What i love most about gigs is attending the smaller intimate shows that bands usually organise before playing a bigger show at a later date, in this case it was Camera Obscura playing at Lexington before they play Shepherds Bush Empire and other similar sized venues.
The intimate show sold out pretty quickly, leaving fans stranded and stuck with buying tickets for the Shepherds Bush show, I was fortunately informed by Phorque via Last.fm that these tickets were on sale and managed to catch one of the last few tickets. I arrived promptly at the venue with not much to do but lounge about and check the interweb on my mobile. There was a person standing near the entrance with a sign asking if anyone had any spare tickets he could buy off them. He eventually got himself in by persuading the box office folks to slip him in. So yeah, definitely worth trying at times.
I managed to meet up with Phorque and Eskimowoman who were hidden in the corner of the pub. We had a pleasant talk about all sorts of gigging shenanigans and then our topic went to Anika and her obscene amount of gigs, she has clearly achieved celebrity status in the London gigging world. Speaking of gig celebrities, creepy spanish guy was there too. Dont think I’ve fully introduced him to you folks yet, he attends quite a lot of gigs armed with his compact camera and a hidden mini disc recorder. He never really smiles and appears somewhat shy but to a point that it gets creepy (if that makes sense). Anika and Adam pointed him out to me during shows he came along to and slowly I began to understand why he was called CSG (we’ll call him CSG from now on, more cryptic). But yes, he was there for the night and it was only then did I realise he was armed with a mini disc recorder which could explain why he didn’t want to speak to anyone (with the risk of his voice being recorded and whatnot).
The support was Francois, he played various instruments during Camera Obscura but has a band himself. He was much of the experimental variety, playing samples from his sample pad whilst playing acoustic and various other instruments. I think there were some subtle looping involved as well as an abundance of delay and whatnot. It was pretty pleasant and I quite enjoyed it.
Camera Obscura arrived on stage with the crowd buzzing and cheering at them, the setlist was focused mainly on their latest album which they asked the audience whether people have listened to yet (you know, the naughty ones). The lead singer, Tracyanne, apologised to the crowd saying they were trying loads of new songs for this gig. She sported a nice red dress with an iconic swan pin badge/broach type thing.
I haven’t heard her new stuff but was told that if I’ve heard her previous work then it sounds pretty much like that. The setlist was My Maudlin Career, Come Back Margaret, Let’s Get Out of This Country, You Told a Lie, The Sweetest Thing, French Navy, James, Tears for Affairs, Teenager, Swans, Lloyd, I’m Ready to be Heartbroken, If Looks Could Kill and Honey in the Sun.
They came back and asked the audience what people should bands do during encores (the answer would be to do song requests) but yeah, they already had what to play in mind and that was to dish out more new songs and end in Razzle Dazzle Rose. It was quite a nice end to the gig and everyone seemed to be dancing along merrily to the tunes. It was definitely worth seeing them at such an intimate venue and will be worth checking out when they play at Shepherds Bush. I recorded Lloyd, I’m Ready to be Heartbroken because it was one of my favourites and Adam was pretty pumped in getting this song played too. Check back on youtube for video
