Thursday, Mar. 10, 2005 - 12:59 p.m.
I've got a message for you I've got a message
Right so last night was part two in a series of two gig visits. The main feature at the barfly was Thom@s Dybdahl, who is a talented Norwegian dude, who's won Norway's top music prizes and has number one albums there. I know the country will never excel past what A-Ha achieved but he comes pretty close. There's even a keyboard! He and his 5-strong band were all sporting attractively tailored suits and occasional goatees and looked like extras from Reservoir Dogs*. My favourite after Thomas was the guy playing the xither or vibraphone or whatever it was. He held a fag in the side of his mouth, smiled attractively, and waggled a silver thing over some wires in a way that was rather sexually provocative from where I was standing.Lyric of the night: Stay home, I won't do you no fucking harm.
Erm, well if you talk like that, Thomas, I think I will be going out tonight after all...
* This is obv wrong as it was only the non-extras who wore the suits and the extras wore plain clothes.
But wait, the support were marvellous too! Both Australian bands. The first, Sarah Bl@sko was an interesting melange of: the voice of Emiliana T0rrini and also that bird from Swedish-band-you-can't-google-for, The St@ndards(almost identically, but that's certainly no bad thing, in fact quite a good thing), the look of M@ggie Gylenhaal in Secretary:
M@ggie Gylenhaal, yesterday
...and danced like a mannekin-cum-Debbie Harry. Interesting. Good.
But then I really loved The Gr@tes, also Australian, but only 3 people - drums, guitar, voice - and fantastically loud, bumpy, garage/beaty and fun. They are appaz from Queensland, which I understand isn't a very cool place to be from, and, well, while they sounded brilliant, they looked a bit mishmashy. Their drummer girl looked like she was taking a sabbatical from a Chemistry degree, the guitarist was actually quite hott in a youngish way, and the singer ... she was irresistably happy and incredibly pogo-bouncey, and she had an ultra-short cute green 60ish dress on and cute shoes (from Top Shop, I'm sure) but her hair looked like she'd had an accident with a perming machine. She managed to pull it off more or less because of her boundless enthusiasm and grrrreat voice, but I couldn't help but be reminded of Suzanne from Grange Hill.
Suzanne Ross, yesterday