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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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LENE LOVICH
The Underworld, Camden Town, London
August 5th 2006
I always
thought that Lene
Lovich was the bee’s knees, as
nice as ninepence, the cat’s whiskers, A1
at Lloyd’s, the real McCoy, and the mutt’s
nuts. Know what I mean? Jozzer called her “a
load of old codswallop. Ear candy, that’s
all. A nine-day wonder”. Maybe he was right,
because she seemed to exit my musical life almost
as quickly as she entered, leaving me with nothing
but a copy of her first album Stateless, which must
be lying ‘round here somewhere. In fact apart
from those of her tunes that seem to be on the permanent
mega-gigabytes of randomly shuffled music that plays
round my head day and night I’d sort of forgotten
all about her, until I recently saw a much younger
singer on TV somewhere who was clearly trying to
ape her inimitable style. So when I saw the advert
for this gig the die was, as they say, cast in stone.
So
that’s why we’re in this dive of a place
in Camden Town, the Underworld (actually it’s
under a pub), a sleazy Punk and Metal venue, although
tonight it’s devoid of the sleazy rent-a-punks
who normally hang out at Camden Tube station, charging
tourists a fiver to have their picture taken. Indeed
apart from a few clearly disorientated student-visitors,
the fat balding bloke with glasses (the Fan), and
the friends and family of the two rather indifferent
support bands, it’s a pretty sparse and uninteresting
crowd. And uninterested – the Spanish girl
next to me spends the whole night smoking, texting,
and grunting at her boyfriend. Rock and roll!
And
when it said Lene Lovich it should have said Lene
and Les, because she is accompanied by long-standing
partner, co-writer and co-producer Les Chappell,
who supports with keyboards and guitar. No disrespect
to Les, but had it not been for Lene you might have
mistaken them for a Sunday lunchtime pub bar outfit.
But not with Lene. She should know better –
her bus pass can’t be far away, but rather
than slowing down she seems to have camped it up.
And if she’s not clinically insane then I’m
an, err…Englishman. The clothes and bedraggled
bits and pieces are heavier and blacker, her Transylvanian
accent thicker (by the way- she was born in the
USA but brought up in Hull in the UK, a city once,
and perhaps unfairly described, as “the arsehole
of the universe”), her voice richer, her dancing
dafter, and her songs darker. Self parody was never
too far away. It’s a bit like coming across
a pair of Goth pensioners at the Bowls Club. |
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But I have to give the old girl (and Les) credit
– clearly sitting at home watching the National
Lottery show on a Saturday night with a mug of cocoa
is not for them. So instead they give us a mixture
of songs from last year’s Shadows and Dust
album (anyone desperate to buy a copy might care
to drop by the Cancer Research shop in Chiswick
in a week’s time, ‘cos that’s
where mine’s going), at least one that I haven’t
tracked down anywhere, and of course some of the
greatest hits from the Stiff years. It was fantastic.
‘Little Rivers’ from Shadows was a really
good song well performed, on like ‘Bird song’
she used her voice like a Theremin, ‘Wicked
witch’ (also from Shadows) was bonkers, but
how does she dance around like that? And Stateless
classics ‘Sleeping beauty’ and ‘Home
is where the heart is’ were as truthful to
the original as they could be with just one pub
guitar or keyboard, rather than a six piece backing
band. Strangely the worst of the lot was encore
‘Lucky number’, the ‘Ooh ah,ah
ooh’ (or was it ‘Ah ooh, ooh ah’?)
song which propelled her to fame. But by that time
we were enjoying ourselves too much to care. You
know sometimes you just have to suspend your critical
faculties and say “respect”. Lene and
Les, I honour performance, and I honour your performance,
and may you never stop. - Nick Morgan (photographs
by Kate) |
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the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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