Why Top 5? Why not a Top 10? As a lapsed Discordian I was going to knock out a rather elaborate, mind-bending explanation based on the ‘Law of Fives’ (which, according to Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! Trilogy, claims that everything in the universe can be connected to the number five if you try hard enough), but that looked too much like hard work.

Instead, I’ll just tell you the truth: I opted for a Top 5 because I didn’t go to very many gigs in 2008.

Five of ‘em, though, were fucking awesome…

5. Bearsuit, Latitude Festival 2008 – Pete Ashton introduced them to me in 2007 when I saw them play at Birmingham’s Sunflower Lounge, and their Latitude set was great fun. They’re tremendously silly, ridiculously catchy and highly recommended. Jupiter Force, indeed.

4. Foo Fighters, Wembley Stadium, 7th June 2008 – I mentioned it in passing here, here and here but never got around to writing a proper review. Oh, well. I’ve never been what you might call a Foo Fighters fan; I have, however, always been an unrepentant Led Zeppelin fan. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones surprise guest appearance on stage – and their storming rendition with Grohl & Co of Zep classics Rock and Roll and Ramble On – made this a gig to remember.

The Foo Fighters were quite superb, too.

3. Buzzcocks, Latitude Festival 2008 Sweaty, sticky, stomping fun in a marquee at 2am isn’t everyone’s idea of a good time. It’s my idea of a good time and I wrote about it here.

2. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Birmingham Carling Academy, 5th May 2008;
Grinderman, Latitude Festival 2008 I’m cheating a bit, here – I suppose this should be two separate entries – but this is my list so my rules rule. I wrote about the former here and the latter there.

1. Tom Waits, Le Grand Rex Paris, 24th July 2008 – No shit, Sherlock. A bit of a foregone conclusion, this. A Tom Waits gig will always, by definition, be the the gig of the year. That’s just the way it is.

I attempted a reconstruction of the gig here.

Top 10 Films of 2008 to follow.

I’ll eventually get around to writing a proper review of what will almost inevitably end up as My Favourite Gig of 2008. Yes, I know it’s only August and I shouldn’t be writing the rest of my year off already, but this was a Tom Waits concert, Goddamn it! It’d take something pretty spectacular to knock it off pole position. I suppose a surprise birthday festival in my living room might do the trick, but only so long as the organisers manage to get Jimi, Janis, Kurt & Elvis as the headliners. Even then I’d probably be late in writing a review.

Anyhow, what follows is a setlist for Tom Waits’ 24th July gig at Le Grand Rex in Paris courtesy of the fansite The Eyeball Kid. What follows that is my first attempt at online gig reconstruction. Various public-spirited people have uploaded bits of the gig to YouTube, so I thought it might be fairly public-spirited of me to present it all in some kind of sequential order. I don’t know if I’m the only person to think of doing this, but if I’m not then maybe some other public-spirited person can put all the various efforts into some kind of a sequential order, too.

I could only find a dozen songs from the night, and resisted the temptation to splice in material from other ‘Glitter and Doom’ tour dates. If other tracks turn up then I’ll add them as and when. The songs in bold on the playlist are the ones that have been captured by cameraphone. Unsuprisingly, the sound and picture quality can vary quite dramatically, but I suppose that’s kind of apt. It really was one of those you had to be there nights.

Lucinda/Ain’t Going Down To The Well
Raindogs / Russian Dance
Falling Down
All The World Is Green
I’ll Shoot The Moon
Cemetery Polka
Cold Cold Ground
Eyeball Kid
Way Down In The Hole
The Briar And The Rose
You Can Never Hold Back Spring
Lucky Day (aborted)
Tom Traubert’s Blues
Innocent When You Dream
Lie To Me
Hoist That Rag
Bottom Of The World
November
Hang Down Your Head
Get Behind The Mule
Dirt In The Ground
Make It Rain

Chocolate Jesus
Trampled Rose
Come On Up To The House

Lucinda/Ain’t Going Down To The Well from videodharma:


Raindogs & Russian Dance from Stunneddotorg:


Falling Down from videodharma:

All The World Is Green from Ragged Words:

Eyeball Kid (featuring the mirror-encrusted Glitterball Hat!) from Mr Percy:

The Briar and the Rose from lorusinaqua:

You Can Never Hold Back Spring from Rockerparis:

Tom Traubert’s Blues from Stunneddotorg:

Lie To Me from Rockerparis:

Hoist That Rag from lorusinaqua:

Make It Rain & Trampled Rose from Rockerparis:

Trampled Rose from Rockerparis:

Thanks to the various Raindogs who contributed clips. Maybe next time he plays I’ll have a decent cameraphone.

