GIGARAMA…
GIGARAMA…
| When: | Monday, 1st September 2003 |
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| Where: | Cable Club @ The Pressure Point, Brighton. |
| Set List: |
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| Personnel | |
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| DAVID: | NICK: |
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| Sound by Luke Simkins & Andy | |
You can watch the show in all its cable-strewn glory on a You Tube playlist.
Recorded live from the sound desk by the intrepid Luke Simkins, here in
streaming Real Audio is that night’s rather *extreme* version
of PEOPLE WITHOUT PETS.
As Moidah said:
(NB. Ewe will need RealPlayer)Yes, but there was something about the version of People Without Pets last night, it was like:
“How much more extreme could this be?”
and the answer is: “None… none more extreme.”
Snaps by Mr Mariano…
THE FELINE DREAM boot up their machines and take to the stage, Feline1 in customary black shirt and Feline2 in an Unknown Pleasures T-shirt under a sharp suit. The lapels of the suit block out all of the Joy Division logo except the letters ‘DIVIS’, which Feline2 later claims to be no accident. He apologises that his bus conductor hat is at the dry cleaners.
The set kicks off with a mean Mirror Image, its snarling synth pulses propelling another Carlisle anecdote that balances between swagger and pathos. This is my favourite kind of Feline Dream song; about thwarted talent, getting older and going nowhere. Very witty and heartbreakingly sad, a winning combination. They express alarm that Feline2’s keyboards were inaudible, but to be honest it still sounded great.
Lead vocal duties are handed over to Feline1 for Get Your War On, the only song in the set I had never heard before. It’s a fine song but not at all what I was expecting, all glitchy, slippery drum patterns and Feline1 looking like a disappointed school teacher as he scolds the psychopathic brutes currently residing in Capitol Hill and No.10. Full marks for the preamble.
Feline1: Do you know who Tony Blair is? There’s Tony Blair and Linda Blair from the Exorcist, and one of their mothers sucks cocks in hell, This song attempts to find out which one.
Feline2: Where the fuck’s my drink?Next up is Far Behind, sprightly and uplifting as ever, with the wind in its hair and a inviting freeway before it. It leads nicely into My Valerian, the writing of which Feline2 details by revealing that the Felines exhumed Dusty Springfield, cut off her hair and used it to replace the keys on their Mellotron,
So that we could play a song on Dusty Springfield’s dead hair. It’s a song about going to the Limelight every Thursday with my mates in Belfast, and also about Emperor Valerian, who was so unpopular that the Romans cut him up and filled his insides with straw.The song is quite a departure for the Felines, the usual pinch of bile giving way entirely to a dreamlike sort of beauty. The key change lifts it higher and higher, and waiting for that OTT chorus, that is perpetually threatened but hasn’t come by the time the song dies, away, only adds to the poignancy. I’m still trying to think where the tune is lifted from (it’s not quite Sugar Baby Love, not quite Everlasting Love) because I’d die of jealousy if Feline have written it themselves.
The crowd are slightly subdued, and Feline2 worries that they’re not
getting what we’re doing, so now is time for his traditional Q&A session. I ask him where babies come from, because I’ve always wondered.Ask your mother, Manners! Doesn’t anyone want to know, as I wear shades in a nightclub, why I’m such a cunt?As we hurtle towards the end, the stakes are raised significantly by a bruising workout of Destruktiv/Produktiv. It sounds as brilliant as ever, and as for the line I’m just a pop star in my lunchbreak; how could you not fall in love with this band? Feline2 is a pop star in his evenings too, and a bloody good one at that. Maybe it’s the new sunglasses, but he reminds me of Jarvis in his pomp. Pacing from side to side in instrumental breaks, he mimes hanging himself by his mic lead.
After a host of new songs, the evening’s work is polished off by returning to the point of origin and People Without Pets. Living in London, I’ve recently seen so many lifeless Duran/Human League ‘Stars In their Eyes’ turns that I’d started to feel a deep antipathy synthesizer pop, and been baffled that I’d ever felt any affinity towards it. No offence to the Trademarks and Rivieras of this world, who are good folk and do what they do well, but it was only hearing and watching The Feline Dream that managed to remind me why I fell so much in love with this kind of music in the first place; and I’m grateful.
—Jamie Manners
Oo.
Oo.