World Shut Your Mouth
A lot of people seem to go to gigs to hear the headline act, but nothing more (not to mention those who don't seem to go to hear the music at all?) I'm always keen to hear the support, especially if I've never heard of them as you never know what you'll find.
And so I found myself at the front of the stage in SUB89 waiting for Tom Hickox to take to the stage. Never heard of him or heard anything by him, so looking forward to hear what he does.
As the hour of 8pm arrived, he took to the stage and seated himself behind a large electric piano, joined by Sam Grimley on various guitars.
From his opening number, I was struck by his voice - he really has presence on stage. For the first song or two I just thought, 'yeah, he sounds OK, but...', and wasn't really drawn in. A couple of songs had great stories behind them, and his spoken intros to 'The Lisbon Maru' and 'The Dubbing Artist' were intriguing. The song that really landed for me, though, was 'White Roses Red', the lyrics have an intense passion behind them and sung in a similar vein.
Despite being a fan of his solo work, The Teardrop Explodes, not to mention his books on Krautrock, Japanese rock, and his 'expedition into the Rock 'n Roll Underworld' titled 'Copendium', I'd not seen Julian live before tonight.
He has a new album due out shortly, titled 'Self Civil War', after a poem by Reverend Roger Brearley in the late-1630s, a poem which Julian feels sums up the current state of politics (though it was written at the time of the cavaliers and roundheads).
Given the imminent new album, from which I'd already heard a couple of songs, I was half expecting a set drawn largely from it. As it turned out this wasn't what we got, instead he performed songs from 'Kilimanjaro' (the first Teardrop Explodes album) through to 'Self Civil War' and many of the band and solo albums in between.
Julian took to the stage dressed entirely in black, excepting the USAF peaked cap which forms his standard stage wear these days with shades, black short-sleeved hoodie, shorts and leather boots.
Apart from one number, it was Julian solo, on guitars and effects pedals. Opening with 'Soul Desert', not the Can song of the same name, rather a song from the album 'Jehovakill', Julian's set covered loads of audience favourites. The between-song chats and intros were by turns captivating and amusing - he has a great line in stories.
Set highlights were 'They Were on Hard Drugs', 'The Culture Bunker', 'Sunspots', 'The Immortal' and the one song using keyboards, 'The Great Dominions', in which he was accompanied by Chris Holman on keyboards too.
One song, the now-legendary, though unrecorded, live favourite, 'Cunts Can Fuck Off', was another highlight, worked especially well in the one-man format.
The full set list was as follows:
Soul Desert
Your Facebook My Laptop
The Greatness & Perfection of Love
Autogeddon Blues
They Were on Hard Drugs
The Culture Bunker (The Teardrop Explodes song)
Drink Me Under the Table
The Great Dominions (The Teardrop Explodes song)
Cunts Can Fuck Off
Immortal
Passionate Friend (The Teardrop Explodes song)
Sunspots
Treason (The Teardrop Explodes song)
Pristeen
Out of My Mind on Dope & Speed
Encore:
World Shut Your Mouth
He told a similar, if edited, version of this tale before singing the aforementioned 'Cunts...' song, on the night. (The song begins at around 6mins 11secs in!)
Watching him perform, I realised he is essentially a largely unknown National Treasure. His work on stone circles captured in books and on the website The Modern Antiquarian. All his musicology captured in 'KrautRockSampler', 'JapRockSampler' and the aforementioned 'Copendium', which champions outsider and left-field music. His autobiography 'Head-On / Repossessed' and his novel 'One Three One (A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel'. Then of course there is the music - the two great albums with 'The Teardrop Explodes' and all the solo albums and collaborations - so many, I've lost count. I reckon we are lucky to have him.
There has to be a playlist covering the set, though the Spotify version is pretty sparse - many of his solo albums are not available online, and of course then there is the unrecorded song 😇 (Not only that, neither of the songs from his new album are available yet, given it's not officially released yet (though it was on sale at the gig 😀))
There has to be a playlist covering the set, though the Spotify version is pretty sparse - many of his solo albums are not available online, and of course then there is the unrecorded song 😇 (Not only that, neither of the songs from his new album are available yet, given it's not officially released yet (though it was on sale at the gig 😀))
First off a YouTube playlist of the set...
>
...then the rather shorter Spotify version...
Comments
Post a Comment