Going to see Faithless again , playing London sometime over the summer
"Read my posts and see why we`re not allowed nice things anymore" "Brought to you straight from the People`s Republic of There`s Something Wrong With You . The Hoi Polloi Capital of the World"
Oh yes, I meant to post about that. It was brilliant -- and very emotional. She was really good, but she's also very young, bless her. (She said she's 18.) When she sang her first song, she was obviously very nervous, painfully so. Her body language made it clear. The room was full, and the crowd loved her. She was clearly both surprised and overwhelmed by the reaction. During the second song, she seemed more confident, but still concerned. A few songs later, I could see tears in her eyes -- a reaction to the warmth of the crowd.
She spoke to the audience, thanking us. The things she said were obviously unrehearsed, and not entirely coherent. She said something about coming to London where she has no fans... and then she corrected herself (because of our enthusiasm): "well, I don't know..." Later, she said: "I know it's a free gig, but..." She didn't complete her sentence -- something, maybe, about not expecting such an appreciative audience.
Her band is very good, her voice entrancing. There were a couple of acoustic numbers. The whole set lasted about an hour and included two cover versions: "Mr Tambourine Man" and Bowie's "Life on Mars". "Life on Mars" was her encore (although there was only a short pause between the previous song and the Bowie number). I had the idea that it might have been an unplanned addition to the set -- she sang it accompanied only by her keyboard player. During "Mr Tambourine Man", she broke off, and said that she'd missed a bit out (I'm sure none of us noticed). Did we want her to backtrack and sing the missing lines? Of course, we did want that, and made it very clear that we did.
As I said, it was very emotional. At one point, tears trickled down my cheeks, which doesn't happen at every gig I attend. In part, that was a reaction to the beauty of her voice, and in part a reaction to her obvious emotions.
After Aurora's gig, I searched for her CDs on the Internet. (I don't do music downloading. I don't know where downloaded music goes, or what I'm supposed to do with it.) I could only find one CD on the entire Interweb. That was a single song CD of "Puppet" available from US Amazon. It's better than nothing, and I've ordered it. European Amazons seem only to have downloads available.
April 24th: Tove Styrke @ Bitterzoet, A'dam April 30th: Ormonde @ Lutherse Kerk, Breda (with my own band supporting - EXCITED! :-SS ) May 10th: Marina and The Diamonds @ Melkweg, A'dam May 16th: London Calling Outdoors festival (a.o. Aurora, Best Coast, Soley, The Undertones) - A'dam May 23th: Mew @ Melkweg, A'dam