Photo: Julio Enriquez (File)
My review of Ben Kweller’s gig at Koko from last Friday night is up at the Vault today. I must admit, I’d listened to his latest album ‘Changing Horses’ only a couple of times right through before the gig - I just don’t like country, and on initial listens it just seemed to be your standard country fare. But live, it didn’t seem like that at all and I’ve been listening to the album almost constantly since. His live show is where he really shines though.
The question of what is next for Kweller is an intriguing one, but for now it’s clear he’s a musician at the peak of his powers. Even if his mid-stream switch to the country horse isn’t your thing, his live show probably will be.
The full review is here.
I’ve been trying to keep up with some of the ABC’s programs while I’ve been over here, as a way of staying in touch with news from back home: Insiders is great for politics and Offsiders for sport, and both of those shows are available to watch via a flash player on their respective websites. There’s no IP blocking at all based on location.
That free-for-all doesn’t extend to ABC iView, however - the Aussie version of the BBC’s incredibly successful iPlayer. Perhaps a condition of using the distinctly Apple-like product name, both products use strict location blocking: when I was back in Australia over summer I couldn’t watch BBC programs, and now vice versa.
This hasn’t really bothered me up until this past week, when it emerged 4 Corners - the only current affairs program worth its salt in Australia - was to do an expose of sorts on the bad behaviour of rugby league players. My club, the Newcastle Knights, featured prominently in the documentary (partly in a positive light, from what I gather) and so I was keen to see the doco that had Twitter going mad on Monday night.
But unlike usual, the program wasn’t available for viewing on demand and can only be watched through iView. Or, as the ABC put it, “For legal reasons, this report will only be available on the free internet broadcasting service, ABC iView.”
So I used the medium that Oprah endorses, Twitter, to ask the Managing Director of the ABC Mark Scott for clarification. Alas, I just got a reply from another ABC employee telling me nothing I didn’t already know - “we can’t provide as vod for legal reasons”. There has been no reply to my further enquiries about just what this legal reason is.
Does anyone have any idea? Could it open up the possibility of defamation actions in other countries? It just seems strange to me that if something is fit for broadcast in Australia legally, involving all Australian league players, why there’d be a legal concern about showing it elsewhere. I’m half expecting it to pop up on torrent sites anyway…
(On a related note, Channel 9 isn’t using any IP blocking on Matthew Johns’ interview with A Current Affair overnight.)
Photo: paigekparsons (file)
One of the things I am loving about living in London is the sheer amount of gigs on that I actually want to attend. Thanks to the incredibly handy Last.Fm event recommendation service, it’s easy keeping track of when artists I listen to a lot are coming to town - so rarely a few weeks go by without me attending a gig somewhere. It certainly makes a nice change from living in Brisbane.
Anyway, one such man that I’d long wanted to see was Andrew Bird - possibly the most eclectic and multi-talented musician that I know of. If asked to categorise him I wouldn’t really know where to start, though Wikipedia offers “Indie rock, folk rock, baroque pop” as genres. But even that doesn’t come close to capturing the unique artist that Bird is: most tracks include more than a bit of Bird whistling, plenty of violin and usually at least one or two words to have you diving for the dictionary.
That strange combination had me eagerly anticipating his live show, when I first saw him at a church in central London late last year in a solo gig. He used plenty of looping - recording guitar riffs, then a violin line, then singing - to make it sound like he wasn’t alone on stage. He debuted plenty of material from the then-unreleased Noble Beast, including one song that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end:
When I saw Bird was due to play in London again, about six months after the St Giles show, I was hesitant; after all, he’d already played plenty of tracks from Noble Beast last time. But in the end I couldn’t resist heading to the Shepherds Bush Empire, based on a hunch that it would be worth experiencing Bird live with a full backing band. I was right: it was an entirely different - and even better - experience seeing Bird with a three-piece as support.
I was hoping to hear a lot of the earlier material he’d neglected at St Giles (I still think The Mysterious Production of Eggs is his best album) and he didn’t disappoint: A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left (he claimed his “nervous energy” forced him to play it, despite it not being on the set list), Opposite Day and the sublime Cataracts all made appearances.
The one I was really hoping for was Fake Palindromes and, when it eventually came, it did not disappoint. The explosion of crowd energy as Dr Stringz morphed into FP (similar to below) was just stunning.
I think Bird is destined to remain the under-appreciated gem of indie (baroque) rock (though he did go close to selling the Empire out, just six months after his last visit), and his stage show is incredibly captivating. When listening to his records, it’s easy to forget just how multi-talented this man is.
The next time Andrew Bird is in London, I won’t hesitate to buy a ticket. Nor should you.
Rating 9.5/10