Slow Train / Dik Guru / Pixie Vic / Keith Shelley
Live at the Chaos Acoustic Folk Club
Old Mo'
Okay. Despite it being initially quite chilly in the annexe, it was after all a great night at the Chaos Acoustic Club at the Old Mo.
Dik Guru's been busy working on a new EP of unreleased fan favourites which should be out in December. He also a has a lyrics book in the works and has been moonlighting with the Beverly Brothers, that's right, an Everly Brothers covers combo he's part of - It's enough to make you want to get married just to book them for the party... But back onstage at the Old Mo' the outrageous Dik Guru satire was as great and laugh outloud as ever. Bullshit Bob, Iain Duncan Smith and The Cobra are definite crowd favorites. The hilarious and sometimes absurd observations wouldn't matter if the lyrics didn't fly high over great folk inflected tunes. Dik Guru is one of the stars of the Chaos Acoustic club and the most surprising ommission for their recently released 2dc collection.
Earlier, Keith Shelley opened the show with his naturally laconic, sweater and slacks delivery aided by his trusty blue acoustic fender and an eclectic choice of songs from the likes of Neil Finn and Moon Martin, to warm the crowd in the chilled annexe. I could be wrong. I could be right. Neil Finn and Moon Marton's songs might've been sung. Might not.
I ducked out before the Slow Train set had even got going. Some country from old men. What's not to like? But me, winding up my car to get it going, it's a worry.
Meanwhile, Poet Pixie Vic's performance had been a revelatory revelation. You know we've been high on poetry since interviewing the Emergency Poet last year, and then... the Dr John Cooper Clarke show with its exceptionally excellent undercard. Oh Wow. Well Pixie Vic is not so much like any of that. Maybe her hair, unmistakably idiosyncratic as sure as Dr. JCC's is. Blonde dreads if you should know. Not so many detached observations, more her spleen still warm sliding not always so gently across the table in your direction. Because you asked for it. And more likely, need it.
Her opener, the delightful Divine Negativity, regarding invidious oversharing religious street vendors, is essentially an hors d'oeuvres, a lull... deftly put. For the following 20 minutes in a richly and evenly measured timbre, delivered not unlike say a foul-mouthed Jane Garvey presenting a The Relationships episode of Women's Hour that was pulled lest the pearls and twinset set turn more blue and as their hearing aids start to melt. And thats just the men. Pixie Vic simply excoriates the fuckwits she has encountered in the aftermath of a crumbling mid-length marriage and her eventual return to the increasingly technology dominated dating pool. Brilliant poems of encounters that were never going to happen.
It's a courageous, cathartic, performance from Pixie Vic, enervating for me. Naked and true, there are beatniks desperate for dates who can rhyme sit/dick/beatnik. Man that's so cool isn't it? A kiss might do more.
At some point, the disbelief, the anger, the hurt and the pain, all there, is supplanted by maligned resignation. There's a time to try to stop, move away from the flaying, knowing yourself again.
I walked away from Pixie Vic's show a little shaky on my feet, amused though, I'm reappraising wtf I was doing with mrs x and whatever it is, i knew I needed to do it all better. Considering trying a little tenderness. I can't wait to see her again.
