Just for the record, I'm not an 'official' recorder of gigs for FDB, DPT or anyone else, just a fan. But I like writing up in the same way some people take pictures or film, and then it seems only right to share...
A Pretty Dirty Tour
Newcastle-Sheffield-Coventry-Nottinham-Bristol-London-Dublin-Belfast-Limerick May-June 2008
I’m sure it was with some trepidation that Dirty Pretty Things contemplated their first tour since late 2006. Eighteen months is a long time in the music business – fans move onto something else, and with no new releases and few gigs to keep their name alive, this run of 15 shows in the UK and Ireland signalled the beginning of their return to the public eye. A warm-up for the long awaited album being released at the end of June. It needed to be good, to recapture their fan base and to generate interest in ‘Romance at Short Notice’. Modest venues, uneven ticket sales and 15 cities in 20 days – a trial by fire. Even some of their most hard core fans were worried on their behalf. Happily that concern was unfounded. This is a band at their best in the midst of the blaze, and they rose to the occasion with a magnificent ferocity, playing night after night of blinding gigs. Of the 9 shows I experienced, varied as they were, there was not one duffer, and there’s every reason to think that the six we sadly missed were as good. They crashed out a bold mixture of old songs and new, performing with the visceral intensity that makes them one of the best live bands around, and giving every indication that the forthcoming album will be a strong, eclectic and a development from Waterloo to Anywhere.
Heading back into the rainy grey of London last night with the Pogues blaring on the ipod it seemed hard to believe it was over. That we had woken up in the morning in Limerick and had spent most of the past three weeks in mad dashes across the UK and Ireland, immersed in magical music and the strange head space that perpetual motion creates. Friends, even those liking the music, thought we were more than a little mad, launching ourselves into such a frenzy of gig going. What about life, and normal, and work? But in a sense that’s the point. Escapism from life and normal and work on a grand scale – as effective as three weeks on a beach, but with added music. It’s another world. Even wedging in work during our days back at home in London didn’t detract from the sense of being elsewhere. Our first night, the band’s fourth, in Newcastle, we had a little chat with Gary after the show, and said ‘see you tomorrow’. ‘Where’s tomorrow?’ He asked, much to our amusement. Ten days later, I fully understood his confusion. Bits of paper with itineraries and bookings are the bible that guide us from place to place rather than a sense of the overall picture.
And yet… part of the joy of the trip is going to places I’ve never been. Visiting Sheffield, where post-industrial decline meets new urban renewal set amongst beautiful country-side, was a delight. Exploring Belfast with its conflict scarred buildings and memorials was a first. Seeing the beautiful countryside around Limerick and revisiting Dublin and Newcastle all added significantly to the experience. The trip also offered great opportunities to connect with friends gathering to see the band from different parts of the country and as far afield as Switzerland and Holland. People met at other gigs in other cities forming friendships through the endless round of pubs and queues and post-gig jollity. A little community. Bonded in enjoying this particular form of escapist madness. And so it must be for the band – just more intensely. That sense of time-between, punctuated by performance, the buzz of the shows, the bonding of such close and insular living. If we’re feeling slightly odd today, they must be completely shell-shocked. Until next week when they head off to Moscow. When it starts all over again.
The last night of the tour was in Limerick. The smallest event of the lot, part of a promotion by Heineken, it wasn’t really the right end to the run of excellent gigs. By rights, it should have been the stomping, wild euphoria of the Astoria, or the dense, happy intimacy of Dublin that punctuated the tour. Instead, we made our way to a quaint pub by the old docks to join a tiny crowd, who’d won free tickets to what was essentially a corporate event. It felt a little anti-climactic. But the band once again did themselves and us proud – as with every night of the tour. They gave their usual 110%, stomping, raw, good natured, high energy, and the audience – as with every other – was totally won over. So maybe it was a fitting ending. If this tour was about being victorious, then the last night was a shining example.
By our first gig in Newcastle the set list had stabilised, after some experimentation in Scotland. They played this collection of songs, with some variation in order, for the rest of the tour. It’s been posted before, but in case you missed that, it was:
Buzzards and Crows
Wondering
Doctors and Dealers
Tired of England
Gin and Milk
Hippy’s Son
Last of the Smalltown Playboys
Chinese Dogs
Gentry Cove
The Enemy
Plastik Hearts
Deadwood
Bloodthirsty Bastards
You Fucking Love it
***
This is Where the Truth Begins
BURMA
Bang Bang
Despite the fact that I gave them a hard time at every opportunity about the absence of Come Closer, Faultllines, The North, Best Face, and the seemingly abandoned Suits Punk Military, it was actually a brave and strong set. Opening with the stunning, menacing build of Buzzards and Crows was a bold move for crowds unfamiliar with the new songs. Punctuating the set with the catchy Tired of England, and the brilliant, stompy Hippy’s Son and returning from the ‘encore’ (fag) break with the beautiful Truth Begins sandwiched between the more familiar material made for a long and well balanced set, juggling the need to introduce new songs to crowds eager to hear the tried-and-tested. Always a delight to hear the crashing notes of Last of the Small Town Playboys and the swooping croon of BURMA, the set finished before the encore with a breathless You Fucking Love it, and the final song of the evening, Bang Bang, predictably winding audiences into a frenzy of leaping and bouncing. And audiences every night were wowed. Chatting to those around us, I talked to loads of people who were seeing DPT for the first time, and every one came away wildly enthusiastic. New fans have been created and old ones energised.
