Maps Prove Useful

Part Two of a Set of Three reviews from the Summer Sundae Weekender 2007.

Summer Sundae Weekender, DeMontfort Halls And Gardens, Leicester, Saturday August 11 2007.

Meander back onto the site about lunchtime feeling a little dehydrated after the previous night's alcohol consumption, so crack open a thirst-quenching but credibility-crushing can of Tango in the belief that there's no-one around to see and tell. On turning around, however, immediately bump into Simon who talks intelligently about music while your hoarse hack tries to avert his gaze from my childish choice of soft drink.

Manage to chug it all down before Ray and Deb arrive on site, and we stroll off to see The Falling Leaves on the Indoor Stage, who have their moments, and recall The Kissaway Trial here and there, but in general are as familiar and slightly depressing as the season of autumn itself. Some sunshine is in order then (have we mentioned yet this is the best festival weather of the year so far?) to catch the first few songs of teenage prodigies Kitty Daisy and Lewis who play with (and indeed, in the style of) their parents. It's pastiche, but done with style and gusto, and in the light of Amy Winehouse's success, you can't argue there's not a market for this sort of thing. Even so, your wandering writer slopes off to see whether The Lea Shores have finally started their slot over on The Rising stage. They hadn't (a last-minute switch to the Indoor Stage on Sunday, we later learn) so console ourselves with the warblings of Jeremy Warmsley a personable young man in search of that singularly defining tune, whose new material betrays a vaguely alarming ambition to be the British Rufus Wainwright. Jez, leave it.

Grab some food at this point and bump into The Prykemeister, but can't hear a lot of what he's saying because Jazz Jamaica are proving to be the loudest band on the main stage we can ever remember. Turn it down, grandads, or the overflying pigeons will be history! Peek back into the Indoor Stage to see recently-reformed indie veterans Cud try manfully to cope with the absence of their lead singer on premature parental leave by seeking volunteers from the crowd to take turns to sing ditties like 'Rich and Strange'. Simon Cowell, if he was here, would no doubt call it a shambles, and maybe it is, but it's an entertaining one nonetheless which seems to help bond the watching crowd.

Enjoy a quick pint with Ray and Deb before wandering down near the front of the Main Stage where former Arab Strap-ling Malcolm Middleton has just started his set. At our first Summer Sundae two years ago, Malcolm was one of the big hits on the Indoor Stage and, with the usual sizeable Scottish contingent present, it's a deserved elevation to the Main Stage to help promote his third (rather good) album 'A Brighter Beat'. Middleton breaks off at one point to say 'I didn't realise I swore so much...fuckin 'ell!' before eventually revealing the title of the next track, the rather-sweet-actually 'Fuck It I Love You'. Post-rock tinged celtic folk never sounded so good!

Back up to the Rising Stage to catch latest Mancunian hopefuls The Whip here to represent the Nu Rave movement for Summer Sundae. Not entirely sure about Nu Rave over at Parallax View although the Klaxons cover of 'It's Not Over' may be the thing that tips us over the edge into its favour in a kind of indie kerplunk fashion. Early doors The Whip seem a bit drippy but a steady swirl of sauce soon permeates proceedings and by the tremendous last number it's the moment the Summer Sundae turned DayGlo. Later find out they've been tipped as the new New Order, if had been aware of this before seeing them would have been disappointed, but taken on their own terms they're one of the revelations of the weekend. Indeed, the drummer seems so pleased with the crowd response she apparently flashes the bassist in celebration - it's good to see a rhythm section getting on so well.

The two big choices of the night were Maps vs Wild Beasts and Sophie Ellis Bextor vs Low. Dead Kenny opts for the co-ordinated ones and (sorry, No.1 Low fan Ben) S-E-B. Had heard reports that Maps were struggling to recreate the excellent debut We Can Create in the live arena, but on the contrary this was one of the highlights of the weekend for PV, genuinely mesmerising stuff with Eloise and It Will Find You the most vivid highlights. Sophie Ellis-Bextor divides the crowd in terms of how much is pre-recorded or not, but nobody could deny her entertainment value, alternating between chic and gauche with amusing regularity, and she can still twitch her tush to devastating effect. Enough anyway, to district your starstruck scribe from the sight of Kitty and Daisy of Kitty, Daisy and Lewis sat directly to our right.

