Tag Archive for 'Grinderman'

The Electric Picnic is Decadent & Depraved: III

Some notes about the music, I suppose.

Guy Garvey is a class act, and one of the best frontmen going, but he’s a hard man to track down. Security tend not to accept a 6-pint jug of cider as valid identification. Should have gone with the pints, obviously, or pulled some Manchester variant of the potato man routine… the plotting continues.

Going into this thing I had resigned myself to missing out on my usual Sunday evening fix of balding middle-aged men with mullets and walrus moustaches wearing suits and doing karate kicks, so imagine my delight when Grinderman turned up. As a bonus, there was a sentient beard flinging percussion instruments around the place and playing a tiny, tiny guitar. Mortal men would have just looked silly.

Much as The Sex Pistols did… either they’re hell-bent on becoming the most nonsense thing in human history or they’re just acting out Primary School: The Musical. In whatever case, when you come in from a day spent with Henry Rollins and Nick Cave – men with actual testicles – John Lydon gets pretty old pretty quick.

Elbow

I saw the marvellous and wonderful Elbow in Vicar Street last night. They were marvellous, and wonderful. Guy Garvey is so charismatic that it’s pretty much impossible not to have a good time at one of their shows. Another reason to buy an Electic Picnic ticket, yes?

Strictly speaking no, since I just looked at the lineup and they’re not on it. I’m not sure why I thought they were… but what the hell, Grinderman, a flaming jazz bar* and the best pies in the world will be there, so buy a ticket anyway.

*May be a composite of several blurry memories.