Thursday, 27 November 2008

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly Live Review



Once I sent a review to the independent and they were silly enough to print it. They edited it alot, though, and I didn't like it as much when they were done with it. I guess that's natural though.
You can read what was printed by clicking here, and the original review follows:

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly Secret Show at The Fly, London. 21st of June, 2008.
3/5

I wouldn't be surprised if others around the UK feel they have 'lost' Get Cape to the masses. His gigs, once personal, friendly affairs, have grown in size to involve a full band and a crowd full of screaming fans with camera phones who just can’t seem to shut up whilst the support is playing.
It was a nice surprise, then, when my girlfriend won tickets to see him play as part of XFM’s ‘All Day Breakfast’ festival, as the gig wasn’t open to the general public, and that it was to be broadcast live on XFM. We headed in to the tiny basement of The Fly just before lunchtime to claim our spot at the front before the 100-odd other winners arrived.
By the time the support had finished, the place was packed with people, eager for some laptop-aided acoustic folk. We waited patiently as a man told us some completely irrelevant facts about Sam Duckworth before finally letting him start up an extended intro to ‘Chronicles Part 2’, to which the crowd unfortunately responded with… indifference. Singing along was kept to a minimum, with only a few of us dedicated to join in on every song we knew, and dancing was non-existent, so all the energy came from Sam himself, who played, sang and hopped about for a stationary crowd.
The new album is filled with horn and string sections, much fuller and more ambitions than the first, and unfortunately, as the tiny stage hardly had space for such things, the whole set was run off his laptop. Newer songs, therefore, felt slightly hollow without live accompaniment, whereas the older material fared much better, with new, improved laptop parts compared to the album recordings.
The best moments were unexpected, when Duckworth set the laptop aside and called for requests. I groaned when half the venue immediately called for ‘I-Spy’, as though they were, for some reason, worried he wouldn’t play his most popular single, and did my best to make my voice heard to get ‘If I had £1…’ (which he claimed he couldn’t remember how to play – typical) and ‘Once More With Feeling’ played.
Other surprises included a brilliant cover of Alkaline Trio’s ‘Radio’ as part of his extended encore, which not only showed Duckworth’s punk rock roots, but also how his rough-sounding voice can, on occasion, make him sound incredibly angry. Requests for Gorilla Biscuits, Tellison and more Alkaline Trio were ignored in favour of a song written the day before, a more than fair compromise
. Although it’s been a while since I’ve seen the full Get Cape live show, it doesn’t compare to a set like ‘the old days’, with a man and his laptop, clearly in his element, singing his heart out in a tiny room. A great experience that I wish everyone else had seemed to enjoy as much as me.

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These are my pictures from the show. Click on them to see them being bigger. Sam Isaac was the support, but I didn't have room to write about him. He was good.

Sam Isaac Sam Isaac Sam Isaac Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly

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