Inevitably, the band offered a myriad of more subtle entertainments. Kieran Leonard (see more below) played keyboards on Truth Begins (aside from Nottingham and Bristol), and for the last bit of the tour he played guitar on Tired of England. Tech-Timmy joined in on percussion for Hippy’s Son most nights. Little band jokes ran through the performances. Carl skipped a beat before coming in with the ‘wooo’ in Plastik Hearts (seemingly now spelled with a ‘K’). Playboys featured an extended pause before the final raucous end, in which Didz perfected a nonchalant lean on the side of the stage before coming in with a stonking base line, with slight variations each night. Lyrics changed too – some deliberately, such as playing around with the Carl-Didz call and response lines of Chinese Dogs (‘you look like a picture… a very bad picture’ to ’if the hat don’t fit ya… it’s never gonna fit ya’ to ‘if the shirt don’t fit ya… it don’t fucking fit ya’ to ‘if the drugs don’t fit ya… they’ll never fucking fit ya’ to an indecipherable mumble in Limerick with a giggled Didz response). The Enemy included the insertion of ‘oh my giddy giddy gosh’. Some lyric changes were clearly less deliberate, such as Carl fumbling with the words to Playboys and looking at Didz for help. Chinese Dogs ended with chaotic frenzy of guitars segueing neatly into Gentry Cove, with a ‘1,2,1,2,3,4’ from Carl (and an oddly timed ‘1, 2, 3… 4’ in Limerick). Carl sang BURMA without guitar, enabling increasingly lewd hand gestures (at the ‘aching wrists’ line) and coy, teasing looks at Didz (‘dirty things you said’ line), and then, presented with a guitar, moved from the song’s wartime croon into post-war rock ‘n’ roll for the ‘who’s got the clap’ ending.
Every night brought its own band dynamic – Carl bouncing across the stage in his shiny new red converse, crashing into Didz and Anthony. Kisses, cuddles and kicks up the arse (Carl to Anthony and Didz) abounded. Didz bestowed the audience with an endless range of smirks, smiles winks and nods. Anthony and Didz engaged in teasing, giggling and nipple-tweaking during the intro to The Enemy, and Anthony lead into Bang Bang with some freeform riffing on the trumpet, eliciting giggles and whispers about Jazz between Didz and Carl in Sheffield and a look from Didz in Limerick that caused Anthony to present him with the trumpet saying, ‘well you fucking do it then’. Jameson was consumed in heroic quantities, and Gary came forward for his ritual bonding with the crowd before the encore break. Songs were introduced randomly (Gin and Milk, Deadwood often ‘here’s one for ya’ - the audience). Plastik Hearts was introduced in London along with Mr. Stanthony Rossamando. In Coventry, Anthony’s mic stand fell over and he continued to sing his part lying flat on the floor to reach the microphone, causing the others to disintegrate into giggles. Every night they proved they could actually remember where they were with a cheery, ‘good evening, Coventry’ (or where ever). Some evenings the band were chattier than others – Coventry, Bristol and Belfast were peppered with much more talk than the other gigs we attended, some of it eliciting a totally blank look from the audience as the distortion of the amplification combined with the Barat on-stage mumble rendered a lot of it completely indecipherable.
And joyously, stage diving made a reappearance after over a year of band-firmly-on-stage performances. Carl dove into the crowd in Sheffield, thwacking his shins on the barrier. And again at the Astoria, where his shirt got so torn and stretched that he discarded it. In Dublin, Carl clearly contemplated a dive but decided against it. In Belfast, Anthony threw himself into the crowd whilst playing the guitar, and Carl made as if to dive but instead jumped, landing on one of the barrier steps from which point he was assaulted by the crowd. Also in Belfast, Gary crawled along behind the barrier and popped up to surprise the audience. The camp lumberjack-look shirts were abandoned and bare chests made the occasional appearance with little of the 2007 bundled up look (scarf, hat, hoodie). It really seemed as if they were having as much of a good time as the audience.
