Lisa Hannigan - Queen Elizabeth Hall (Royal Festival Hall) - 13 May 2012

So how's about this? I've never been to this venue before! How could that possibly be given that I've been to more gigs in London over the space of ten years than I've had hot brekkies? Who the heck knows, but I'm glad to have found this little venue attached to the Royal Festival Hall at Southbank - not least because it has the most comfortable seats I've been in at a gig for a very long time (although it does also remind me of a university lecture theatre a little too much!).


The capacity here is 900 and she's full up for tonight's performance by Lisa Hannigan & Friends. Yes that's right I'm seeing another Irish singer/songwriter and yes I know I am making somewhat of a habit of that, but when there is good Irish talent around you definitely want to be in the room partaking.


The opener tonight is John Smith who comments that he needs all the help he can get given his'common' moniker. John gives us some fairly pleasant acoustic tunes on his 'gheetar'. The most amusing part is when he tells us about his fear of breaking a string while he is de-tuning and sending said string into his arm. Sure enough a couple of songs from the end of his set he does just that (although thankfully without the arm injury).


Lisa is on around 8.15pm and when she says 'friends' she means it! I count seven people onstage with various instruments - piano/banjo, violin, double bass, trumpet, guitar (in the form of opener John Smith), drums and Lisa (on guitar, mandolin, percussion and piano accordion). In other words it's a full on Irish festival of sound - giddy up!


This is the last night of the band's European tour but there's no mucking around - we are off instantly and straight into Little Bird. I've not managed to see Lisa live before as a solo artist and it's great to hear her voice echo through the hall. I find that her voice has a delicious raspiness to it which makes it unique, and it's something that attracts me to her work.


Another aspect of Lisa's work that I enjoy is her penchant for tunes with gorgeous and subtle melodies and one is offered up immediately in the form of Pistachio.


I said damn this band are a multi-talented lot! We've got a myriad of instruments being whipped out, and for the next number Ocean and a Rock there is some glockenspiel and accordion action - tidy work!


One thing about Lisa is that she always seems to be to be fully invested in her music. It's as if her own songs captivate her, and that's what I want to see. If music is your passion in life and you are lucky enough to be making a living out of that passion then there is no reason why you shouldn't be leaving everything you've got on the stage every night. You cannot ask anything more than that from any performer. If you leave your heart and soul on the stage then you've done justice to your art - if the audience doesn't get it, then that's their issue. That being said, there's no such issue tonight because the audience are attentive and appreciative at every stage.


Lisa then takes a new mandolin on 'her maiden voyage' with Venn Diagram which is sweet, as is her duet with John Smith which follows (O Sleep).


A slight technical issue (a guitar not tuned to Lisa's liking) has the band changing around the set list slightly and the nest tune - O Sail - eventually has the whole band involved and it sounds wonderful.


One of my favourite Lisa tunes is next - Flowers- there's some great direct lyrics here:


"I don't know the rules of this game,
And I don't think I want to play"


Lisa's moving around the stage like she's been possessed here - her whole body is involved in this process and there's something slightly hypnotic about it.


Paper Hats from Lisa's latest album Passenger is next, followed by Nowhere to Go (which sports a gorgeous violin solo) and then Lisa decides to pull out yet another instrument (this time a melodica) for Teeth- ok c'mon how many instruments does she play?This is making us non-musical plebs feel even more inadequate!


Home, Lille (with great glockenspiel) and Safe Travels (Don't Die) are a lovely threesome with the last tune being dedicated to the band's good fortune at escaping death throughout the tour. I Don't Know and What'll I Do round off the main set. Darn - are we near the end already?


There is a very short encore break and then the band come back on for what, in my view, is the highlight of the night - a musical tribute to Levon Helm in the form of an inspiring version of The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. It's the band singing all together with only a guitar accompanying them. It's a pretty perfect way to honour Levon and I'm pretty sure this performance wouldn't have been out of place at any of his infamous rambles.

Lisa ends the night with Knots - which is a fantastic ukulele driven track. We are left bopping in our seats on a high and positive note. This has been a very enjoyable night and something which I certainly hope to repeat at some time in the future. Ta muchly to Lisa and her extremely talented band!


Setlist:


Little Bird
Pistachio
Passenger
Ocean and a Rock
Venn Diagram
O Sleep
A Sail
Flowers
Paper House
Nowhere To Go
Teeth
Home
Lille
Safe Travels (Don't Die)
I Don't Know
What'll I Do


Encore:
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
Knots

Henry Rollins @ Royal Festival Hall - 20 January 2012

The first time I ever saw Henry Rollins perform one of his infamous spoken word shows was many, many moons ago when I was at university (ahh those were the days!). I managed to talk a couple of mates into seeing him at the Refectory at UCan (University of Canberra) and the ticket said 8pm so we all thought he'd be on around 9pm and accordingly rocked up at 8.40pm only to be told he'd already started - in fact he'd been on for almost 40 minutes!!!


Henry is disciplined and on time - always. I never made this mistake again and every time I've been to see him since I've anally kept to the time on the tickets knowing that Henry would be on only minutes after the stated time. The show at the Royal Festival Hall on Friday night was no different. The ticket said 7.30pm - I was there and seated in my front row seat at 7.20pm and so were the very vast majority of the crowd (ahhh so I'm not Robinson Crusoe!). Henry came on at 7.40pm and didn't leave the stage until around 10.15pm.

