GIGARAMA...
GIGARAMA...
Chaos tempered with genius
;-)
| When: | Saturday, 6th April 2002 |
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| Where: | The Fan Club
@ The Verge, 147 Kentish Town Road, London NW1 |
| Set List: |
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| Personnel | ||
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| NICK: | DAVID: | |
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| Sound mix by Verge soundman | ||
Two whole galleries of photos from the Fan Club (click on the thumbnails below see the big JPEGs in all their glory...)
A review by Slow Thrills Fanzine...well done to messrs. 1 and 2 for the most enoyable show I've seen them put on to date! the children of Lodnod seemed well impressed for the most part and the Felines have certainly made their mark.
I was pleased to arrive in time for the opening band, Fanclub residents RIVIERA. People had been telling me that this band were just up my street for ages, but I was always somewhere else whenever they had a gig on and had missed the last 11 or sthg.
They pass the most important test by looking great—beats and beeps generated by two besuited fops, two blonde, Eastern-European female vocalists on posing/deadpan vocal duty—one of whom, clad in very tight hot pants, regularly bent over to pick up/set down her guitar between songs :-o
Riviera I think prove that if ewe behave like a pop star convincingly enough, pretty soon ewe'll be treated like one. "Etienne wants another glass of red wine," declares the lead singer during a lull, and two Japanese ladies immediately scuttle off to the bar to buy him one.
As for the music, they were always going to have a hard job with me because I'd been waiting for ages to see them, and really did want to like them loads, to the extent that some sort of anticlimax was inevitable for anyone unable to match the tunesmithery of Holland/Dozier/Holland. But the sound is good, the songs are pleasing—it would be interesting to see how they sounded if Riviera's equipment matched the power of the Felines. The two final tracks were the songs which I felt to be outstanding, 'Now We've Got Europe' and 'International Lover'. Neither of which feature on their neu 3-track EP, both are apparently recent compositions—but hopefully they'll keep writing more tracks like that before an album emerges.Rather disgracefully, during the interval Magazine's 'Song From Under The Floorboards' was cut very short for the next band, MARCEL. I'd never heard of this lot, but reckoned the name might suggest a Proust fixation and lots of waistcoat-addled fop introspection of a Tindersticks nature. The singer, wearing a yellow shirt and straw hat, bellowed "We're the Peter Buck liberation squad!" and they leapt into the most turgid thrashabout. I spent 90% of their set hiding at the back, in all honesty, and lots of eminent folk such as wee Simon Price left the club in disgust. I managed to persuade some acquaintances that The Felines were worth enduring this band for, thankfully, but it would have made far more sense to have Riviera on second.
When our intrepid heroes THE FELINE DREAM finally took to the stage, it was a spine-tingling moment comparable only to what would occur if the Manics of '91 walked onstage at the Woodstock of '67. Nick wound up the Hoxton electroclash set with a snide "ooh! *hey*, playgirl! It's a synth duo! Are they going to do songs about going out in Camden? I fuckin' hope not!", before making NWA references and loudly declaring himself to be the Shankill Road Butcher.
After the opening salvo, perhaps inevitably, they spent five minutes that seemed like an hour trying to get the equipment to werk, which momentarily dented the momentum. At least the faffing was accompanied by the drum pattern for at 'At A Standstill', unlike the uneasy silence at M.A.T.E. 'Standstill' has never been my favourite Feline song, it's greatly atmospheric but I thought it a slightly odd, downbeat opener. But David's singing I think is at a peak, and after this song the editor of the Guardian's clubs section excitedly whispered to me, "tell me, does he always croon exactly like Marc Almond?"
A stirring rendition of the mighty 'INDUSTRIAL ESTATES' followed, and got multitudes dancing! 'Lindsay Bell's Carcass' and 'Far Behind' were exemplary, the latter in particular, and the next EP will be eagerly awaited in my part of the werld. Then time for the obligatory cover version, with yours truly making a cameo to deliver the golden envelope. David: "Has anybody heard of Brian Eno?" Fifty loud cheers. "How about Here Come The Warm Jets?" Ten vague grumbles. But those in the know were spolit rotten by a vigorous werkout of 'Baby's On Fire'.
