_Noise_Conspiracy.jpg "The (International) Noise Conspiracy - 002-09-17: 9:30 Club, Washington D.C., USA")
Nizlopi
June 2nd, 2007 at 01:09
Last night I went and tolerated Nizlopi playing in Leamington Spa to do my part of an agreement with JD. Last week he came to see Reel Big Fish with me (who were incredible) – so I’d said I’d endure this for him. It was an interesting evening.
Unlike every other gig I’ve been to, this gig was compered by a performance poet. As you might expect, he was a fairly young bloke who wore one of those old-man flat-caps that have inexplicably become fashionable again, and he seemed to be deliberately wearing it at the most optimally fashionable angle (approximately 25 degrees off of a line perpendicular to the front centre of his head). He also consistently tried his best to rhyme his sentences even when not reciting a poem.
Excellently, his poems were the best type of poems: misguided political rants.
He did his first poem, which was going quite well – explaining how Bush was bad, and Blair was bad and were war criminals. Y’know, generally agreeable stuff that can be said in a way that sounds against the grain and revolutionary. Towards the end of his first poem he said something like “the UN are in Afghanistan controlling the opium trade”.
“Hang on!”, I thought – the UN aren’t anywhere near Afghanistan. NATO are though. And controlling the opium trade? I thought the invasion of Afghanistan had resulted in a massive boost for the opium trade as NATO struggle to control it and more people turn to grow it as the only source of viable income?
He then completely undermined everything he’d ever said, as well as everything he’s ever likely to say, by claiming that the Bush administration were responsible for 9/11 and that it was “fact to him”. Hmm…
The two other poems he performed between the other acts were slightly more sane. But I couldn’t take him seriously any more.
There were two normal support acts – two instantly forgettable “I’ll strum a guitar for a bit and maybe sing over it” types.
Unfortunately, I didn’t think Nizlopi were that spectacular either. This is probably because I’m not a fan though, and being surrounded by a couple of hundred sycophantic fans is going to make any outsiders feel slightly awkward. They did some fan pleasing stuff – unplugging from their amplifiers and walking into the centre of the audience and carrying on, that sort of thing. I was a bit worried about one of the guys in the band though, as not only was he not wearing shoes (a sure sign of madness), he seemed to be getting into it rather too much. Maybe it’s just that the bands I’m used to tend to transmit nothing but naked aggression in their lyrics, whereas Nizlopi were a bit more… feelingsy than that.
Afterwards was the best bit – there was an “after-party” at a nearby pub, where the poet from the gig invited people to go up on stage in this pub and “express themselves” (that was the phrase he used). It would have been beret-level pretentious if it hadn’t been bought crashing down to a cynical earth by being again compered by the performance poet and his questionable political insight, starred a hilarious rapper with a Birmingham accent, and been spoilt by some twats shouting “get off the stage” at the bad acts – which is a pretty bad thing to do. It’s much more grown-up to slag someone off on the internet the day after – there’s less of a chance of them hearing after all.
One of the acts was a woman who said that she was going to sing a “depressing song”. She wasn’t wrong. With no music accompanying her she went on for what felt like an eternity about her own funeral, or something.
Another of the acts was excellently hilarious though. It was a rapper calling himself “Jimmy Davis”, who’s gimmick seemed to be name-dropping himself in every other sentence. He even echoed himself manually, ’singing’ the lyric “Jimmy Davis Davis”, as if his lyrics were so forgettable he wasn’t even getting to the end of each line before forgetting what he’s already said.
It’s also a good job that “Jimmy Davis” rhymes with quite a few words, as the rhyming scheme required he rhyme his own name quite a lot. “Make it” “Play this” “Deathwish” “Gunsmith” and so on. It’s a good job his name isn’t Jimmy Orange, really.
A Cardiffian woman called Sarah, who we met at the gig, and I tried to encourage JD to perform – he can play practically every instrument imaginable (presumably including the accordion, which you can watch me play here), but he wouldn’t budge from his “not playing an instrument” policy, which was irritating, because you could have had a cracking YouTube video of me offending people – nothing too out of the ordinary until you consider that it could have been set to some lovely music.
Post to: [ del.icio.us ][ Digg it ][ Furl ][ Netscape ][ Newsvine ][ reddit ][ StumbleUpon ][ Yahoo MyWeb ]Categories: Events, Friends, Music, Politics |