I’ve finally gotten around to recount the events of last Thursday. The original plan was to go see The Handsome Family at Voxhall and then head home, but I met a friend who invited me to a party, so I went to that after the concert.

I went to the concert along with probably 25 other paying customers. That’s not exactly a lot of people in a venue that usually fits 500. But thankfully they’d set up tables and chairs, so the room didn’t look completely empty. The Handsome Family consists of three members. A husband on guitar and lead vocals, a wife on backing vocals, bass, and miscellaneous instruments, and a brother-in-law on drums. The concert began with the members wandering onstage and shuffling papers around and then eventually starting in on the first song. From then on every song would be introduced by the wife (who’d say stuff like; “This next song is about birds. And death. Birds and death.”), which would lead to a couple of weird comments from the husband, then some bickering between the two of them, and then finally a song. She would occasionally rush him and he’d say stuff like “It’s not like they’re going anywhere” and she’d be like “They could leave any minute” and then be like “This is the slowest sinking ship I’ve ever been on” (Sorry if I sound like a character from Clueless, but it’s the easiest way to retell the conversation).

This went on for an hour and a half, but it was actually quite amusing. It is definitely the first concert I’ve seen, where the singer kicks of a sneaker and then runs backstage to get a pair of slippers. He then returned and kicked off the other sneaker, put on the slippers, and did a couple of tap dancing moves to show how comfortable he now was.
If you don’t know The Handsome Family I think their music can best be described as slow country music. They use pretty dark humour and even though I didn’t really know any of the songs, the combination of their weird stage presence and entertaining songs meant that I quite enjoyed the show. During the concert they made a couple of reference to the band Lambchop, who had played a concert the night before. Supposedly, the concert had been great, but I unfortunately missed it. But now I know that they took their name from a television show about a puppet called Lambchop, which had to be cancelled, when the woman who supplied the voice of Lambchop died.

A friend of mine works at the venue and he had stopped by to check out the band. After the concert he invited me to an art school party, which we went to that straight after the concert. I knew a couple of people at the party, so it wasn’t completely weird for me, but it was still a different scene from what I’m used to. It was most mostly students from the school, who was there, and I don’t think I’m offending anyone when I say they all looked weird. I think they were going for that look and in my opinion they succeeded quite well.

A lot of them acted weird as well, so inspired by BradLands I’ve transcribed an example of a conversation. So here’s a scene from the Aarhus bar scene:

[A guy in a huge parka with huge headphones around his neck walks up to me]
Guy: Take a flyer for this concert I’ve arranged.
Me: You gave me one of those already.
Guy: Oh well, you should come. We’re going to play some fucked up music.
Me: Like this? [Referring to the music being played in the background]
Guy: Oh, a lot more fucked up than that. Like fucked up. Like totally fucked up.
Me: ‘Cause the stuff they played before sounded like someone violently cleaning his toilet.
Guy: Ha ha. Well yeah, more fucked up than that.
Me: Great.

That sums up the intelligence level of the conversations I had at that party, so after a couple of beers I took off. But somehow I still managed to have a massive hangover the next day, so I had to cancel on the party I was supposed to go to Friday night.

I just came back from seeing Arsenal beating Bolton, so I’m a bit knackered (which should explain spelling errors and so forth). But they’re now definitely on the way to winning The Double and I just got a new apartment and new CDs today, so I’m a happy knackered.

Posted by John Fogde at April 30, 2002 12:48 AM | TrackBack