Watch the first few numbers from The Magic Numbers but once they've performed 'Forever Lost' we make a move towards the Indoor Stage to see !!!, meeting the gaze of Kitty and Daisy again as they sit on the steps looking on (later discover they join The Magic Numbers for some of their encores). !!! have the cocky fucker from OutHud (remember them?) as their lead singer and he's in typically extrovert form during a frenetic show during which many people seem to be enjoying themselves immensely, even if we're not sure how many of 'em will remember much about it in the morning.

Try to meet up again with Ray and Deb in the Cocktail Bar, where your
confused correspondent thinks he spies the DJ Trevor Nelson. The doppelganger mistakes my perusal for some other enquiry and sidles over to me and says 'everyone seems to be having a good time, brother, whaddaya reckon?'. Not sure whether he thought your harmless hack was after a fight, a fuck or a score, but time for an f. sharp exit, a timeous text message leading the way to a rendezvous at the indie disco in The Charlotte. A couple of hours of twisting and shouting to the latest indie faves later, your duracell dunderhead still hasn't had enough and heads for the hotel bar for a double whisky and to check the football highlights.

My dazed reverie is however interrupted by a familiar cackle. Who should be lounging in the hotel with friends but the esteemed Mancunian punk-poet John Cooper-Clarke! If seeing him once meant we'd done good, and seeing him twice meant we'd done very very bad, what does seeing him three times mean? On that inscrutable enigma, retire to bed.

to be continued...

Rising Tent Pole

Part One of a Set of Three reviews from the Summer Sundae Weekender 2007.

Summer Sundae Weekender, DeMontfort Hall and Gardens, Leicester, Friday August 10th 2007.

Mebbe your cine-literate correspondent has seen Mulholland Dr. too many times but the night afore Summer Sundae Weekender starts, have a dream in which Mancunian punk-poet John Cooper-Clarke advises that if we see him over the weekend once we'll know we've done good, but if we see him twice we'll know we've done very very bad. Things continue in an ominous vein next day with a freight train derailment between Birmingham and Leicester cancelling all trains in that direction, the replacement coach passes a caravan that has just exploded into fire, and the driver and guard for the connecting train at Nuneaton get held up in the resulting jam.

So arrive in Leicester approximately 90 minutes behind schedule, but still with enough time for a quick shower at the hotel before heading on to the site, where we catch the tail end of some plinkety-plonkety synth-pop from Palladium another band seemingly convinced that what the world needs now is another Kajagoogoo, or in their better moments, another Flock Of Seagulls. Thankfully, some real proper chart pop stuff is about to start off on the main stage in the form of Kate Nash. With Kate's album due to top the album charts later this weekend, there's a backlash brewing for the bespoke boho brunette for sure, but it's one your balanced blogger won't be joining, because we still think she's lovely. Claims that she's just a Lily Allen knock-off are lazy and misguided, although 'Mariella' does sound like the Regina Spektor schtick given an EC1 lick of dayglo paint. It's a good show, not a great one (in the same way her album's entertaining but not fabulous) equal parts sweary and playful, and each generation deserves a break-up(?) song delivered to them in their own language and this year that's 'Foundations' and we don't begrudge her those fifteen minutes of dodging the paps.

A new innovation this year on site is a 'Hub Stage' next to the 6Music caravan, and we're treated to a couple of poems from John Cooper-Clarke and a brief but amusing interview between him and Steve Lamacq, where they stick to a 'script' to eliminate the swearing risk, and JCC advises with mock-weariness that he's been 'supporting The Fall all my life'. Your post-Britop pen-pusher always had a bit of a soft spot for The Beta Band but is afraid to report that spin-off satellite band The Aliens are nothing out of this world, so drift back to the 6Music caravan where your garrulous guide distracts Simon from getting an autograph from Kate Nash with the usual blogging blether.

