Lisa Gerrard Weekend: The Wind That Shakes The Barley

Clearly, this is one to close your eyes for - The Wind That Shakes The Barley live in Toronto last May:



[Part of Lisa Gerrard weekend]

Well done, United Kingdom. That's going to be another year of five points if we're lucky.

You'd have hoped that the bemusing selection process for Song For Europe - sorry, Making Your Mind Up; sorry, Your Eurovision Decision - had been constructed to try and stop the voting public sending a lame donkey into the Eurovision finals this year. A first round of head-to-head matches (presumably inspired by Loaded's Crisps world cup) delivering three finalists, topped up with a single Wogan wildcard, and then the decision thrown across to the public phone vote during Casualty.

And yet we still end up with Andy Abraham beating out Michelle Gayle. Everyone looked surprised - not least Michelle Gayle, who sloped off through a shower of sparks. Of course, Gayle's song was a bit weakly delivered. In fact, it might have been better in the slightly more girl-group hands of The Revelations; the rocky delivery made the "woo woo woo" backings sound like feeding time in Battersea Dogs Home. But at least it sounded like a possible Eurovision winner. Maybe a 1980s winner, but a winner nevertheless.

Instead, for some reason, we're sending a mid-set song from a provincial wine bar act. Abraham only made it into the final because of the bloody Wogan wildcard. When you're sat in the commentary box, downing your fourth glass of the local liqueur and complaining that Latvia hasn't given us any points, remember whose fault it this year, Wogan.

Canadians* for Obama

The Arcade Fire have announced two shows in support of Barack Obama's Presidential Campaign: Tomorrow and Monday night:

Arcade Fire will be playing a free concert on Sunday, March 2nd at Stuart's Opera House in Nelsonville, Ohio in support of Barack Obama's bid for the Democratic nomination. The show is at 7 p.m., first come first serve.They will also be playing a free show at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland on Monday, March 3rd. Doors are at 7 p.m., and the show is 18 and over, first come first serve.

* - We know; they're only sort-of-Canadian.

Lisa Gerrard Weekend: Sacrifice

Continuing our weekend of Lisa Gerrard, this is Sacrifice live in Paris last year:



[Part of the Lisa Gerrard weekend]

Icicle defends Beatle

It's been a few weeks since Ringo Starr upset Liverpool by hastening from launching the City of Culture year to laugh when Jonathan Ross asked him what he missed about Liverpool. Ian McNabb - yes, Ian McNabb - thinks his fellow townspeople are being unfair:

THERE’S been a lot made of Ringo Starr’s comments on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross.

Jason Starkey called me the other day and he was saying how upset his dad was by all the negative reaction in Liverpool.

I’m very proud to come from Liverpool, but the main reason this city is on the map is The Beatles.

As far as whatever he said that night goes, where was the famous Scouse sense of humour?

This year promises so much, but we need voices of dissent to question what goes on and the opinions that are presented as fact. One of those will be mine.

Yes, your questioning voice, Ian, has been heard. Although it seems to be desperately trying to spin Ringo's interview into some sort of party line.

Suggesting "the famous Scouse of humour" is somehow lacking when a bloke pockets a big cheque for praising the city, then - as soon as he's off the city's soil - laughs like a drain at the suggestion that there might be something about Liverpool he misses is curious. McNabb seems to think the fault lays with the Scousers who don't enjoy being patronised rather than with the man who takes their money and laughs in their face.

Starr wasn't shounding a note of dissent - he was being a hypocrite. If he wanted to show some individual thinking, he could have done it by not being part of the Capital Of Culture year, and explaining then why he doesn't want to live in a city he supposedly loves so much.

Westlife chaos

That expensive booking fee creamed off when you buy tickets through Ticketmaster - that's for the quality service they give.

Sometimes.

Last night's Liverpool Westlife gig was a bit of a screw-up: Ticketmaster customers hadn't received their tickets through the post, so eager Westlife fans had to turn up in hope and lay siege to the ticket office in a bid to get in.

We're sure Ticketmaster will be refunding all those booking fees as they'd not really done anything to earn them.

Of course, poor though this show was, the angry Westlife fans still managed to overstate their frustration:

Kath Johnson, 55, from Liverpool city centre, said: “It has been horrendous. I have never known anything like it. I had to wait over an hour to get my ticket.”

Upsetting. Ruined the fun of the evening. Maybe a bit annoying. But if you can live half a century on this planet and you've never known anything as "horrendous" as having to queue for a little while outside a box office, you might consider your life to have been somewhat charmed.

And if Kath really wanted to know horrendous, wait until she got inside and saw Westlife singing. Now, that's bad.

Darkness at 3AM: Moss chucks Monkeys

More fallout from the night of the NME awards in the 3AM column, with the gossipoids revealing that there's a pop group that Kate Moss won't touch:

Kate Moss has Arctic Monkeys thrown out of Punk club

She had them thrown out of the club?

The Croydon-born supermodel had them thrown out of an exclusive awards afterparty at Punk on Thursday - for not being famous enough.

Not out of the club, then, but out of the party?

"At the VIP area the Arctics were pushed away. The drummer Matt Helders started having a row with Moss and her people.

"But she didn't care. She kept saying, 'They're not coming in. This is my VIP area I don't want them in here'. Matt had to slope off to the bar with the rest of the great unwashed."

Ah. So, then, the headline should have been 'Kate Moss has Arctic Monkeys asked to stand somewhere else', then.

Embed and breakfast man: Lisa Gerrard Weekend

Perhaps the most surprising thing in Lisa Gerrard's career is that amongst the movies whose soundtracks upon which she appears is Layer Cake. No, really. This weekend, as we shake the video tree to pick some of her best performances, we'll try and draw some sort of veil over that one, shall we?

This is Come Tenderness:



More videos over the weekend - they'll be listed here
Sacrifice - live in Paris
Wind That Shakes The Barley - live in Toronto
Heaven - with Heavenly Bodies

Buy
The Mirror Pool
Gladiator soundtrack
Wake: The best of Dead Can Dance
Sanctuary DVD

This must be what anticipation feels like

There's a new Oasis album being constructed somewhere - presumably by taking a Gerry And The Pacemakers album and sucking anything interesting out of the mix - which means the Gallagher brothers are roaming about. The pair turned up on Steve Jones' US radio show this week, talking extensively about Sven Goran Erikkson - that must have been fascinating for the LA radio audience.

Then, of course, attention had to turn to the next album. Liam:

“I’m rocking on it. I’m ’aving it.”

Be fair to Liam, when you're churning out the same bloody album again and again over fifteen years, it must be hard to think up something new to say.

Noel had more to offer, though:

“We’re mixing our new record. We recorded it in Abbey Road just before Christmas. We did two tracks in Abbey Road in ’97 but they kicked us out as we were a bit mental back then.

“We were in one of the studios listening back to one of the tunes and somebody who was mixing a classical record next door tapped on the studio and asked us to turn it down.

“There might have been swear words and the next thing was, ‘You can leave’ ”

Abbey Road. Of course, Abbey Road. Abbey... happy... losing concentration... will to live... time to get ready for bed...