(I tried to write this in narrative form, with "here's what they played," and, "the band sounded great," and, "the crowd was [blah blah]," but it just wouldn't come out that way. Instead, it is unapologetically impressionistic. You have been warned.)
Set list: Plainsong / Shake Dog Shake / The Figurehead / alt.end / A Night Like This / The End of the World / Charlotte Sometimes / Lovesong / Us or Them / Siamese Twins / Closedown / Like Cockatoos / Before Three / From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea / One Hundred Years / Disintegration
Encore: Pictures of You / Lullaby / InBetween Days / Just Like Heaven / Boys Don't Cry
I think it's cold and it looks like rain...
Sunset, nightfall, smoke and beer, sweat and anticipation... when the lights go out we're more than ready. We're his from the moment he walks out, straps on the guitar, and calls the first "'Kew!" He smiles, and we're living at the edge of the world...
How does he do that? How does he possibly capture fragile nascent giddiness, scarlet full-blown heart-rending love, bilious bloody disgust and frustration and passion gone sour, and quiet (but not still) acceptance of it all? What a paradox he is... pain and heartache and lost love and rage and little boy smiles and his childhood sweetheart's wedding ring.
Larger than life on the big screen, a soap bubble drifts into the frame, and leaves a kamikaze kiss on Robert's cheek, imploding at the touch (as any of us might). He smiles and his eyes close for a moment, as if the bubble's accolade has made him suddenly shy. Lucky, lucky bubble.
For always and ever is always for you...
Wicked, innocent smile, under smeary red lips. He has a secret, he does, and when he smiles and looks sidelong, it's like he tells it just for you. Shhh...
He changes the words sometimes when he sings, not by accident, and not as a test... the words change and the song is re-crafted, just by a delicate touch, a bubble's kiss... "Darker still/Deeper still" ... "Not just for today/a day" ... "Whatever games I play" ... volumes could be written about the difference between "I want it to be perfect like before" and "I want it to be perfect as before" -- he had to use them both.
Surrender... Remember... We'll be here forever, we'll never say goodbye...
Well-known and well-loved songs, well-loved songs that not everybody knows. Shake Dog Shake. Us or Them. Like Cockatoos. (Live, it is a revelation.) From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea. (Green water rolling, head on fire, drumbeat pulsing -- did you put your hands in the sky?)
So it all comes back round to breaking apart again...
Shattering glass, shards of light spinning on the screen behind, Robert clutching the microphone like a lover he has to murder to get away from and yet can't let go of. Song in the key of having to hurt, rip tear shred through the eye of the needle... how the end... always... is.
Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly...
Making spider hands, hugging himself, tugging on his shirtsleeves, struggling and loving it more, and contagiously pleased with himself for giving us goosebumps, making us shiver along. (I bet he tells a good ghost story.)
Every song, you think he's sung them a thousand times, and yet he's singing them now for the first time ever. And he's singing to each and every one of us, to the whole crowd: to the dancing dervishes spinning on that dizzy edge and singing all the words... to the worshipful girls (and boys) standing fixed like salt pillars, rapture rooting them to the cement... to the beer-drinking flip-flop wearers sending picture phone captures yet swaying, eyes closed, as transfixed as any other... he's singing for us all, and to each of us on our own.
Slip away, quietly...
Leave without trying to go backstage, go straight to the car and drive straight home, fast in the dark, listening to the same songs and finding them that more magical because of the experience.
'Kew, Robert.
Posted on August 16, 2004 to horticulture
Previously: Theirs know they're there.
Next Time: Where have you gone, Lizzie Bennett?
Main: cleaning out ferryboats
The title says it all. It's my ongoing one-woman show, with new works being put into rotation as they come up.
cleaning out ferryboats
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