I’ve never been a design nut, architecture addict or buildingophile, but when I first saw Le Grand Rex in Paris I was reduced to the state of a lovesick puppy.

It was years’ ago (don’t ask how many), during my first trip to Paris. I was staying at a far-from-swanky hotel just a few far-from-swanky streets from Gare du Nord station and, on the first day, went for a reasonably long walk. As someone who only started travelling abroad when I was all grown-up and could afford to pay for it myself, I was doing then what I still do now: getting intentionally lost as whilst immersing myself in the alien ambiance of it all.

I can’t remember the specifics of the route, possibly because the route was far from specific. I headed in a vaguely southerly direction on the basis that I was pretty certain that the ‘Nord‘ in Gare du Nord meant ‘north’. By my standards, that’s about as sophisticated as it’s ever likely to get. Anyway, at some point I must have ended up wandering down the Rue du Faubourg Poissonnière because, when I reached the point where it intersects with Boulevard Poissonnière, I saw it:

It stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t need to be a design nut, an architecture addict or a buildingophile to know that I was looking at one Goddamned sexy building. For one thing, it couldn’t have looked more outrageously French if it tried. It was so quintessentially cool, so effortlessly elegant and so proudly Parisian that I half expected it to light up a Citannes, raise a pair of eyebrows and shrug. I was captivated. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I might even have fallen in love.

The fact it was very obviously a cinema probably had a lot to do with it. I’ve been embroiled in a long-term and occasionally tempestuous love affair with the cinema for most of my life. ever since I first saw Star Wars at the Birmingham Gaumont at the tender age of seven. The Gaumont – in case you don’t already know – was a grand, two-tiered, Art Deco picture palace that once boasted the largest screen in Europe. I spent many a Saturday afternoon there, feeding my growing celluloid addiction by greedily devouring movies, often indiscriminately. I can still remember the walnut panelled foyer, the huge velvet curtains and the ladies selling ice cream in the aisle. There was something almost sacred and ritualistic about it all. It will always be one of my favourite places in the world.

The Gaumont, like so many of its kith and kin, was closed in 1983 and bulldozed out of existence in 1986. Others didn’t even last that long. Located a mere ten minutes’ walk from my family home, the magnificent Kingstanding Odeon might have been a serious rival for my affections if it wasn’t for the inconvenient fact that it was turned into a bingo hall eight years before I was born. As you drive through the suburbs you’ll often catch a glimpse of other, long-abandoned cinemas, now nothing more than fossilized remains of splendour. In Birmingham, they are a thing of the past. In this part of the world ornate picture palaces and movie temples are about as rare as rocking horse shit.

But not in Paris, it seems. As I looked at Le Grand Rex I was reminded of those Saturday afternoons at the Gaumont. The buildings, after all, were of similar age: the Parisian cinema first opened its doors in December 1932, some 18 months after its Brummie counterpart. Like the Gaumont, the facade of Le Grand Rex was bold and classically Art Deco, while the Haussmann-endorsed pan coupe corners gave it a distinctly Parisian flavour. And while the Gaumont once had the largest screen in Europe, Le Grande Rex was (and still is) the current holder of that title.

Inside, the scale of the main auditorium – 2,800 seats with two balcony levels – left me in the same state of awe I felt as a child. The baroque decor, the otherworldly elegance and the vaulted ceiling festooned with stars transported me to another place and another state of mind, somewhere that I thought no longer existed. This was somewhere special, somewhere sacred, somewhere timeless. This was something else.

I can’t think of a better place in the world to see a Tom Waits concert.

Well, I’m back.

Over the last week and a half I’ve driven from Birmingham to Kent, from Kent to Sussex and then back to Kent again. I’ve taken the Eurostar to and from Paris and, today, have driven from Kent back to Birmingham.

At the Latitude Festival I’ve seen performances by (amongst others) Grinderman, Breeders, Bearsuit, Death Cab For Cutie, Franz Ferdinand, Noah and the Whale, Sigur Ros and Micah P. Hinson, I’ve partially caught performances by The Mars Volta, Blondie and Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed & The True Loves and have seen stand-up acts by (amongst others) Rich Hall (and Otis Lee Crenshaw), Bill Bailey, Jeremy Hardy and Stewart Lee.

I’ve moshed to the Buzzcocks at 2am, saw the first ten minutes of Guillemots doing a live soundtrack to David Lynch’s Eraserhead, listened to David Soul reading some blackly humorous crime noir and saw a fight break out halfway up the Eiffel Tower.

Oh, and I saw Tom Waits in Paris.

I’ll be writing reviews and suchlike over the coming days. In the meantime, will you please just give me some time to process it all…