Strange Thoughts of a Strange Man

Last night I went to the Troubadour in Earl’s Court to see Jill Sobule sing.

I have been wanting to see her perform for such a long time and I cannot begin to describe how excited I was leading up to the show. Imagine I was five and I’d just been told that Santa was coming to visit and that he was the real thing, not one of these shop imitations and you’d be somewhere close.

I am normally the least impressed by anyone who is famous. I could see the Queen in Sainsbury’s and not bat an eyelid and I have seen plenty of famous people around where I work and other than thinking “oh that’s so and so” I am not impressed. They are just people after all. I see them on TV or in the papers but so what?

Jill, however, is different. I like her music. I like the way she sings. The lyrics and the tunes and the fragile yet immensely strong quality of her voice speak to me in a way that many others don’t.

I could not pass up the opportunity to see her.

Did I regret it? Was she good? She was absolutely fantastic. She could turn me straight. No, just kidding. She was good though.

The venue could only be described as small and intimate but I think it suited Jill’s act and we, well I, felt more connected with her than if she had been on a huge stage in a massive auditorium filled with a sea of people. Jill deserves that sort of fame but hopefully not just yet.

I wasn’t in a good enough position to properly appreciate Jill’s support act, Erin Williams. She had a similar strong/weak quality to her voice and I would probably like to hear more at another time but I was there to hear and see Jill. People carried on talking while Erin was on but even they stopped when Jill stepped onto the stage and smiled at us and sang.

All of her stuff I had heard before but hearing it live and seeing her standing in front of me gave it all another dimension. The time just passed in this really happy haze where she would start playing something and it would be a little while before my brain worked out what it was and what a great arrangement this was.

Let's see what I can remember - she played Heroes, Trains, Bitter, I Kissed a Girl, Nothing to Prove, Where is Bobbie Gentry?, A Good Life, Wendell Lee, Angel/Asshole, Mexican Wrestler and a million others. She finished her set but was having such a great time with us that we got her to sing five other songs, ending on I Kissed a Girl, threatening to sing the Katy Perry version, but doing the proper one.

She had us sing along to a few things as well … Nothing to Prove works well with audience participation as does Bobbie Gentry. It didn’t do my voice any favours (I still have a bit of a cough) but that didn’t matter. I bellowed along with everyone else.

I managed to speak to her afterwards and got her to sign a copy of Pink Pearl. I told her that Rainy Day Parade was my favourite song but that I'm not good enough at shouting to get her to sing it. I'm too British and, besides, at the moment I probably would have ended up shouting "Rainy! *cough* *COUGH*" which probably wouldn't have worked. In any case, I could think of a dozen more “favourites” which I would have loved her to sing had either of us the time or the lung power. Karen by *cough* would have been good or Sanfran *cough* co or even Big *coughs*.

If she's playing anywhere near you, go see her. You won't regret it. She was kidding about moving to London. Possibly. I think she was kidding. A little bit of me is hoping she was serious.

Oooh! - sorry went a bit camp there - she was interviewed by "whispering" Bob Harris yesterday afternoon and sang some songs on his show. That will be broadcast on Saturday night on BBC Radio 2. Have a listen.

Labels: Jill Sobule

My favourite singer (after David, of course), Jill Sobule, is doing a UK tour in 2010. The dates and places are:

2/3/2010 (Tue) London Troubadour
3/3/2010 (Wed) Cambridge Junction 2
9/3/10 (Tue) Henley The Crooked Billet
10/3/10 (Wed) Leicester The Musician
11/3/10 (Thu) Bristol St Bonaventure's
14/3/10 (Sun) Milton Keynes The Stables

For more details go to http://www.jillsobule.com/shows

I have booked two tickets for the London show. It isn’t David’s thing so I will have to get someone else to come with me. If there are any of my friends who fancy coming along, please get in touch!

I have blogged about Jill before, several times and so I will try to be restrained here and not be gushy, ration the amount of exclamation marks I use and most definitely not use OMG anywhere. I am, however, pretty excited by this. This is evident by the fact that I have bought tickets and fully intend to go – I never go to concerts other than classical ones. Really, I have never been to a non-classical music concert. I have led a sheltered life.

I really love Jill’s music, however, and would regret not going to see her when I have the chance. She has an absolutely incredible voice and creates wonderfully emotional songs.

Labels: Jill Sobule

I'm currently reading The Annotated Alice: The Definitive version. It's been a while since I read any version of Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass and even longer since I have read anything with annotations.

I have to say I am a little disturbed by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's (Lewis Carroll's real name) preoccupation with little girls. It was allegedly non-sexual but, nevertheless, it doesn't feel right as I am reading about it.

My favourite singer, Jill Sobule, referred to this in her song, Heroes. I hope she won't mind if I quote her:

Heard Babe Ruth was full of malice
Lewis Carroll I'm sure did Alice
Plato in the cave with those very young boys

Anyhow, reading it academically, I was able to move on to the story, which seems greatly different to the one I read. I think that version must have been very heavily abridged.

One other thing that I'm finding rather jarring (and the original reason for this post before I distracted myself) is the archaic versions of can't and shan't that pervades the book. The versions in vogue then were ca'n't and sha'n't. I know it's only an extra apostrophe but I'm surprised the language has moved on so quickly. No doubt the cants that are already littering our language will become vogue in not that many years in the future.

Labels: Alice, Jill Sobule, Lewis Carroll

I was left a comment for my last posting on Jill that led me to her website where I bought some albums of hers that I have not yet heard. I also downloaded a recording of a concert she made last year in a place called Joe’s bar.Wonderful stuff. I wish she’d do something in London.

Labels: Jill Sobule

When I toured New Zealand at the end of 1999, our guide, Rich, played some music to the tour group in the bus. One of the songs that caught all of our attentions had lyrics along the lines of "we'll shoot from the bushes ... make love in the bushes". Although Rich told us the names of the artists I never found them but the song stayed in my head enough for me to make enquiries every so often to be able to find it.

Then, some years later, instead of looking for the artists on the Internet, I looked for the lyrics and found Jill Sobule's Resistance Song. On the strength of that I bought her semi-compilation album I Never Learned to Swim and fell in love with her songs and her voice.

I love the utter depair in her voice for Houdini's Box, the fun of I Kissed a Girl and the craziness of Margaret and Heroes.

Just recently I bought the rest of her albums. My favourite song at the moment is Rainy Day Parade on the album Pink Pearl, a song that appears to be about depression and the odd effect that anti-depressants have. The song sounds really upbeat and cheerful but when you listen to the lyrics you realise that she has really messed up her life and is pinning all her hopes on her antidepressants:

My friends, they've all run away
But they'll come back again
And we'll have a celebration
Getting back on my medication
We'll have a rainy day parade

This is a theme she has used in another song, the title track of Happy Town:

I used to sit under a gloomy cloud of gray
And now the sun is out and my
whole world is beige

A close second favourite of mine is Jetpack on the Jill Sobule album, a song about dreaming for a better life:

And if I had a jetpack, I'd burst into your door
take you by the hand to the Jersey shore
and underneath the moonlight, you'd want me even more
cause, I'd have a jetpack

Her early album, Things Here are Different, has tracks on it that are reminiscent of an early Madonna and I have to confess that these are not among my favourites although flashes of the Jill that is to come dominate the album.

Ah, what do I know? I'm not a music reviewer. I know I like Jill's work though. Try it, you might like it too.

Labels: Jill Sobule, Music, New Zealand