At Home with John and Debbie

A while ago, I got excited at the prospect of going not once, not twice, but three times, to Nottingham’s Rescue Rooms to see good bands from the Pacific Northwest. Then there was a scheduling snafu whereby we invited a load of people to our house for a murder mystery evening on the night of the Kinski gig, followed by Sleater Kinney cancelling their tour for health reasons. That left one visit to Nottingham — last night’s Decemberists gig.

Having never been to Nottingham before, I perceived it as quite a trek, but pretty much an essential one since the alternatives were Manchester, Glasgow, London, mainland Europe, or worst of all, no Decemberists at all! It turns out that, by car, from Leamington, attending a gig in this part of Nottingham is hardly any more trouble than going to Birmingham.

The Rescue Rooms are a sister venue to the more famous Rock City, and consist of a rather pleasantly Bohemian pub (full of Nottingham Trent students) with a food kiosk, and an adjoining music venue. When we got there, people were queuing for the venue, in the freezing cold, but the pub was open and serving drinks, so we waited in the warmth until the queue started moving.

In all the time we spent in Nottingham, we didn’t see Alex Rodman once.

I expected the venue to be smaller than, say, the Birmingham Academy, but I was quite surprised to find out how intimate the Rescue Rooms venue is. Taken aback in the sense that I’m not often reminded that my tastes in music aren’t mainstream, but pleasantly surprised because an intimate gig is always more fun than watching stick figures 30 metres away.

I bought a nice t-shirt, and we found ourselves a spot with a good view of the stage. The support ambled on: Two Gallants.

Two Gallants are from San Francisco. If the Jeopardy answer was “Two Gallants”, the question might be “What would the White Stripes be like if the drummer was a little more, er, ornate, and a fella, and the singer/guitarist wasn’t quite the seething entertainment machine that is Jack White?”.

I enjoyed the bluesy guitar work, the brooding intensity of the singer, and the whole idea in general, but the problem with being just a guitarist and drummer is that you’ve got to do an awful lot to keep it interesting, which is one reason that the White Stripes are so remarkable. This lot hit a great tone, but then that’s the tone they stuck with throughout. I am nitpicking though — I’d happily see them again.

Between acts there was a dilemma — I needed the loo, but we’d fought for and won a nice position. It turns out that the venue had no toilet of its own, and we had to go outside and back into the main bar. This meant we had to fight through the throng for a place once more. Our original position was taken and not retrieveable, so we forged further forward to end up with a lovely spot, where both Debbie and I had a good view of the stage, and there was only five metres or so between us and the performers. Wonderful! Better still the drivers were above our heads, so worst of the loudness was likely to carry over us rather than batter my poor ageing ears.

When The Decemberists came on, I thought the crowd was somewhat muted — not that I should judge because I’m never the one whooping and shouting. The band struck up into The Infanta, which was nice and uptempo to get the crowd going, but found me thinking “Oh God, all I can hear is the drums; if it stays like this for the rest of the gig, I’ll go mad.”

Fortunately, the sound men were on the case, and by the middle of the second song everything was lovely. The band’s easy rapport, the way it was obvious they were enjoying themselves, the top notch musicianship, all got the crowd on their side in no time.

Colin Meloy informed us that this was their second visit to Nottingham. The first time, they had gone to Tales of Robin Hood. Apparently it’s expensive but “so worth it”. It was “about 50 US dollars” he said. “That’s about £5″ came a yell from the audience. Rather than get into a US/UK argument, they played a song about France: The Legionnaire’s Lament. Ah, wonderful.

I grinned throughout, and I could happily have tolerated aching legs for another hour’s performance if the Decemberists had the stamina and the licence had allowed it. For an encore, I was expecting a raucous rendition of The Chimbley Sweep, which was the climax of their support slot with Cake. We didn’t get this, but we got something even better. The Mariner’s Revenge Song saw the drummer bring the bass drum and a tamourine out to centre stage, and the crowd encouraged to contribute an almighy scream to illustrate the point at which the ship is swallowed by a whale.

I count it among the best gigs I’ve ever been to, and I’m determined to continue firing Decemberists evangelism at an uncaring audience:

Here is a set of live recordings done for KEXP in October 2004.
Here is another one from March 2005, which includes a fine rendition of The Mariner’s Revenge Song.

Unfortunately both are in a streaming format, so you’d have to jump through hoops to make copies to keep.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 15th, 2005 at 15:57 and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.