- From Music Week:
Dirty Pretty Things’ Carl Barat and Reverend And The Makers’ Jon McClure will join Peter Hook and Steve White on In The City’s Importance Of Being Idols panel next week.
The two are late additions to the Manchester conference and will sit on the October 6 panel, which will address the dumbing down of the use of the word celebrity and also how to stay creative at the same time.
Digital expert Ted Cohen, chairman of Tag Strategic, has also been drafted in to lead a discussion group summing up Sunday’s digital theme.
Finally, music filmmaker extraordinaire Dick Carruthers will be showing exclusive never-before-seen footage from a private Oasis gig he recently shot in front of 100 fans at Black Island Studios.
Carruthers has also written an exclusive blog for the official In The City website which can be found at http://www.inthecity.co.uk/.
- Still on the Carlos subject, Dirty Pretty Things played at the Reading University last night, a gig apparently ruined by total lack of promotion and so scarce attendance. But I leave the word to Alicepooh, who was there and wrote another one of her beautiful reports:
It’s probably just as well that Didz Hammond is a Reading boy and was able to direct their van right to the door of the University Students’ Union. It might have been difficult if they’d driven around in as many circles as we did trying to find the venue for tonight’s DPT show. The University isn’t in the town of Reading. It’s outside, and has several campuses. We visited most of them, and it was, in the end, thanks to a helpful University security guy that we managed to find the Union building. Four hours from door to door. Not quite what we’d imagined when we made a last minute decision to go to this gig.
But for all kinds of reasons, I’m really glad we made the effort. Rush hour traffic and loop-the-loops of Reading not withstanding. The Reading University Student Union is a pleasant venue. Modern, with a raised bar area at the back selling ridiculously cheap drinks, it probably holds about 500. When we arrived at about half eight there can’t have been more than about 50 people there. And, although the numbers increased in the hour and a half before DPT came on, the venue remained less than half full. I’d guess at 150-200. ‘It’s Freshers Week, and there’s lots of other things on,’ several people told me, whilst waiting about for things to happen. Lingering in the pleasant outside smoking area, a guy who works at the venue assured me that the place had been equally empty at around nine recently for both The Subways and The Holloways, but that it had been fine when the bands came on. And he was right. Sort of. Certainly the numbers grew during the support act, a pleasant, undemanding, rather generic indie band, and by the time the lights dimmed for DPT about ten there was indeed a cluster of people around the stage. But the venue remained sparsely filled and the consequences of last minute scheduling and lack of publicity was incredibly evident.
If there were things about tonight’s event that brought into question the tactics of DPT’s management, none of them seemed to bleed into the band’s performance. They engaged with the happy, bouncing audience, Carl saluted the girls at the barrier holding a ‘we love you Carl’ sign, and most of all, they gave it the full blast of energy and enthusiasm that makes their performances so wonderful. Playing off each other, they bounded and leapt around the stage and treated us to a set with a great mix of new and old material. As always, dressed for cold climes, Didz shed his scarf after the second song, but retained his jacket. Carl appeared wearing a tightly zipped and buttoned leather jacket (there’s a sight not seen in some time), but did manage to remove it about half way through, revealing a black T shirt, jeans and the still newish looking red converse. Anthony seems to be sticking to the tartan lumberjack look, and Gary, of course, as ever, was topless from the start.
They opened with the now familiar drama of ‘Buzzards and Crows’, and ploughed through twelve songs with few pauses, returning for three more after a cigarette break (gone are the days when we pretend it’s an encore, now it’s recognised for what it is). The set was:
Buzzards and Crows Wondering Doctors and Dealers Hippy’s Son The Enemy Come Closer (for some reason ‘Mother Fucker’ appears in brackets on the set list after this one) Kicks or Consumption Gin and Milk Plastik Hearts Chinese Dogs (labelled Chinese Hearts on the set list) Gentry Cove
Fag Break
Best Face (the set list reads ‘Blood’ but this was obviously changed during the course of the gig) Bang Bang You Fucking Love It
It was great to hear ‘Come Closer’ and ‘Best Face’ again, and the track listing suggests that we’ll get ‘Blood on My Shoes’ at some point on the tour. Hopefully, ‘Truth Begins’ is only temporarily abandoned – presumably due to a need for ongoing tweaking for the synthesizer which has been rigged up as part of the drum kit. Moreover, it was the first time I’d heard ‘Kicks or Consumption’ live, and as I might have anticipated, it works really well, high energy madness fronted by Anthony and Didz. Once again, I was bowled over by what a brilliant live band they really are – and the small crowd obviously loved it.
As we headed home, I hoped that some of the people lurking at the stage door told them how great they were tonight. All the more so because it would be easy to lose energy with such an under-populated venue. I also hoped that someone would take McGee aside and ask him what he’s playing at. I’m sure there’s lots of complex reasons for tonight’s small turn out, but I fail to understand why the fee is adequate compensation for the lack of promotion for this event, and indeed, the whole tour.
- However, the band has added 4 more dates to the November European tour:
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