Kirsty Karaoke

To Shepherd’s Bush Empire last night to see A Concert for Kirsty MacColl. Kirsty would have been 50 yesterday if only she hadn’t been killed by some rich twat in a boat off the coast of Mexico nearly 10 years ago.

The first and last time I ever saw Kirsty MacColl play live was in the same venue  about 10 years ago. She herself declared it to be about the best gig she’d ever done, largely due to her lack of nerves which had blighted her all through her career but on this tour she had her partner on stage with her and that seemed to do the trick.

She’s influenced so many people over the years that there were queues of artist wanting to sing at this benefit gig for Kirsty’s favourite charity, Music Fund for Cuba. We’d been promised Johnny Marr and David Gray, who failed to show up and inevitably Shane McGowan was lost in the bottom of a glass somewhere in Dublin when he should have been singing 'Fairytale of New York'.

But it didn’t matter as most of the stars who turned up for a night of Kirsty Karaoke did a brilliant job. I say ‘most’ as I don’t understand why a Corr was allowed on stage to murder ‘They Don’t Know’. Fortunately the organisers redeemed themselves by bringing on Kim Wilde later on to show her how it should be done. Great performances too from Alison Moyet, Billy Bragg (doing a cover version of one of his own songs), Jackie Clune (who knew she could sing), Eddi Reader, Boo Hewerdine, James Walsh, Catherine Tate and even Phill Jupitus.

It was left to a couple of members of Kirsty’s band to sum the night up. They’d clearly had a fantastic time and had enjoyed playing songs that they’d not done for a long time. Here’s hoping they get to play them again soon.

Playlists

I've just finished reading Good Morning Nantwich, Adventures in Breakfast Radio by Phill Jupitus. Mainly about his time as the inaugural presenter of the 6 Music breakfast show, it chronicles his love of radio from using the old radiogram at home to make weird noises through to him chucking in his dream job of chatting to people while playing records. It's a great read and I recommend it to anyone with a love of radio, especially anyone who, like me, was wont to talk out loud to an imaginary audience while changing singles on their old Dansette, alone in their bedroom as a youngster.

It highlighted a problem with many music stations which has been annoying me for a while. Why do radio stations employ people as DJs who have a deep love and knowledge of music and then foist a playlist on them? As I'm currently 'between jobs' I've been spending a lot of time recently listening to 6Music. I love the diversity of music you get, even during the daytime but it bugs the hell out of me that several times an hour I get to hear something that I just heard 3 hours ago on another program. Every single day. I couldn't count the number of times I've heard Melancholy Hill by Gorillaz in the past month. It's not a particularly great record, neither do I think it's a bad one either. Now I just think that it's an intensely irritating one due to its ubiquity on the country's premier radio station. It got so bad I was ready to throw the DAB out of the window.

I know I'm not the only one that gets irritated by this as shown by the 6 Music message boards but things do seem to be improving acccording to this recent Guardian article. Let's hope TPTB at 6 Music will listen to their, er, listeners and keep the variety. At least I can console myself with the fact that I don't have to put up with the monotony (and adverts) that constitute XFM nowadays. Leaving the music selection of every program completely up to the presenter is probably an ideal that can never be achieved in a controlling environment like the BBC (even less so at a commercial station) but a less heavy-handed approach to the playlist would be an improvement.

I've now decided to limit my listening to 6 Music a bit and will spend more time with my extensive record & CD collection and accept that 6 Music has made me a bit lazy. Since coming to that decision this morning I've already listened to some absolute gems: Belly, The Breeders, Ultravox (the John Foxx version), Talking Heads, Jimi Hendrix, Faithless and The Fall. I just hope I don't get too lonely without somebody talking to me every few minutes.