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So, it’s Saturday morning and I’m browsing ent24, my favourite site for local gigs and events, and I notice that not all on the London dates for Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds are marked as sold out.

Not wanting to mess around, I’m straight on the phone and after a couple of minutes of automated messages I get to speak with an actual person…

“Hi, I’d like two tickets for Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds.�
“Wicked! What date would you like?�
“Friday 9th May please.�
“And that would be the seven thirty performance�
“Yeah, that sounds about right�
“What seats would you like? We have £60, £30 and £15�
Odd. “Whereabouts are they?�
“The £15 and £30 tickets are in the stalls, the £60 is in the circle. Actually, the £15 ones are in really good positions.�
I look at the seating plan. “Ok then, I’ll go for those!�
I’m getting pretty excited by this point. Tickets for a gig I was sure would be sold out and cheaper than listed. Great!
“So, just to confirm… Two tickets for Wicked on Friday 9th May at 7:30�
“Er, just a second. Did you say ‘Wicked’ as in the show Wicked?�
“Yes�
“Isn’t Nick Cave playing on Friday 9th May at 7:30?�
“Victoria Apollo Friday 9th May at 7:30, Wicked.�
“I rang the number of the Hammersmith Apollo.�
“Oh, I’m sorry.�
“Phew, that was a narrow escape�
“Yes. The Hammersmith Apollo; who did you want tickets for?�
“Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds�
“No, sorry, I’m not getting any availability on that.�

I don’t know what sort of speech impediment I must have for Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds to be heard as Wicked. I thought she was simply echoing my great taste! Either way, it looks like I’ll have to listen to Dig Lazarus Dig from home tomorrow…

Image is courtesy of gustavoBom’s photostream on flickr.

Last night an old friend called me out of the blue. He was visiting Liverpool with work and was out for a drink with a group of colleauges.

To cut a long story short, he bumped in to Ian McCulloch, the lead singer of Echo and the Bunnymen.

Following this chance encounter, my friend was understandably quite excited and felt a desire to share the event. Unfortunately, none of the twenty-odd colleagues he was out with had any frame of reference… “So?”, “Echo and the who?”.

What he needed was someone he had introduced to the band’s music over 20 years ago, someone who had joined him sneaking backstage at one of there gigs and someone who would definitely know what a big deal it was to to bump into an icon!

So he rang me.

His excitement was quite infectious.

Picture “borrowed” from heavenuphere on flickr.

I received my copy of Go Away White, the new album from Bauhaus yesterday and I have to admit that I was a little nervous about playing it. This feeling of trepidation wasn’t helped by the sticker on the front proclaiming this to be their first studio recording since 1983; though this is a little misleading, since they recorded a new track Severance for their live reunion album Gotham back in 1998.

Bauhaus are still a band I listen to frequently. There may be an element of nostalgia here, but I do feel that for me at least, their music has not dated in the way so much of what I listened to in my youth has.

I was nearly sick with worry when they reformed for a tour in 1998.

The closest analogy I can think of would be The Matrix, a fantastic film irrevocably tarnished by its sequels (well the second one anyway – I didn’t even bother with the third after that).

I shouldn’t have worried though. It was perhaps the best concert I have ever been to and I would have defied anyone who even suggested that it was not in fact fifteen years earlier.

But what about Go Away White? Well, it’s not the best album I have ever heard, but equally, I should not have worried so much.

From the outset the sound and the familiar form was present and by about half way through I realised that I had stopped worrying whether next track may spoil it. I was enjoying it.

In they days when I would look at my record collection and think, “I fancy a bit of Bauhaus, which album should I put on?�, Go Away White might not be my first choice. But now, with my MP3 player more often than not on shuffle, it will fall comfortably into the collection to be genuinely enjoyed when a track crops up.

It’s no secret that the big label record companies are struggling with, or reluctant to, adjust their business models to cope with the issues thrown up by, for the want of a better term, “the digital revolution�. So it’s down to the artists to address the situation themselves and an increasing number are making independent releases.

Einstürzende Neubauten have not long since released their third supporter funded release, working on a pay upfront model that gets you involved in the process and results in a disc through the post at the end.

The latest I’ve come across is an instrumental/concept album from Nine Inch Nails. Ghosts I-IV has been marketed direct by Trent Reznor from www.nin.com and is being offered in a number of guises.

The first volume Ghost I is free and has also been posted up on various torrent sites under a variation of the GPL licence.

The full package of Ghosts I-IV however is available as a lossless FLAC from the site at a measly $5. You can also choose a “hard copy� with a “download now too� option and could even go for an all singing and dancing signed deluxe vinyl edition with the grooves in the disk hand scribed by Mr Reznor for $300, though this has sold out.

Five Dollars! That’s less than… well less than loads of things… even less than the cut American Express would get if you used one of their cards to pay for a conventional album release!

I would consider myself a fan if NIN, so it’s possibly no surprise that I stumped up without a moments thought.

Although NIN enjoy a position of status that might allow them do things this way that true independents or unsigned artists might not this still feels in some way right. Good value and the money going to the artist.

The nice image at the top is courtesy of the people working on concerts and music at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, which I found after a post on eirikso.com.