Do you remember the first time?

Yeah, I suck. Been sitting on this review for months. And Bestival. And two gigs I went to recently and totally forgot to write about. I'd say I'll change, write more, be good...but...you know.

Wireless, 3rd July 2011, London Hyde Park

The year is 1995 and Essex as we know it is a different place. Well, it was still a land of high tans and low brain cells, but at least the loudest of these specimens didn’t have their own ITV franchise. Anyway, the landscape of Colchester was certainly different. I remember being all of 10 years old and visiting Our Price on Culver Square (which shut down and became Woolworths which shut now and is now New Look or something). They had listening booths dotted around the store, and I knew which one I was after. There was this band I’d seen on Top Of The Pops and probably Live & Kicking too. Being that age music was a relatively new thing to me. My earliest exposure would have been getting Kylie’s first album (THE HAT!!!!) on cassette (this was 1988 remember) and clearly I never looked back. I found an oversized pair of headphones and began listening. “This is really good” I said to my Mum who was waiting nearby.

“Joseph, you’re shouting”.

I can’t remember if I bought the album then or waited until a birthday, but I do remember getting Different Class and being instantly terrified and intimidated by it. Titles like Live Bed Show and Underwear sounded far too dirty to listen to. There’s also a recollection in the back of my mind of one dinner time being asked if I knew exactly what “E’s and Wizz” were.

So I only listened to four of its tracks. For around three years this era defining record stayed unplayed. Reaching that awkward 13 I finally found it in me to put it on and stay the distance. My God. Listening to it today, it’s still a remarkable album. In amongst the fog of Britpop (which was 80%-90% Boys With Guitars) came a band who thought rather that fought. And it changed my life all over again, beginning this love affair with music that to this day makes me part with more money than other interests or distractions.

I first saw Pulp at my first ever festival. For a 15th birthday present, Dad took me to a day at Reading in 2000. Throughout the day was an indie smorgasboard, with the delights of The Delgados, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, Idlewild, Elastica, Super Furry Animals, Gomez and Beck. Pulp hadn’t played a gig in 18 months, and this was the big comeback. It was like falling love all over again.

Then came shows in Brixton late 2001 and Thetford Forest 2002, both at the end of a string of gigs that carried the air of it being the last time. And then it was. No more Pulp. Jarvis would go through phases of “no fucking way”, but I always knew they’d be back.

If there’s one thing about Jarvis Cocker, it’s that he never lets you down.

But let’s talk about the other bands first. Metronomy were the first one I paid any attention to, but as there is a review of a full gig by them elsewhere, let’s just say they made the most of an early afternoon 30 minute slot. The Horrors showed their continuing maturity with a strong collection of new songs. The Hives surprised everyone with their continued existence. They now wear hats!! Saying that, I was surrounded by old uni friends so the likes of Hate To Say I Told You So brought back memories of 99p pints consumed in the basement of our sports centre. TV On The Radio put on a spectacular show in the sunset, sounding as pounding and urgent as ever. Foals is where the alcohol starts to fuzz the memory slightly, and we left early to get a good main stage spot, but they played a typically tight set, even if the instrumentals all tended to blur into one.

It’s hard to write anything about Pulp’s set other than “utter perfection”. Opening with Do You Remember The First Time with much exploding of ticker tape cannons, Jarvis shook his ever-skinny frame to a set of nostalgia and joy. Consisting of pretty much all of Different Class with a few other delights thrown in, we knew all the words, we sung every note. As this was the first show announced alongside their reunion, Jarvis praised us for being “early adopters” and regaled us with various London tales. This was the most relaxed performance I’d seen from Pulp, playing with Russell Senior for the first time since 1996. Whatever had caused them to call it a day was forgotten. Whether they do anything after this doesn’t matter, this show was an example of how to get a reunion right.

Common People closed the day, and could have been the last song I ever heard. It summed up the whole show: still clever, still loud, still shaking, just with more explosions.