Did I say Henry was disciplined? He was on stage for 2 hours and 35 minutes with no break, no toliet stop and not even a drink of water - and this is completely normal and expected of his performances. He is far too busy having a good time taking in our rapt attention to need to concern himself with the normal workings of mere mortals!


Actually he's a complete fucking spoken word machine and I love him! *insert further gushing*


I hear those people who've never seen Henry in action say 'What you just sit and listen to him talk for over two hours?' - well yeah - and it's easily some of the best time I've ever spent.


Over the period of 15/16 years that I've been seeing Henry perform spoken word shows there has (unsurprisingly) been a huge improvement in the quality of his shows - not necessarily in the content - that has always been great - but more in terms of delivery. His shows are now, in a word, seamless and he shifts from one story to another with absolute ease.


His first story tonight delves into the vintage period surrounding his involvement with Black Flag in the early 80s - it's his 'Get In the Van' period. You would have thought by now that I'd have heard all his GITV anecdotes but the two pearlers he brings out tonight have not been heard - at least by me. The first involves the somewhat tragic story of woman literally losing an eye in a Black Flag mosh in New York after being landed upon by a huge hairy behemoth of a man who thought a stage dive mid-set would be a good idea - ahhh slightly hardcore - yeah?


The second GITV parable is set during Black Flag's European tour in the mid-80s in Sweden where the entire audience at a gig are all skin-heads but for a number of out of place 'long hairs' at the front. The 'long hairs' are later introduced to the members of Black Flag backstage as a band in their own right and little note is taken of them until some years later when Henry recalls the meeting and the name of band - Metallica. Gold!!

After a hilarious story about scaring the bejesus out of Dennis Hopper outside a Santa Monica gallery, we leap like a gazelle from the GITV era into something a bit more recent as Henry recounts a visit to the bulk-buy jungle that is CostCo with his assistant Heidi ('the Demon') to undertake the innocuous task of buying a ladder and bizarrely, a copy of George Dubya's biography - Decision Point (no really that's what it's called!). Now I don't know if many people have actually been into a CostCo, but it is a fairly scary place in terms of the sheer physical tonnage of food and alcohol and it fits right into the psyche of American excess (to be fair on my one and only visit to a CostCo I found it VERY hard to walk past a 2kg bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups - but I did keep walking!). It's a retail journey many people make everyday, but it seems to epitomise the attitude held by those making up the common denominator (with the help of some megacorporations). It's real and scary, but not without hope. 

Henry then moves on to some of the more interesting things he has participated in since his last visit to the UK - the most important and entertaining of which have occurred as part of his role filming and narrating National Geographic documentaries detailing the more bizarre connections between humans and animals.

I'm not sure if many people are aware but Henry is an avid serpent fan and actually keeps snakes himself at home so it's no surprise to me that his two NatGeo related stories involve humans interacting with snakes in various unique ways. The first story finds us in India in an interesting and slightly neanderthal 'bro-down' with some local snake catchers who actually undertake a huge service for their community by catching and milking the venom of some of the world's most dangerous snakes to provide the locals with anti-venom where a hospital is far too far away to assist anyone who gets bitten.

There is much successful hunting and milking of snakes which is then celebrated with a dinner of field-roasted rat liver - I shit you not! 

The second tale switches to the deep south in the US where a small number of Pentecostal churches engage in 'serpent handling' as a religious ritual. The deal apparently is that if you 'believe' then you won't get bitten. I'm not myself convinced and neither was Henry when he made a pre-ritual visit to the Pastor and found his house chock full of rattlesnakes and Cottonmouths who were chock full of venom and ready to party snake style!

Henry attends the ritual faithfully reporting that no-one is bitten and that the whole night's activities are undertaken to a 3 hour soundtrack provided by the Pastor blues-wailing on his gold-top Gibson Les Paul - TESTIFY!!! - maybe I've got the Pentecostal faithful wrong?  Take out the snakes and it sounds like a good night!!

Henry is a major traveller and his further anecdotes relate to his trips through India, North Korea, Vietnam, Tibet and Haiti. An interesting list of places with plenty of interesting stories. I won't go into the full details of each story but some of the highlights include:

- the very long list of items which you cannot take on a flight in India which range from acid to bolt-cutters and brassknuckles (a new Henry salutation), chilly (yes spelt this way!), spices and sabres;

- using all his willpower to overcome his ADD and not run down the travelator visiting the mausoleum containing the in-state body of former North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung;

- his guide, Mr Ka's, hilarious and inappropriate payout of John McCain at the Hanoi Hilton;

- his description of Tibet as a beautifully tragic place where he greets any monk on a cell phone or scooter with delight; and

- his attempts to overcome the 'no soap, no dignity' situation in Haiti by delivering hundreds of 8 cent bars of soap and soccer balls.

Henry is always pretty much preaching to the converted at his shows, but his insistence that we can do better as humans and that we need to get out and see the world (the 'knowledge without milage equals bullshit' edict) always permeates all his spoken word performances. He says what he means, and he means what he says - we desperately need more adults in the world like Henry Rollins.

He's 50 years old and I don't know anyone more punk than Hank - he simply makes me want to go!