Things Involving Cabaret and Sleep Deprivation

Gig review time again! Actually there'll be a few posts over the next few days, as there are plenty of antics that I need to get around to documenting, but let's start with the most recent, shall we?

Now, if you didn't know that my favourite band in the universe is Bauhaus, you don't know me at all. So imagine my excitement this weekend to get a rare chance to see former Bauhaus bassist and all-round clever singer-song-writer (and director and playwright) David J perform solo. He hasn't played the UK in at least ten years, which is a terrible pity because his solo work is incredibly rich and beautiful, ranging from cozily comforting to astutely melancholy to downright heartbreaking. Of course, I've seen him perform with Bauhaus themselves several times, but I certainly wasn't going to miss the chance to see him when his tour reached London.

I rushed out from work, backcombing my hair on the train because, y'know, I can't go to a gig these days unless my hair is puffed out to at least the same size as my waist, and dashed across ol' London town to the Slimelight. I've got to say, I thought Slimes was an odd choice for David to play. Yes, Bauhaus are beloved of goths the world over, and yes he wrote a very witty song about Goth Girls in Southern California but he's not exactly a goth and Slimes is...well, Slimes.  I missed the first support band, who apparently sounded "almost exactly like the Fields of the Nephilim" but arrived just in time to catch the second, a band called Partly Faithful who looked and sounded like an enthusiastic mixture between Gene Loves Jezebel and Christian Death. They weren't amazing but they weren't bad and they did seem to be rather enjoying themselves, which is always nice.

After they finished I took the chance to catch up with some old friends from my days lurking on the bauhausmusik fan forum. It'd been a good few years since I'd seen most of them, so it was nice to see everybody again. Happy memories and all that.

Unfortunately, I was so busy chatting in the smoking area, I missed the first few songs performed by the next act, the fabulous Mister Joe Black. He's a cabaret singer from back home in gloomy Portsmouth (where he hosts a burlesque night in the King's Theatre, and dammit I wish I hadn't managed to keep missing that when I lived there), and like any good cabaret act, his songs are witty, flithy and ever so slightly disturbing. I arrived just in time for a deranged rendition of You Are My Sunshine accompanied by an accordion (I really do like accordions) and gosh, I'd never realised quite how creepy the lyrics of that song are. Anyway, his set was brilliant, musically, it's very dark cabaret, think the Tiger Lilies by way of the Dresden Dolls, only with more off-colour jokes (yes, more off-colour jokes than the Tiger Lilies, that's quite an achievement). I particularly liked the song about murdering your lover if they leave you and the cover of Radiohead's Creep performed on ukulele and kazoo. I bought his latest CD right after the set and I will definitely be looking out for him again, he was absolutely hilarious.


Next it was at last time for David J Haskins to take the stage. Unfortunately, some of the Slimes regulars didn't seem to quite "get" him, and there were some very rude and uncultured individuals chatting through most of the show, which was distracting and rather irritating, at one point promoter Frank Flag had to come onstage and tell them all to shut up. On the plus side, David's work is accoustic enough not to be too badly affected by the dreaded Slimes soundsystem although his ensemble did suffer at one point with problems with the guitar. The ensemble, incidentally, were marvelous too, though at points I have to say it felt weird seeing someone else playing bass on Bauhaus tracks. For the last half a dozen songs a lovely lady (whose name escapes me, sorry) joined them improvising on violin, apparently she had played on the album and happened to be in London. It was a perfect set, with a few gorgeous melancholy tracks from his new album Not Long For This World and plenty of old favourites from throughout his career too. From his solo work we had tracks like I'll Be Your Chauffeur, Crocodile Tears and the Velvet Cosh, and Goth Girls In Southern California (very fitting, methinks), from Love and Rockets we had Rainbird, Dog End of a Day Gone By, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven and, my favourite, No New Tale to Tell, plus a few glorious Bauhaus tracks, All We Ever Wanted and Who Killed Mr Moonlight, which is absolutely one of my favourite tracks of all time and I can't even begin to tell you how happy I was to finally hear it live. David himself was in fine voice despite apparently not being very well and having to rush around trying to sort out his passport, which someone had stolen!

For some reason or other the next show, which had been scheduled for Bristol, had been cancelled, so he was playing a second night in London. I couldn't miss that! So I hopped back on the bus that afternoon and back into London for a "Bauhaus party" in the Purple Turtle in Camden. The venue was sadly all but empty, despite criminally low entrance prices, but on the plus side that meant I could stay right down at the front for the whole show. The first support act were a slightly electronic goth rock band called Das Fluff and they... weren't to my tastes. Thankfully Joe Black was back next with a sparkly hat and more cabaret shenanigans. Well, I say "more", it was the same set as the night before but it didn't matter, I really enjoyed it and there were plenty of new jokes to keep the humour fresh. And funny. Did I mention he was funny? He was very funny. Plus it meant I got to catch the songs I'd missed the night before, including an accordion cover of Sex Bomb by Tom Jones which finished with him felating the microphone.

One very blurry photo of Joe Black. I had a few more photos of him, but the shutter didn't open on the camera properly so they are impossibly dark

And one very blurry, slightly photoshopped photo of Joe Black.  The dark smudge at the top is where the shutter of my camera didn't open. Stupid camera.

David J's set was interrupted with a few more technical hitches, largely because the ensemble had only been given one pickup between them (an oversight which was remedied with the help of one of my friends) and yet more problems with the guitar, leading David to add a bit of "VU dissonance, man". The set itself was pretty much the same as the night before, the only real difference was that some of the songs were played in a different order (perhaps because of the different technical problems) but it was wonderful all the same. David had a few different, interesting asides that night too, but the real treat was the encore. The first encore was a rendition of Bela Lugosi's Dead with added violin and more dissonant guitar (by that point, there was a string hanging from David's guitar, and the violinist's bow was pretty much decimated). The second encore was a suitably cabaret-esque version of The Alabama Song performed with Joe Black, which was completely and utterly fantastic. I do rather miss David's cabaret faze.

And a blurry photo of David J

Ye gods, this one isn't blurry! I didn't take many photos, I was too busy being in awe.

After the show I lurked for a while with a couple of friends who're acquainted with David. I'm making rather a habit of standing around behind people who are chatting to musicians, aren't I? One of these days I will get over this dreadful shyness and actually talk to someone!

Anyway, it was a wonderful weekend and, although I suffered for the lack of sleep at work on Monday, I'm so glad I made it to both shows. I'll leave you with a little clip of Messers Black and Haskins performing the Alabama Song (not taken by me, so it's not blurry!)