And so the cockroach limped away, looking back at me

A couple of new things this time - a matinee gig in a church!

I've seen Throwing Muses live three times, back in the days before write-ups - I wonder how many historical gigs I'd remember enough about to write more than a few sentences on?  The most memorable TM gig was at Trinity Church in Bristol which is a lovely venue and they played alongside Tanya Donnelly and She Makes War (a local female singer-songwriter) - the music was great but the venue was hotter than the surface of the sun!  But I've never seen Kristin Hersh live solo though - I knew she was on tour here and read a really positive review but the tickets were sold out in London, so assumed it wouldn't happen this time either.  But then, due to popular demand, they added an extra matinee show - so I was in.  And, quite frankly, the idea of not having to catch a train back from London late on a Saturday night was extremely appealing.

So I headed to the wilds of the East End to go to St John on Bethnal Green which is a very imposing church conveniently located above the tube station, so you don't have to venture too far into the local neighbourhood - I did consider heading into a local coffee shop, but I have to say it wasn't the most inviting.

My ticket simply said "Start Time - 3:00" which I assumed meant doors open but you can never be certain, can you?  To play it safe, I rocked up at 2:30 - to be met by precious little sign there was any gig on at all.  The massive front door of the church was at least open, leading to an entrance hall with two guys my age hanging around by themselves (which was at least a good sign I was in the right place) and another huge door - when I opened that door, I was immediately overwhelmed by the huge security presence (aka one churchwarden) who told me it was 3:00 doors open.  And then he went outside and mounted the massive promotional material which you can see prominently displayed in the picture below (yes, he used blu-tack).

Over the next half an hour, a few more people turned up - nearly all men my age, with a few accompanied by their wives.  And two random kids, who must have wondered what they'd done to deserve this.  All of which resulted in a distressingly British problem - it was a general admission show with seats (OK, pews) and (the horror!) absolutely no queuing system in evidence on the door.  There was a lot of polite milling around going on - but luckily I was in the entrance hall, so I knew I was OK, so who cared what was going on outside?  Another problem you don’t get in the larger venues is the door handle breaking - if the door shut then it could only be opened from the inside, which resulted in a few panicked shouts from the merch guys.

As 3:00 approached, the churchwarden set up a table and a chair in the entrance hall and then suddenly realised there was no queuing system and no re-entry stamp - I have a sneaking suspicion they don't hold too many gigs there.  His solution to the former was to tell us to sort it out ourselves and his trusty assistant on the door (who turned up with five minutes to spare) came up with a genius system to sort out the latter.

So I was in!  I think I was seventh in, so front row seats were always going to happen, but bizarrely three of the people in before me sat further back - I was having none of that.  Now all I had to do was sit on an uncomfortable pew, not relinquishing my space, for an hour - given there was no bar, or in fact, anything apart from a postcard stall in the church, I do feel they probably could have cut this down to thirty minutes!  But finally Kristin finally came on stage with her guitar (to very polite applause) accompanied by her band - one guy with a cello.

And the pair of them made some lovely noises - Kristin is the queen of odd rhythms and scansion, so the fact that Pete Harvey the celloist made it all look effortless is a testament to his skill.  I'm not really au fait with Kristin's solo stuff, so wasn't expecting to recognise too many songs but was hoping she'd throw in some Muses stuff - and she did!  But they were (I think) all from Purgatory/Paradise which is one of their albums I know the least - oh well!  But her voice, the guitar and the cello blended together beautifully on all of them.

She did take a bit of time to warm up with the banter - the first half an hour or so was mostly quiet "thank yous" and straight in to the next song.  But she gets there in the end, telling us about the time that her and David Narcizo (the Muses drummer) nearly fell into a frozen lake and how funny it would have been if two thirds of the band had disappeared and only been discovered after the spring melt.  And how cockroaches are called palmetto in New Orleans so they can pretend they don't have roaches.  And then, towards the end, she read an excerpt from her book telling us that "if you don't like this bit, then maybe don't buy the book from the merch stand".

She did also finally remember to introduce us to Cello Pete - "and by a weird coincidence, he plays the cello.  Although if his mum had named him Piccolo Pete, our van could could have been a lot smaller".  It's fair to say Pete isn't a big conversationalist, but he gets to pick every other track they play so it seems like a fair partnership.

The setting was lovely, but somewhat run down - it's fair to say the church has seen better days.

And it was a bit on the nippy side, so I bet it was COLD for the evening gig.  The trip to the toilets was also interesting - they are hidden away in the rabbit warren of the crypt and I passed loads of interesting looking rooms on the way being hired out for all sorts of activities.  It also had some very striking stations of the cross - commissioned in 2009 from Chris Gollon who was apparently a controversial choice because he's not a practicing Christian (guys, is that really going to affect his ability to paint?).  They're quite simple and stark and I found some of them quite unsettling - I did like this one though (apparently most of the figures are based around members of his family).

All in all, it was a great gig in a lovely location.  Yes, I could have taken more than 80 minutes of it and having some early Muses stuff in there would have been nice - mostly because I would have recognised them, but I also think the instrumentation would have made for some really interesting versions.  But these are mere artistic quibbles and I, in case you hadn't guess, am not the artist here.  So thanks to Kristin and Cello Pete for a lovely afternoon experience - and I was home by 7pm (just in time for some dad taxi duties in the pouring rain).