Simon suggests a trip up to the Musician Stage to see the full John Cooper-Clarke set, and caught up in blogging bonhomie follow him in to the packed tent for an entertaining half-hour of the same jokes he always tells, interspersed with a few poems here and there. Take a call on the Parallax Phone towards the end of the set, so regrettably have to leave the marquee and so miss his Beasley Street remix. Fortunately, however, it does get me down to the Main Stage in time to see The Concretes your hopeful hack's first experience of seeing them in the flesh since Victoria Bergsman's exit. Erstwhile drummer Lisa Millberg has taken up the lead vocal reins, her singing is a dusky, drowsy, acquired taste (she'd have made a great foil for Serge Gainsbourg) but she makes an effort with bright red knee-length stockings and copious flirting with guitarist Maria Eriksson, despite a mixed response from a crowd seemingly expecting a 'best of' set rather than a platform for promoting new record 'Hey Trouble'. Lisa wants us all to move on from the Bergsman period, and that may well prove a struggle but if they continue writing songs of the calibre of 'Oh Boy' and 'Keep Yours' it may yet prove a worthwhile campaign, with 'Hey Trouble' for our money their most consistently rewarding record to date.

Shoot quickly off to the Indoor Stage to see Candie Payne who kindly plays all our favourites from debut platter 'I Wish I could Have Loved You More' (including the rather swish title track) during the first half of her set, allowing the opportunity to hotfoot it to the Rising stage to catch the last few songs from The Modified Toy Orchestra still bedecked in the same Primark suits as Supersonic, and with plentiful supply of banter, Toy Orchestra conductor Brian Duffy inviting one member of the audience to an anal sex experience after the show to show him/her how forbidden it wasn't. Bump into The Prykemeister after the performance, and a minute later get a call from Ray and Deb to say they've finally made it on site. Beers and banter ensue, with our last musical memories of the night involving Dead Kenny doing a spot of pole dancing - no, not what you're thinking, just your clumsy correspondent doing his best to co-ordinate shifting one foot to the other during a surprisingly funky latenight set from German experimentalists Pole in The Rising Stage.

To be continued...

Feeding Frenzy

In no way a method of prevaricating further before delivering our Summer Sundae Weekender review, and in no particular order, let the linkdumping commence -

Page2RSS.com will create an RSS feed for this site so Dead Kenny won't have to. It's not hard work, just put the URL in the box provided and they will let you know whenever PV is updated. (info kindly provided by Pete Ashton.)

LiveJournal Community for people to share photographs of Abandoned Places. Wonder if LiveJournal counts as an abandoned place itself these days?

Unedited transcript of interview between authors Toby Litt and JG Ballard.

Birmingham's Pub Toilet Halls Of Shame And Fame.

Cronenberg's Eastern Promises to open London Film Festival on October 17. (trailer can be viewed here.)

Former West Ham player Jeroen Boere dies aged 39.

Cold War Quiz. The world seems to fall around your ears if you anything wrong. Is that how it felt for JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Another quiz, this time asking How Manky Are You?.

Sheffield's Letters and Colours have seemingly been washed away in the rain.

And finally...Telford thieves think big. That's really a haul of shame (via Phill).

August Journal

When Michele decided to desert us to travel to the end of the earth known as New Zealand one thing we made absolutely clear was that we'd never ever forget her birth-D'OH! Erm, happy birthday Michele for Monday just gone. And to Dave and Nadean for earlier this month, too. Also, if we remember correctly it's also birthday week this week for Phill and Robyn. If there's anyone not mentioned, don't think of it that I've forgotten, just consider it an opportunity to be proactive and give yourself a good old shout-out in the comments box below.

Sheesh, I know too many Leos. Going to have to put a lion bar on future acquaintances, for sure.

How Are Things In The West Mids?

Interpol, Carling Academy, Birmingham, Monday August 20 2007.

With the autumn of 2007 nibbling at our ankles and chafing our necks, it's perhaps time for those of us with nothing more productive to do to consider who is likeliest to emerge as the finest rock band of the decade. In which case, looking further than Interpol may prove futile. Almost exactly five years on from when their debut was released in the UK, they have now released three albums unrivalled by contemporaries in terms of dark, rich musical textures and lyrical loopiness combining to compelling, addictive effect.

