Alison just posted on Twitter that Mara Carlyle will be supporting them at this gig.  I love a bit of musical saw ;) 

Musical saw trivia (true) - early in her career Marlene Dietrich became a virtuouso on the musical saw after a wrist injury put paid to her aspirations to become a solo violinist.

Alt Universe: Dietrich does not hurt her wrist, becomes a soloist, premieres the Berg, Stravinsky and Bartok concertos ... Oh, and persuades Schoenberg to write a concerto that does not require the soloist grows a sixth finger...  and is actually good. I quite like that alternative universe myself, even if you do have to trade Lola-Lola for it

^ Yeah, I'd never heard of her, either. Cheers for the video link. Not quite my sorta thang music-wise, but looks like it'll be a more interesting support than most of the other recent ones...

Wiki says ukulele player. Help. God. Me.

wild_corgi said:

Musical saw trivia (true) - early in her career Marlene Dietrich became a virtuouso on the musical saw after a wrist injury put paid to her aspirations to become a solo violinist.

Alt Universe: Dietrich does not hurt her wrist, becomes a soloist, premieres the Berg, Stravinsky and Bartok concertos ... Oh, and persuades Schoenberg to write a concerto that does not require the soloist grows a sixth finger...  and is actually good. I quite like that alternative universe myself, even if you do have to trade Lola-Lola for it

Personally, I wouldn't trade Lola-Lola for that.  Nor would I trade for it the journey on the Shanghai Express.

Elliot, that video clip is joe goddard (of hot chip/2 bears fame), with Mara doing vocals... her own music is actually pretty different. 

wild_corgi said:

Or what the boys in the backroom would have!

Actually ... now I think about it ... yeah I'd trade all that for Dietrich the Imperial Violinist of the Second Viennese School.

Don't mind me, just geeking out, nothing to see here

If I may geek out, too, perhaps Dietrich wouldn't have been a very good violinist.  She was a woman of extraordinary, but very limited, talents.  She made about ten films that are worth watching and a much larger number that are not.  (I could list the ten, but perhaps that would be too geekish.)  As a singer... I once had a CD of her songs, but it wasn't something to which I ever wished to listen in its entirety.  A song or two is sufficient.  Her best songs are all embedded in films and, I think, are most enjoyable when heard/seen in context.  Amongst her well remembered songs is Lili Marlen (to take its original spelling) of which she made (in my opinion) a dog's breakfast.  Lale Andersen's original version of the song is deeply moving and (again in my opinion) belongs in anyone's record collection. Dietrich's would have been better not made.  I could discuss Lili Marlen at length, but suffice it to say that the subject matter of the lyrics is not as most people seem to assume.

I think that Lili Marlen is the correct original spelling.  The lyric dates back to the First World war and, I believe, took the names of two real girls called Lili and Marlen who waited by the gates to some barracks for their sweethearts who had the happiness (or otherwise) to be conscripted into the German army.