LLL: Former Ghosts and, ehrm, Former Ghosts

LLL = Linda Live in London. Linda discussing her musical adventures in the English city. This week, Former Ghosts, Parenthetical Girls, and some additional name dropping.

So this was my last week in London, for now at least. I'll be back in two weeks, but it still feels like a farewell. For this reason, I had planned a crazy week with music every night. That could lead to one enormous review, but this once I will stick to the capsule concept. Not because it's 27 degrees outside and I prefer lying in the park with a book, but because I saw the best gig in my entire life this week and all the other things seem rather bleak now. So no long renditions of how much Oh No Ono seem to enjoy exhibiting their Mew and MGMT inspired psychedelic rock; no endless rants about the Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug comedy roadshow (also known as Wolf Parade) and Spencer Krug's fabulous 80s TV show haircut; no whining about the abysmal support act Crystal Castles ended up with after both HEALTH and Male Bonding were taken off the bill; or even the brilliance of Neon Indian doing Vega tracks as an encore. Even a festival like Stag and Dagger with the likes of Team Ghost (with that other guy from M83), LoneLady, Comanechi, Active Child, The Radio Dept. and A Place To Bury Strangers couldn't measure up to seeing Former Ghosts live. Nope.

The only band that came close was Parenthetical Girls, who conveniently played on the same night at the Luminaire, which I have to say is a great venue. And not just because they tell people to shut up during gigs by writing this on the walls: it's also got a giant disco-ball. And as Zac Pennington said, you can tell if it's a good venue if they let you sing on the bar. As the venue is only half filled, there is enough room for Zac and his freshly painted silver microphone to go about the audience, and even dance in the back where nobody's standing anyway, or hang from the rafters in front of the stage (which is quite up front, so to put it, if you're standing on the front row - though as Zac is blessed with one of the most theatrical faces in human history it's definitely worth the occasional crotch in your face). As the Dance Dysmorphic Tour ends in London, and this end happens to coincide with a certain Steven M's birthday, Parenthetical Girls (who are by the way supported by Former Ghosts's Freddy Ruppert on samples and occasional guitar) treat themselves to some foamy champagne, and us to 'Handsome Devil'. If anyone should be allowed to cover the Smiths, it should be this band.

I can't even begin to describe how very special, and mostly intense, Former Ghosts' performance was. I've seen over 500 bands live (yes, I keep an Excel-file in which I track each and every band I have EVER seen, and no, I don't think I'm OCD), and nothing even begins to compare to Freddy Ruppert. At first, I was a bit disappointed as it was just going to be Freddy Ruppert, no Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu) or Nika Roza (Zola Jesus) to back him up, but as it turn out, he doesn't really need them anyway as I ended up just staring at my wall for about an hour when I came home afterwards. I just couldn't do anything else. In a way, his performance reminded me of how it felt to hear patients' stories during lectures in my first years as a medical student: at the end you're not sure whether to applaud since, though it's very brave of them to tell their story to a bunch of barely post-pubescent students who are struggling to keep awake, it sort of feels like you're applauding the fact they've got a disorder of some kind (on a theatrical note, this feeling is achieved to great effect by Wallace Shawn in his play Aunt Dan and Lemon). Freddy Ruppert puts so much emotion into what he does, that the process itself seems to be killing him. After the first song he is already out of breath (which might also have something to do with him beating the drums with a vengeance all Rocky films combined wouldn't even come close to), but he just keeps pushing himself to go even further. As a result, 'New Orleans' seems more like torture than an actual performance (though in the best possible way), and Freddy needs a few moments to regain control of himself before he can even carry on.

I already loved last years Fleurs, which I've now learned contains an epic amount of reverb: if you take out all the instruments and then line up just the reverb, you've got 8 3/4 years of sound. That's just amazing! Some quick calculations have told me that my entire music collection (some 22,000 tracks, roughly) wouldn't even fill two months. And as I need a terrabyte-size external hard drive to accommodate my music, I don't think that's just me.

Live, it's even better, just through the sheer display of emotions. When Freddy tries to announce his last song after a truly amazing 'Mother', he can't even control his voice. He seems at the verge of a breakdown, and if what he did wasn't so brilliant, you would want him to quit right now.