love on the streets - womb jam, daniel johnston
What a night. Listen - I know I haven't reviewed Womb at St Margaret's yet. I'll try and get round to it but shit moves fast these days.
Things have been pretty hallucinatory and hyperreal lately. Time stretching and disorienting. Feeling like I'm changing into someone else. Emotions intensified.
Then throw in the night of civil disobedience, the heat and the rain, and things start to get weird.
As I said to a friend when normal social compacts don't apply, when rules are suspended, when nobody knows anything you find out who you really are. You don't have the same external frameworks for the parts of your identity. Suddenly, briefly, excitingly you're reliant only on yourself.
Yesterday Womb decided to play a gig on Market Street outside Miss Selfridge around 6pm. Five of the band turned up as well as some friends. Everyone was pretty sure the police would be all over us the moment we started playing.
We moved down a little from Miss Selfridge grabbed the percussion and other bits and started making a noise. And the police left us well alone.
Some people engaged with the band - stopping or slowing to listen - taking photos. But a lot just walked past - 'There's nothing happening. If I just ignore it I won't have to get involved.'
Maybe it wasn't the best performance Womb have ever done but there was certainly something very special about it. Everyone seemed to relax fairly quickly. We played two improvisations around 20 minutes apiece at a guess and then wound up.
But it wasn't the end of the night. There was the opening of a Daniel Johnston exhibition at Incognito Gallery on Stevenson Square and there had been heavy hints he'd play a set some time after 8.
It was hot in the gallery ground level and downstairs. The place was packed and it was clear Daniel Johnston was going to play once he'd finished a radio appearance elsewhere.
I liked the artwork - and some of it seemed to jump off the page - to resonate with something deep and hidden. I'd say he's almost like a pop-art William Blake except I'm afraid someone might take me seriously and quote it - so forget I wrote anything.
Then he turned up and played three songs. I don't want to use the normal critical vocabulary for the set. And I don't want to dip in the big box of Daniel Johnston cliche.
It was a wonderful performance. The songs not so much played as transmitted and felt. Simple repetitive tunes and rhymes accumulating greater beauty and significance the longer they went on.
And it was over.
But the night still wasn't done.
A group of us went on to Gullivers where we sat and talked and listened to music. I spoke to friends and people I'd never met before then walked home through a warm night. I fell asleep sometime after 2 after chatting online with a friend for a bit.
Things have been pretty hallucinatory and hyperreal lately. Time stretching and disorienting. Feeling like I'm changing into someone else. Emotions intensified.
Then throw in the night of civil disobedience, the heat and the rain, and things start to get weird.
As I said to a friend when normal social compacts don't apply, when rules are suspended, when nobody knows anything you find out who you really are. You don't have the same external frameworks for the parts of your identity. Suddenly, briefly, excitingly you're reliant only on yourself.
Yesterday Womb decided to play a gig on Market Street outside Miss Selfridge around 6pm. Five of the band turned up as well as some friends. Everyone was pretty sure the police would be all over us the moment we started playing.
We moved down a little from Miss Selfridge grabbed the percussion and other bits and started making a noise. And the police left us well alone.
Some people engaged with the band - stopping or slowing to listen - taking photos. But a lot just walked past - 'There's nothing happening. If I just ignore it I won't have to get involved.'
Maybe it wasn't the best performance Womb have ever done but there was certainly something very special about it. Everyone seemed to relax fairly quickly. We played two improvisations around 20 minutes apiece at a guess and then wound up.
But it wasn't the end of the night. There was the opening of a Daniel Johnston exhibition at Incognito Gallery on Stevenson Square and there had been heavy hints he'd play a set some time after 8.
It was hot in the gallery ground level and downstairs. The place was packed and it was clear Daniel Johnston was going to play once he'd finished a radio appearance elsewhere.
I liked the artwork - and some of it seemed to jump off the page - to resonate with something deep and hidden. I'd say he's almost like a pop-art William Blake except I'm afraid someone might take me seriously and quote it - so forget I wrote anything.
Then he turned up and played three songs. I don't want to use the normal critical vocabulary for the set. And I don't want to dip in the big box of Daniel Johnston cliche.
It was a wonderful performance. The songs not so much played as transmitted and felt. Simple repetitive tunes and rhymes accumulating greater beauty and significance the longer they went on.
And it was over.
But the night still wasn't done.
A group of us went on to Gullivers where we sat and talked and listened to music. I spoke to friends and people I'd never met before then walked home through a warm night. I fell asleep sometime after 2 after chatting online with a friend for a bit.
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