Intermezzo

Iggy! Iggy! Iggy!

Iggy & the Stooges - Royal Festival Hall, 20 June 2007

(More photos here)

Iggy Pop

The world's greatest entertainer bounced around the stage like a boxing kangaroo, doused himself in gallons of mineral water, crowd surfed, invited the audience up on stage, broke a beer bottle, rolled around on the floor and rode the amps like a beetch. What more could you ask for? The 90 minutes of piledriving rock'n'roll were almost a bonus. Covering pretty much his whole Stooges career, from No Fun and I Wanna Be Your Dog to a large slice of the newer album, but skipping the artsier solo stuff, a relentless barrage of full on noise was provided by the fabulous original Stooges. Iggy's total engagement, his generous compulsion to give everyone a good time, his profound knowledge of what he does best and his willingness to do it are what really made this night special though.

And he has the world's greatest rider too.

(More photos here)

Jarvis Cocker enters the Forest of No Return - Meltdown Part 2

Jarvis Cocker and Guests - Royal Festival Hall, 17 June 2007

Forest of No Return - a tribute to Disney film music

(Click here for full photo album)

So it kicked off an hour later than it should have, and started with chronic sound problems, but this was Disney, so everything ended happily ever after. Few of the songs were done straight - some were almost unrecognisable - but it all worked pretty well, though there too many instrumentals for my liking

David Thomas made the first of several appearances, bare footed and behatted, with a brilliant pig-squealed I'm Late, which he later trumped with When I See an Elephant Fly and Pink Elephants on Parade - rarely in the history of rawk have performer and material been so perfectly matched:

Skye Edwards and Ed Harcourt paired up for a sweetly traditional Little April Showers:

Beth Orton applied her husky tones to Baby Mine, and later on bravely did Stay Awake acapella, in pin drop silence, followed by Second Star to the Right:

Jarvis himself made the first of several appearances with I Wanna Be Like You, complete with classic Jarvis electrocuted stick insect dance moves:

He later took the stage with Nick Cave, Pete Doherty and Shane MacGowan to make several minutes of howling doggy whining (billed on the programme as Home Sweet Home), surprisingly not nearly as self indulgent as it sounds:

Pete Doherty came back later for a sweet and touching solo Chim Chim Cheree, confounding expectation and reputation with one of the best performances of the evening:

And Shane MacGowan wandered unsteadily on to the stage for a shouty solo Zip-a-dee Doo Dah, his only unsupported appearance of the evening:

Roisin Murphy purred through He's a Tramp in a spectacular ruffled frock and huge Ascot hat:

But she was pipped to best frock honours by the frankly unbelievable Grace Jones, who closed the first half with Trust in Me as only Grace can, in a costume that needed a table and a wind machine to display it properly:

 

(Click here for loads more pics, including artists not mentioned above)

Jarvis Cocker's Meltdown kicks off

Motorhead - Royal Festival Hall, Melanie - Queen Elizabeth Hall, 16 June 2007

Jarvis Cocker's Meltdown Festival opened with a difficult choice - Motorhead in the Royal Festival Hall, or Melanie in the Queen Elizabeth Hall? I went for Melanie, but squeezed in a few minutes of the other acts first.

I stuck with Motorhead's support act, the tiresome and well past their sell by date Selfish Cnnt, for about five minutes before joining the barward exodus. Still, it was moderately entertaining to see their name on all the promo stuff:

Then I wandered over to the QEH for Melanie's opener, Mathew Sawyer & The Ghosts:

Motorhead sounded on great form, but once you've heard one......

I skipped most of Motorhead's set so I could catch all of Melanie's. She ambled on looking greyer and wider than she used to, but that big voice hadn't changed. Dressed like a Sun Ra refugee and accompanied by her genius guitarist son Beau, she gave us a two hour mix of old and new material, interspersed with chat that got more rambly and bizarre as the night went on:

While Melanie took a break halfway through, Beau did the most incredible virtuoso guitar solo, like a cross between John McLaughlin and Paco Peña:

He even performed some of the lightning fast fingerwork with the guitar behind his head: