Best bands at the Enmore 2007-08
I’ve been working at the Enmore Theatre for over a year, as an usher. I was talking to a fellow torch-bearer the other night about a prospective Top 5 list for bands we’ve seen at work. Here’s what I’ve settled on, and this ain’t ranked.
1. Sonic Youth plays Daydream Nation
Sonic Youth played for two nights, but I was stuck out on the front door for the first show. The second night was the one. I was on the inside of the theatre, against the wall and doing very little. They played Daydream Nation in its entirety, thus the show opened magnificently and steadily fell into noisier, dirtier tracks. Thurston Moore dialed Radiohead’s Creep through effects, distorting and destroying it, winding it like flickering tape loops. They closed with an encore of more recent hits, including Accelerate.
Signed poster, aw yeah.
2. Nick Cave and Grinderman
Before this show I’d only heard No Pussy Blues off the Grinderman album, which would have been embarrassing in a geekish-fashion, but I caught up, I guess. These shows were amazing, Grinderman sounded like The Stooges, so brutal, with dirty storms of guitar tearing through the space, reverbing like Boredoms, yet this was Nick Cave with a strat, wtf?
After the madness of Grinderman, they returned for a best-of-Cave set, gentle piano and the smooth contours of his voice, an audience silent and resting on a soft thudding bass, reiling to the madness of a drunk, brilliantly arrogant and funny dude, leering and thrusting at 17-year-old girls in the front row.
3. Talib Kweli and Madlib
Almost everybody I know missed this show, outrageous. Talib Kweli is from Brooklyn and MC’d in Black Star with Mos Def, before each went solo; he has history with Common, Kanye West, MF Doom and many others.
His Get By has an awesome video clip, shot in New York, and the tune gets stuck in my head too easily.
This show worked out so damn well. I was on the columns, between the front bar and dance floor, but as the end drew near, I asked my boss if I could stand on the inside of the theatre. I thought I’d catch a few tracks; instead he played for another 40 minutes.
It was a performance set under projected images of great figures in the struggle for racial and social equality in America and around the world. Fight the powers that be.
4. The Jesus and Mary Chain
I saw The Jesus and Marychain in early 2007, at the Coachella Music Festival in California. It was a return after a long public absence. They played on the main stage, set before the rolling red hills of the desert at sunset, outlines of palm trees swayed by pulsing light. Cool breezes and an eventual, easing peace after a long, dry day.
The Enmore appearance rekindled the bliss; I skipped V festival but caught the best of it.
“I wanna die just like JFK, I wanna die on a sunny day, I wanna die just like JFK, I wanna die in the USA”.
5. Ice Cube
Straight Outta Compton, Gangsta Gangsta, Fuck Tha Police.
Ice Cube played two nights at the Enmore. The bouncers didn’t want to mess with the crowd of hip-hop people and thugs; and I got no support, foolishly attempting to send a 7 ft tall Eastern European back to his seat in Row Q. Shit went crazy.
