Tuesday 20 January 2009

Dulli's-ville

That title is a bit of a misnomer. Last night we went to see Greg Dulli, ex-lead singer of the Afghan Whigs and currently of the Twilight Singers, in a collaboration he's doing at the moment with Mark Lanegan, ex-lead singer of Screaming Trees and occasionally of Queens of the Stone Age. These two are now writing together as The Gutter Twins. I've been a fan of Greg Dulli's work for years, since buying "1965" by the Afghan Whigs back in 1998 on the strength of a review in Q magazine extolling its darky, gothy, highly sexual, New Orleans-inspired feel (I can't find the Q review online so here's the one from Rolling Stone). I introduced it to the boyfriend as soon as we got together and he bought me one of their other albums for Valentine's Day a couple of weeks later. Aaah. Mark Lanegan, however, was a bit of an unknown to me - for some reason I've never really listened to Screaming Trees - which is why I said we went to see Greg Dulli.

It certainly wasn't dull. The two of them have very different voices: Mark Lanegan's is very deep, absolutely controlled, and with huge range; Greg Dulli's is more of a charged yelp across the high notes. Together, they work really well. It was a great concert, and I am now going to have to find a copy of their album together, and some of Mark's stuff.


That photo isn't very good as they were strictly enforcing no flash photography. I'd never use flash in that situation anyway (in fact, hardly ever in any circumstances) as all you do is illuminate the head of the person in front of you and irritate everybody around, but the stewards were generally unhappy about anyone whipping out a camera. After what happened to Eddie Vedder last year (even the first few seconds should give you the idea), I'm not surprised bands are cracking down on this. But during the interval I got a slightly better photo of the venue, the stupendous Union Chapel in Islington:


It's even more stunning in person, when your eyes can pick out the octagonal chamber and old wooden pews by candlelight. This is what churches should be for.

Other than that, life is in a state of flux... I won't say any more but I am waiting for news, something good, but it's boring to wait. I've been distracting myself with the Leyburn socks KAL. Here they are:


The other foot is coming along too.

I've also been amusing myself by spotting these signs around London which I'm sure the lsg crew on Ravelry will enjoy. Yes, yes, the company's actually called ISG, not LSG, but it looks that way with the oh-so-trendy mixed upper- and lower-case.


Back to the pretty socks and a pile of DVDs...

1 comment:

stash haus said...

I LOVE those socks. I really have to queue that patten because the variegated yarns look SO good knitting up!