So unless tonight support act The Maccabees decide to arrest their chemistry, Interpol look set to handcuff themselves to destiny and leave British contenders like Arctic Monkeys looking like feeble chancers in comparison. In defence of The Maccabees your chaotic correspondent arrives late in the venue and spends time chatting to the StrangeTime ensemble and Andrew from post-rock outfit Cellar Door rather than visually checking them out, but from what we hear their best songs sound like Interpol but just not quite as good, while their other songs rarely ascend above generic post-britpop indie. In further defence, however, the crowd seem to love 'em.

And what an assembled crowd it it is. Last time your hopeful hack saw Interpol at this very same venue some three years ago it was reasonably easy to get near-ish to the stage albeit from the sides but tonight we're rammed right at the back. Further away we may be, but it has to be said that the sound quality is much improved upon from that 2004 gig when the band finally hit the stage after what seems an interminable wait.

The set, when it comes, has a fairly even spread of material across the three albums, although the bulk of material from the debut is saved for the three closing songs. It's perhaps surprising that only five tracks from the newie 'Our Love To Admire' make the setlist (There's No I In Threesome, All Fired Up and Wrecking Ball all missing the cut), but this could be explained by the fact that it's effectively a warm-up gig before the Carling Festivals shows in Reading and Leeds this upcoming weekend.

What's left, however, sounds tremendous, from the tense opener 'Pioneer To The Falls' through the ominous coda of 'Mammoth' to the now-anthemic brace of 'Antics' favourites - 'Slow Hands'; 'Evil' and 'Not Even Jail'. It's slightly disconcerting to see these troubled and troubling songs being accompanied by a stunning striplight show and greeted with terrace-style chanting and partytime handclaps, and for sure if they continue at this rate of progress Interpol are heading for the (gulp) arena circuit for too long. Perhaps that's a fate befitting the decade's best rock band, however, and there's no doubt they're a group on top of their form right now, with a sound as hard, precise and powerful as titanium thunderbolts to the heart.

The effects of the show linger on long after the lights go up, as an hour later at New Street Station a radiant redhead fan is heard to gasp that her 'knickers are still wet'. Given that they apparently reduced Kate to tears the first time she saw them, it's clear that Carlos D & Co. have developed a surefire knack for distantly stimulating feminine fluids that your befuddled blogger and other mere mortals can only dream of.

FYI: Both Chris Maher from StrangeTime and Andrew from Cellar Door went to school with the bass player from Beestung Lips! (recently signed to Southern Recordings, no doubt encouraged by our rave review of their Supersonic show). So now Papa's Got A Brand New Gig Blag, just say on the door that you were in the same class as the Beestung Lips! bassist and you too will be able to enter the possibly sinister world of the Second City's secret musical society. Our investigations into these matters to be continued...

Why Make A Simpsons Movie? D'Ough!

The Simpsons Movie, Odeon Telford, Sunday August 19 2007, 8.15pm.

First off, let's make it clear your cool-on-cartoons correspondent is no Simpsons obsessive. Have laughed along to many a show, and would generally concur it's one of the landmark programmes of our era, but when pubtalk moves to matching gags to particular episodes your huffy hack will quickly look to shift it back to music, football or girls. Yet in what seems a weak summer season, The Simpsons Movie appeared to offer the most palatable blend of brainfood and pop(culture)corn on the multiplex menu.

Belly-laughs start early with an inspired Itchy and Scratchy toon that sets the tone for a satisfying stirfry of slapstick and subversion, although the laugh-o-meter settles down to a steady stream of chucklesome moments without quite ever spilling over into wet-your-pants hilarity. The storyline quite comfortably reaches the running time without feeling like an over-long episode but there's a softer centre to proceedings than usual and a slight tendency to sentimentality probably explained by the need to pander to a broader audience taste than normal.

Most disappointing, perhaps, is that the linear plotline doesn't allow for meatier subplots concerning the fantastic range of supporting characters that have built up over the series. Having typed that, the Simpson movie of my dreams, that would owe as much to Altman and Pynchon than Hanna and Barbera in its holistic and hilarious debunking of a corrupt age, would never get made, let alone released, despite the potential hinted at during some of the best episodes over the years. And so, we're left with the best Simpsons movie we could hope for that would also earn over 100 million bucks at the box office, a pretty good way to spend 90 minutes without ever approaching the greatness of landmark cinematic toons like Toy Story or The Incredibles.