I’ve been a fan of Texas born singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett since 1986 and had tickets to see him four times. Unfortunately, for myriad reasons (schedule conflict, death in family, poor ticket sales) three of those shows were cancelled, so I’ve only seen him the once, opening a double bill with Mary Chapin Carptenter. He was great, but it was an arena, and he only played an 80 minute set. So when I saw that he and his large band were playing Toronto while we were there, I had to get tickets. Massey Hall is a beautiful old venue with legendarily great sound and (we discovered) legendarily uncomfortable seats, half of which seemed to be broken. However, this worked in my favour as the man mountain…
I first came across Tracey Thorn when I heard a beautiful, very articulate love song called ‘Plain Sailing’ on a sampler cd in the early 80’s. I put it on the first mix tape I made for my partner. Tracey met her partner, Ben Watt, at university and they formed Everything But The Girl. Nearly thirty years on, they’re still together, but a lot of their friends aren’t. Her second solo album, ‘Love And Its Opposite’ came out recently and is a kind of concept album about divorce. It’s a brilliant record, full of thought provoking, intelligent songs that are also growers. Here’s the one that keeps getting stuck in my head. Initial copies of the album came with a Berlin Demos bonus disc and…
My copy of the new Arcade Fire album, ‘The Suburbs’, arrived yesterday. It’s officially released tomorrow. I’ve been playing an MP3 version since last weekend, but it’s only when I hear a lossless version, up loud, on my hi-fi, that I find out how good an album is. And this is good, full of strong melodies with lyrics that resemble their debut Funeral more that the bombastic follow-up Neon Bible. It could be an album of the year contender. I’ve already previewed the opening, title track here (grab your mother’s keys, we’re leaving). Here’s the second track, which is just as exciting. The Arcade Fire – Ready To Start
Nice to find myself (under my Twitter handle, Canfan) quoted in full on page 17 of today’s Guardian Review digest of the reader comments about the Booker longlist. For anyone interested who can’t be bothered to trawl through the long or short version, here’s what I said. ‘The Mitchell is brilliant, I think, and would be a worthy winner, but I agree with Joe Thomas: McGregor’s Even The Dogs is an outstanding read, formally audacious and stunningly written. Did Bloomsbury nominate it? If so, perhaps the bleak subject matter put the panel off. I read it in one sitting.’ (The Guardian retained my misspelling of Jon’s surname, which I added an ‘a’ to.’ Oops.)
I was having dinner with friends recently and they started telling another guest that I was a massive Dylan fan. I confessed that I’d seen Dylan ten times, but it didn’t seem that many to me. I have one friend who’s nearly into three figures. Still, they got me thinking. Which other acts have I seen ten times or more? There aren’t many. Gaffa, a Nottingham band from the 70’s. REM, Elvis Costello and Richard Thompson. I’m into the teens for those three acts largely because they’ve been touring for so long. I first saw Thompson in 77, Costello in ’80 and REM in ’83. The other act who should be on that list is Loudon Wainwright III. I’ve seen him eight or nine times.…