It was wet and cold out so...

i put it back in. haha. [that was today's joke]

Then I did this at great expense.

Mark Kozelek is not a bad songwriter. I have heard his recordings and they are nice. Maybe when you listen to stuff on a cd because you are doing other things as well you don't notice stuff that become obvious in a club setting like where he stops a song when people come back from the toilet. Granted the Troubadour toilets entrances are next to the stage and everyone was sitting respectfully so it was obvious when people came back to the room after he had started the song. But really mate, harden up.

Then the AC fan above the stage was annoying him and he asked if it could be turned off. I'm pretty sure to do this the AC in the whole room was turned off cause it started getting real hot about then. He also complained about the spotlight but i don't think anyone heard him. It stayed on.

So he and his friend played a few songs for us and to be honest I don't know his work so I can't say if they were old, new, whatever. People received them pretty much the same; a round of polite applause. They all sounded pretty much the same. The guitar sound was good so you could hear every single fucking note. And there were a lot of them, all different to the one before it but each destined to be repeated many times before the night was over. His voice was less discernible under the reverb and sounded like he was phoning it in from the back room. I understood a few words but have no idea what the songs were about but I assume they involved yearning for something. This is a pastime I have not had the luxury of indulging in for about 35 years now so I'm not a good person to ask really.

After 40 minutes of this I longed for a strum. Television did a whole album and there may very well have been not a single strum but Verlaine and Lloyd didn't play the same lines the whole way through.

The sound guy who knows me and who is with Mark on this tour spotted me on the way in and asked me not to record the show and I was happy to oblige him. From where I was standing and given the vocal sound it would not have come out very well anyway. I needed to be a lot closer but the floor was covered with reclining people. Many of them were females.

You ask why then did I go there if I obviously have a problem with singer songwriters. Actually I don't; just most of them. Last year I saw David Kilgour at the Zoo and he was on his own with a second mic with a delay effect and it was probably one of the best musical experiences I have had ever.

Maybe if Mark sang a song called 'I Wanna Fuck A Man With A Beard' it might have picked up a bit. As it was I didn't make it to the end.

Then I did this for free

So I went over the street to Ric's where it was cool as in not hot. And I listened to The Legend! [Everett True] backed by half of The Young Liberals who did sing a song called 'I Wanna Fuck A Man With A Beard'.

In a performance ranging from blues to acapella renditions of Television Personalities songs with all sorts of DIY and garage sounds in between together with stories of his encounters with famous people set to often improvised music from the guitar and drum of Ben and Dan, this was the perfect antidote to what I had just endured. Hear for yourself.

The Legend! - Live @ Ric's - 24 July 2008 52MB

I had a great time. Spot the improvisation that is actually one of my favourite Pink Floyd songs.