The duo romped home with a hat-trick of 'People Without Pets', 'Crap Layabout' and 'The Doll Squad', which through their sheer muscularity pummeled the punters into submission, before Nick launched on another most enteraining tirade against his trendier electro contemporaries and their "fashion music". The encore was, ironically, the most Visage-esque cut from the Feline songbook, 'Florian and Magalie' which once more segued into the... er, lengthy instrumental section, with excerpts from 'Trans-Europa Express', and although I might have been hallucinating at this point, what sounded awfully like 'I Feel Love'.All in all, a definite success. Hopefully the gremlins can be ironed out in subsequent performances, and 'Beachcomber' and 'Destruktive/Produktiv' (sadly missed) will return from their hiatuses (ewe were right to drop 'Animal Daydreams' though! :-) ) soon. I was pleased to see that TFD have become more anti-essentialist than *ever*!!
THE FELINE DREAM + MARCEL + RIVIERA
London Kentish Town “The Fan Club” at the Verge
6th April 2002Tonight is yet another instalment of the monthly dose of synth pop and punk rock that is the Fan Club, and first up are the seemingly ever-present Riviera.
You can see why they’re treated as the house band, as their shamelessly retro 80s synth pop fits perfectly. This is the second time I've seen them, and they are in better form than their Notting Hill Arts Club performance a couple of weeks earlier. I like them better when they just have the synths and the emotionless female vocals, so thankfully the chunky guitar parts are much lower in the mix tonight.
They do have two or three really strong songs (and one absolute europop stinker) and they’ve built up a following around London already. Unfortunately some of their fans tend to dress like extras from Bergerac and Howard’s Way, but I guess they'll grow out of it. As for Riviera the band, their studied retro pose certainly works and new keyboard player Etienne Le Beau (well, he is French so there's an outside chance that might be his real name!) has fitted in well.
Marcel, in contrast to almost everything else going on tonight, are one of the worst bands I’ve seen in a long time. The singer comes on wearing a straw boater and the band sound like Shed Seven. The crowd ignore them for most of the set and quite a few people leave. In fact I’m only mentioning them in this review because there is an outside chance that some of the people who legged it may have thought they were the Feline Dream. That would be a disaster.
As it happens, the Feline Dream think they’re having a disaster when they launch into 'At a Standstill' as some of their many leads have become unplugged during the other changearounds. It’s not a big deal really, as most of the crowd just think that it has a really long intro (and a pretty good intro at that!). Nick uses the delay to wind up the ladytronners in the crowd, saying “hey playgirl, oh look it’s a synth duo, are they going to do songs about going out in Camden?” Make no mistake, the Feline Dream make a lot of the other analogue synth acts look like silly fashion music.
'Standstill' is a odd one to open with though, as it’s more downbeat than a lot of their material, though David’s singing is really impressive. 'Industrial Estates' is next and gets the audience dancing, and 'Lindsay Carcass’s warped RnB thing follows. Next up is a new song (to me anyway) which I think is called 'Far Behind' and is probably the best pop tune I've heard them play—make it the next single guys!
The obligatory cover version is chosen from a mystery envelope, and just like the Belfast show it’s an energetic version of Eno’s 'Baby's on Fire'. 'People Without Pets' is next, and it strikes me as odd (but refreshing) to see people actually playing real keyboards. They’re on a bit of a roll now, and they leave on a high with their punkiest tunes—'Crap Layabout' and 'The Doll Squad'. At just under half an hour this was a perfect chance to show-off their best material, and although we can quibble over which songs they dropped, don’t forget that this was their first show in London and they won over a lot of the audience. The well deserved encore is 'Florian and Magalie' which mutates into improvised versions of 'Trans Europe Express' and fantastically, Donna Summer/ Giorgo Moroder’s 'I Feel Love'. Now that’s what you call ending things in style.
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