The Night You Can't Remember

I've been enjoying my first week of the uni Easter Break and I've had time to do a bit more than previous weeks. The first thing I did was to go to the Magnetic Fields tribute night at MacSorley's two weeks ago. Covers were played by musicians from bands like Dot to Dot, The Royal We, Hermit Crabs and Older and Far Away for several hours. The best set was from the band called The Meritocracy (pictured below) - made up for the night. And that was mainly because Hermit Crab-John played guitar. Older and Far Away were good as well - I've never seen them before. I'm looking forward to seeing them with The Hermit Crabs at the RAFA Club on April 13th (yes, it's a Friday...).



This week I went Hitherto (small shop inside Tinderbox) where some friends of the Mono folk put on the Japanese folk guitarist Naoto Kawate, who has been seen playing with Maher Shalal Hash Baz on occasion. He was really shy and had the quietest voice. But his guitar-playing was beautiful and ranging from virtuosity to awkwardness. It was instrumental because 'the notes were the words' or something. Supporting him was a lone David Scott without backup from the rest of The Pearlfishers. I've never listened much to The Pearlfishers although I like them, but I will now! It was a great performance and top quality songs, including a charming cover of the Pentangle song "Lord Franklin". Stephen and Katrina were there of course, as well as Norman Blake and Duglas T Stewart (who seemed to have gotten a recent haircut).


The day after that, on Friday, I went to Sounds of Sweden. This month it was at Bacchus and had Television Keeps Us Apart and Zoey Van Goey on the bill. Only the former were from Sweden of course, but I've never heard of them before. They were quite good, but it seemed the bulk of the crowd were there to see local attractions Zoey, who were as good as the last time I saw them. Next month (on Easter Sunday!) it's The Ex-Men (who include a guy from Death By Chocolate, but which is of no consequence musically I gather) and Mr. Suitcase, which means I'll finally be able to see him play live.