| |
Whiskyfun
Home
(Current
entries)
Concert
Review
Index
(All Reviews
Since 2004)
Leave
feedback
 |
Copyright
Nick Morgan and crew
|
|
|
Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
|
 |
AMY WINEHOUSE Shepherd’s Bush Empire,
London
February 2nd, March
9th, May 29th 2007 |
 |
Third
time lucky, or so they say, but it doesn’t
quite feel like it up here on the second floor of
a packed and sweaty Shepherd’s Bush Empire.
Amy
Winehouse is over thirty minutes late
and the audience don’t like it – booing,
foot stamping and all that stuff. Some of the out-of-towners
are audibly worried about buses and trains home.
Some of the younger girls around us (in this highly
diverse audience) are taking a tip from their heroine
and simply getting plastered – her hit single
‘Rehab’ has become something of an anthem
for them and their like. But hang on – Amy’s
not thirty minutes late, she’s over three
months late. |
| This
gig should have been on 2nd February, but Ms Winehouse
postponed. It was rescheduled for 9th March and
by the skin of my teeth, I made it to the Bush from
Scotland to meet closed doors. Amy had broken a
tooth “following a fall” was the excuse,
but as tabloid pictures showed, it didn’t
stop her from buying wine at Sainsbury’s or
boozing in Camden Town pubs. Hot gossip was that
she’d split up with her beau. Tonight’s
hot gossip – there’s a lot of gossip
about Amy - is that she has just married her beau
(no – not that one, but the other one from
before, who apparently inspired most of the songs
on her fantastic album Back to Black). So what?
This time it’s been a ferry, car and plane
ride from Islay (and horror of horrors, no dinner)
to get here on time. On time? Maybe I’m just
getting old-fashioned. |
| A
few minutes later, Amy totters out onto the stage
and as you might imagine everything is immediately
forgiven. It’s a nightclub set-up: ruched
curtains, satin-shaded standard lamps and red carpet.
Amy’s dressed for the part (as are her dark
suited nine-piece band) in a tiny dress, her crown
of dark hair tumbling down her tattooed and scarred
arms (self-harming apparently). Her legs are painfully
thin. Her heels dangerously high. And she’s
on a high too. Sir Elton, who was here last night
with David (there’s a Gallagher on the other
side of the balcony tonight – Noel I think,
and a Weller too) proclaims her “the world’s
most talented female singer”. She’s
just won an Ivor Novello award (her second) for
the self-penned ‘Rehab’ and she also
picked up the Brit Award for Best British Female
Artist – pipping little Lily Allen at the
post (much to the delight of many). Lily, you may
like to know, has struck back by putting a lot of
whine into her grotesquely self-indulgent and self-regarding
Myspace blog – “fat, ugly and shitter
than winehouse” she wrote recently. But back
to Amy – she’s tipped for just about
every prize that’s going this year, and of
course, like I said, she’s just got married.
Sadly, the
latest gossip is that after only a month it’s
not going too well – as Ms Winehouse wrote,
‘Love is a losing game’. |
| What
with those legs, and those shoes, Amy doesn’t
too a great deal of moving (it’s a sort of
inhibited shimmy with exotic hand movements), except
that is to curtsey painfully (remember the skirt?)
to pick up one of two glasses by her monitors. In
one, an ever-replenished supply of red wine and
in the other, something that looked like Lemsip.
She’s got a bit of a throat, or as she explains
after singing the Zutons’ ‘Valerie’,
“Me voice is going all shitty”. Actually
that’s about as eloquent as Ms Winehouse got
in the speaking stakes. Every attempt at communication
ended in a faded barely articulate mumble. She did
manage to introduce us to dad (on the right of the
first balcony), and hubby (on the left of the first
balcony), and ‘my girls’, who are up
there squeaking and squealing with hubby. Hubby,
by the way, gets lots of waves, kisses and long
languid looks – it’s sometimes as though
the audience isn’t there. She talks a little
about the songs, which could be interesting, but
it all ends up getting lost in the Norf London mumble
– “this song’s about, well, I
dunno, oh fuck it…” Shame. I’d
like to know how a little girl (figuratively) can
write such complex and grown up songs. Yes, they’re
probably very self-focussed in terms of content
but the structure is immensely mature and sophisticated.
That comes across even more when you hear the stuff
being performed live by a very accomplished band.
|
 |
| It’s
almost too good, and it makes me wonder what happened
between 2004 after the release of her first album
Frank and the release of Back to Black at the end
of 2006 – did she sell her soul to the devil
at the Golders Green and Finchley Road crossroads? |
|
Throat problem or not Ms Winehouse’s voice
is a pretty remarkable thing, and she excels on
songs such as ‘Back to black’, ‘Tears
dry on their own’, and ‘Me & Mr
Jones’. And who could imagine having songs
like ‘Rehab’ and ‘You know I’m
no good’ (with its deliciously aromatic, if
not botanical lyric, “sniffed me out like
Tanqueray”) at the age of 23? It’s great
stuff, and what Ms
Winehouse lacks - particularly movement - is
made up for by her band and the two singer/dancers
who barely stop dancing all night. Pity that it
ends with a great song (the Maytals’ ‘Monkey
Man’) poorly executed, but maybe her voice
had given up by then. Booing and jeering long forgotten,
an exhilarated audience made their way happily home
across Shepherd’s Bush Green. I certainly
wouldn’t have missed this for anything –
not any means of transport you care to mention –
but I still couldn’t help thinking that three
months was just a bit too long to make me wait.
- Nick Morgan (photographs by Kate) |
Check
the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
|
|
|
|
|
There's nothing more down there... |
|
|
|
|
