a poem about his relationship with his stepfather who he came to like and respect after many years during his mother’s illness. I also particularly liked Comandante Joe, his ode to Joe Strummer, someone Attila never met but a lovely tribute to someone many of us still revere. Attila’s out on a nationwide tour soon, I recommend you catch him if you can.

http://www.attilathestockbroker.com/

The Dictator - Sacha Baron Cohen

‘The heroic story of a dictator who risks his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed.’ The film raises some laughs, often in spite of yourself but the only really bit of decent satire was when he (The Dictator) lists the advantages of America becoming a dictatorship – tortured foreign suspects, fixed elections, 1% of the population own virtually all the wealth of the country etc … all of which has already happened of course.

Bauhaus:art as life - Barbican

Following the route around this exhibition of the modernist design school I passed some Bauhaus furniture and overheard a eight or nine year old say the immortal line to his parents 'it's just like IKEA'. His well-spoken and obviously proud Father explained why this may be so and congratulated him on a good observation. I know what the boy meant and I think that's why this exhibition didn't grab me in the way some previous Bauhaus related exhibitions have such as the Albers/Moholy-Nagy and Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde at Tate Modern. The Bauhaus is now another part of our modern, consumerist world with the obligatory shop with buying opportunities.

Afterwards I treated myself to a coffee from Costa, the hugely profitable coffee wing of Whitbread which has a concession at the Barbican (£2.15 for a small latte although you mustn't actally call it 'sml' of course). Sitting outside in the sun the Barbican is undeniably beautiful, the flats with flowers drapped over their balconies look like a modern day Hanging Gardens of Babylon, modernist social housing from the sixties/seventies that actually work. Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, would've been proud although unfortunately, because of its success the Barbican is now out of the reach of anyone on an ordinary wage of course.

Pharos Arts Foundation

International Chamber Music Festival
Friday 25 May / Royal Manor House, Kouklia / 8:30pmWolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791)
Flute Quartet No.3 in C, K.285b (1778)
Felix Mendelssohn (1809 –1847)
Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 49 (1839) arrangement for flute
Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897)
Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34 (1861)
We were fortunate enough to be in Cyprus for the second year in a row during the Pharos Arts Foundation's annual international chamber music festival. This acclaimed festival brings together world class musicians for a range of truly luscious chamber music concerts in amazingly atmospheric venues, including The Royal Manor House at Kouklia, a medieval monument on the site of Aphrodite's Temple, a UNESCO World Heritage site dating back over 3,500 years. Other venues include the open air at The Olive Grove at Delikipos, and the Shoe Factory in the heart of old Nicosia.

After a lovely meal in the village of Kouklia, we walked up in the golden evening light through the ruins of Aphrodite's Temple, with a view to the sea to the right. The opening piece, Mozart's flute quartet no 3 reflected the usual genius of Mozart, despite the fact that apparently he wasn't overly enamoured of the flute as an instrument! As the music progressed through the evening it also progressed through history: it was noticeable how much more romantic the pieces became in the 19th century, and this was wonderfully reflected in the sheer passion with which these wonderful musicians played. Interestingly they included Levon Chilingirian, one of the founders of the Chilingirian Quartet and a son of Cyprus through Armenian parentage.

The interval drinks were served in the courtyard of the Manor House, atmospherically lit and dominated by a magnificent tree in the centre. The event had the peculiar intimacy of Cyprus cultural events of old, where many in the audience knew each other, well, a little, or even just by sight.

The music-making was of the highest standard, and with the musicians milling about in the courtyard too, it was particularly interesting to see pianist Ashley Wass having a last quiet look at the Brahms score under the tree in the gloaming, minutes before he was due to play it. And play it he did, with depth and agility matched by the four string players.

A magical evening thanks to the Pharos Arts Foundation, which punches well above its weight in the world of the arts. We are coveting a visit to the Olive Grove at Delikipos! and wondering about the extent to which the Pharos schedule of events will play a part in the timing of our future visits to Cyprus...

For more like this, see: http://www.thepharostrust.org/about.htm. And for Pharos in the BBC Music Magazine's Festival Guide see the very end of: http://www.classical-music.com/festival-guide-2012#international_pharos_chamber_music_festival

Musicians:
Mozart: Emmanuel Pahud / flute, Levon Chilingirian / violin, Philip Dukes / viola, Tim Park / cello
Mendelssohn: Emmanuel Pahud / flute, Ashley Wass / piano, Alexander Chaushian / cello
Brahms: Ashley Wass / piano, Levon Chilingirian / violin, Maya Avramovic / violin, Philip Dukes / viola, Tim Park / cello

Jeff Cox - What's going on?

The Stone Space, Leytonstone, E11

A most enjoyable exhibition of Jeff Cox's small abstract/figurative paintings in an intimate Leytonstone gallery.

http://thestonespace.wordpress.com/

Ray Bradbury 1919-2012

Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 45, has died aged 91. Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favourite science fiction books (and a very good film) about a society where firemen don't put out fires, they start them in order to burn books.

Damien Hirst - Tate Modern

With a Damian Hirst exhibition you obviously go with pre-conceived notions, it's easy to jump on the conservative bandwagon and dismiss him but his work is interesting and profound, all about life & death and beauty, often represented by butterflies & ugliness, represented by cigarette butts. His most iconic work is probably the shark, ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’ although I prefer Pharmacy which reminds me of a Donald Judd minimalist piece. It is especially effective here as you enter it from a room kept humid to support butterflies flying around living out their life, you then progress from the heat of the butterfly room to the cool of Pharmacy, cool in both senses of the word.
  
'A Thousand Years' must also be mentioned. Within a glass box a life cycle is played out. Maggots hatch, develop into flies, then feed on a severed cow's head while other flies fly around and either meet their end in an insect-o-cutor or survive to continue the cycle. It's the artist playing God and it is amazing, horrific but amazing. The randomness of life and death, it seems so unfair, but that is how life and death works I suppose.

There's always going to be bits you don’t like as well. His spin paintings don’t do much for me and I didn’t bother with the diamond encrusted skull as there was a big queque and it's not my favourite. Without the artist the diamonds are still worth enough for an ordinary person to retire on whereas with the shark for example there is no value without Hirst’s creative flair and ideas.

Bram Bogart 1921-2012

The Dutch-born Belgian (via Paris) abstract artist Bram Bogart has died aged 90. Bogart pioneered a form of abstraction that quite literally stood out. His thick gestural application of paint produced works that are more sculptural than anything easily recognisable as painting prompting one critic to describe them as 'canvases that were both sensuous and with the quality of rock faces' while also being infused with colour, light and optimism.

Leytonstone post box given silver makeover

A traditional red post box in Leytonstone has been completely spraypainted silver in an act of wanton vandalism that should be condemned by all right thinking people. Mind you as an onlooker observed, 'it's absolutely superb...everyone has stopped to take a picture of it and it's putting a smile on their faces.'