Don’t be a Stranger

Was it worth all that war just to win?

Patrick Wolf + Micachu & The Shapes, London Palladium, 15/11/09

I’ve gushed about Patrick Wolf many times in this blog already. I’m about to do it again, so make sure you’re sitting comfortably.

This was to be The Show To End All Shows. A one-off performance to celebrate Patrick’s seven year career to date, and topping off a 2009 which saw him take another sequined step towards the mass adulation that everyone attending tonight knows he deserves.

The setting was the Palladium, taking a night off from Sister Act – THE MUSICAL!!! and providing home for a couple of thousand extroverts and bohemians. I’ve not been in a room of so full of gay men since Ice Cream rolled out of town. It was the perfect venue. Ornate, classical and echoing with history.

Starting the night were Micachu & The Shapes, taking up a small area in the centre of the stage. Starting with a clanging drone that shuffled its way into a tune, each track swerved between abstract catchiness and what my Mum would describe as “just a load of noise”. Micachu herself reminded me of Justine Frischmann’s semi comatose androgyny. I’m still a bit undecided, but they shared the same uncompromising spirit that has been at the core of Patrick’s work since the very beginning.

So that got us in the mood for something a bit different, which is what tonight was to be all about. To add to this, the pre-performance music ranged from classical to gypsy folk to Cheryl Cole. Surely, somewhere in this myriad sonic triangle lies Patrick Wolf.

After new (I think) song Divine Intervention is sung behind the closed Safety Curtain, the all too familiar tribal thump of Overture begins. The curtain raises. The strings soar. He appears. And, not for the first time that night, the tears begin.

This gig put a few things into perspective for me. Is there any other artist or band that could draw this reaction from me? Radiohead, very possibly, but however much I love them, they like to keep a certain distance from their audience. Blur and Pulp also have the means, but I’m unlikely to see either of them live any time soon. Maybe it just doesn’t take much to make me cry these days, after a combination of relatives passing away, pets being put down and friends leaving town. God help me when The Doctor regenerates in the new year, I’ll probably need therapy.

I’m rambling.

The set had an understandable focus on The Bachelor, with debut Lycanthropy also healthily represented. As my main love falls for the middle two records, it would have been nice to hear a few more from them, but seriously this was not a performance you could fault. Other than that it ended and I had to go back to dull reality afterwards.

The highlights were numerous. Florence bringing the house down for a lusty rendition of The Bachelor. Wind In The Wires and its hushed fragility. Oblivion unveiling a horned leather jacket as well as The Voice Of Hope, and Hard Times finally getting people dancing in the aisles, as well as Alec Empire attacking what appeared to be a cybernetic ironing board.

It was this call to arms that made the whole night really kick off. There was a rush to the front of the stage, sporadically broken up by the theatre’s ushers, but the delirium was never truly quashed from then on. After a fiddle with the set list, The Libertine arrived and transformed into a stomping ukulele-off. The divine Damaris has now joined the ranks of Classic Wolf, meaning that Tristan felt like a bit of an afterthought in its wake.

Arriving at the end of the main set, which had lasted almost two hours, The Magic Position came with Patrick sporting a shiny new top hat and a tear in his eye. Its very telling that there are no decent videos of this on You Tube, as the hysteria among us all reached its peak. Some things are just impossible to document on camera phones. The performance of this song and what it means to me is hard to put into words, so I won’t.

Returning for a touching rendition of The Sun Is Often Out, dedicated to a lost friend, the end came with Vulture. Tonight’s outfits included a black feathered ensemble followed by something involving bamboo and pantaloons, but the finale was delivered in see-through trousers and a liberal application of silver body paint, emerging from behind the curtain on a rotating disco ball. I fucking love that I wrote that sentence and every word of it is true.

Tonight we watched a man throw his very essence into a show that he has been preparing for his entire life. Over the years Patrick Wolf has been occasionally outspoken and often uncompromising to the point of career destruction. Was it worth all that war just to win? Yes it was.