Every night, at the end of the performance, Anthony engaged in an evolving sequence of chaos-creation. Initially this started with setting up guitars to create feedback and then fiddling with the pedals to make the sound reverb. Before long, Didz joined in, lying flat on the floor on Anthony’s spot doing pedal futzing, and in Coventry this progressed to Anthony diving into the drum-kit, and then getting behind the kit and playing, a painful looking procedure repeated in Liverpool (I gather) and Nottingham where he was joined by Didz in drum-diving. Gary and Timmy then took to standing nearby as if to guard against excessive mistreatment of the kit, and by Bristol the drum-surfing had ceased but the drum-playing continued. One night, Carl pushed Anthony on top of Didz into a floor-pedal heap, and several times the whole thing disintegrated into a mess of pushed over mic stands and cymbals.
It wouldn’t be right and proper to end this write up without a word about the support acts. Kieran Leonard opened every show (with the exception of the Dot to Dot Festival dates in Nottingham and Bristol), taking on the unenviable role of playing an early set to a handful of people. This he did with more aplomb and energy than one had any right to expect, and sang a variety of songs accompanied for the most part only by his guitar. He has a rough and characterful voice and the music conveys anger and longing in a satisfying mix. His set included a lovely version of Dylan’s ‘Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol’ and after the Astoria, DPT’s ‘9 Lives’. In Belfast, Anthony and Timmy joined Kieran to do some blues and in London he was accompanied by his band. Check out his myspace.
In Nottingham and Bristol, DPT were preceded by the ever joyous Holloways, whose good spirits make them one of the easiest bands around to like. For most of the tour, however, the band’s main support was a US based California-rock group, Dusty Rhodes and the River Band. A six piece, clearly chosen to ensure that Didz does not feel quite so on his own with facial hair, they played a lively folk-influenced rock with a strongly American feel. Most of those I know were divided between people who really liked them and those who hated them. I fell into the former category, and particularly enjoyed the woman fiddle player and the antics of their Jack-Black-School-of-Rock influenced lead singer. Most nights they played an excellent version of The Band’s great song, The Weight, joined in Sheffield by both Didz and Kieran, whilst Gary stood backstage singing along. On some tours, it is easy to get bored by the support acts, but this time the support was diverse, interesting and well worth getting in early enough to hear.
Different cities have different feel at gigs – it’s interesting – I can’t figure out why that is, and it may just be the particular audience for an individual show, but, for example, I’ve never found a Glasgow crowd to be anything but delightful. On this tour, the audiences in Newcastle and Bristol were particularly nice, enthusiastic but without being aggressive, and the Irish crowds were without exception, lovely. It was good fun talking to people between bands: those who’d never seen DPT before and were ridiculously excited, people who had been to lots of shows, people who’d come with friends. There was a lovely girl I talked to in Dublin and Limerick, and some funny lads in Belfast. It’s really nice how friendly people can be in those situations when it’s crowded, and hot, and there’s a lot of waiting about.
And finally, at the end of this stupidly long ramble, I want to leave you with some of the images that will stick in my head from this collection of shows…
· Anthony busily setting up guitars to make maximum and painful feedback
· Didz lying flat on the floor in the aid of self-same feedback project
· Carl pushing Anthony on top of Didz
· Carl coughing his guts out for the first few gigs, and interspersing his medicinal whiskey with something hot. Said he’d caught a chill in Dundee. And by the middle of the tour had managed to share it with a number of his fans!
· Anthony chatting in the street outside the Bristol event dancing about the whole time he talked in post gig twitchy-ness.
· Carl pouring Jameson down Anthony’s throat
· A myriad of coloured feathers left on the stage by the band before the Holloways at the Dot to Dot events, and then distributed to the audience.
· Didz in a dance-off with a fan at the aftershow in Coventry – and packing it in when the fan demonstrated a bit of rather flash break-dancing.
· Didz and Kieran on stage singing The Weight with Dusty Rhodes with Gary joining in from the wings.
· Anthony playing the drums at the end of some of the sets with Gary and Timmy looking on protectively.
· Anthon, Timmy and Kieran playing the blues in Belfast with Gary in the audience taking pictures.
· Carl being surrounded by a scrum of fans after the show in Belfast, and chatting endlessly, doling out cigarettes and being asked if he was a cigarette machine.
· Carl and Kieran leaning out of window in Limerick showering fanboys with cigarettes, and then Carl coming down and the boys continuing to call for Carl up to the window.
· Carl leading the same group of fans off to the pub with a peremptory ‘come on’ and them all trailing up the street looking ever so much like a teacher with a school trip.
· And last but not least, Carl singing along with Rage Against the Machine in a club in Limerick, looking for all the world like he wants to be a rock star when he grows up.
It’s been an amazing few weeks. And I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. I hope they’ve had as much fun.
June 4th 2008
