Ever have one of those dreams that are filled with a bizarre mish-mash of famous people in a familiar setting but doing things they wouldn’t normally do?
No? I have them them all the time. Take this for example:
Nick Cave is on stage in Brighton where he is joined by Beth Orton and Jarvis Cocker. Then Laurie Anderson starts performing with Kate and Anna McGarrigle. The Handsome Family, Rufus Wainright and Linda Thompson all drop by. They spend the whole time singing Leonard Cohen songs with help from some of his backing singers.
It was a wonderful evening. Although… it was a little offputting to see so many of the performers clutching lyric sheets. It made me nervous. I started to worry that they’d flub the lines. Then I stopped being nervous and started being slightly annoyed. The songs were fairly evenly distributed: how hard would it have been to learn all the words by heart? Heck, I thnk I know all the words to most of the songs that were played.
But I’m nitpicking. It was great.
The great revelation of the night was Teddy Thompson. Every song he did, he made his own. Laurie Anderson was amazing too but that’s hardly surprising: she’s always amazing.