Saturday, July 18, 2009

Column inches

I had a very pleasant night out last week with Steve Connor at the Manchester International Festival pavilion. An evening talking about old friends, old enemies, the collapse of neo-liberalism and Jello Biafra can't fail really. We went to see The Durrutti Column, an instrumental Factory band, who produced a "paean" to our late friend Tony Wilson. And what a smashing, handsome, young man Oliver Wilson is turning into. It was lovely lovely music, with a mixture of tight strings, brass and subtle percussion.

But Paul Taylor's review - here - had it right.

For music so contemplative, it was a bizarre choice to stage this in the Pavilion Theatre, the audience forced to stand in a sweltering tent rather than appreciate every nuance from the cooler vantage point of a seat in, say, the Bridgewater Hall.

Are we just old farts, then? Or was this another Wilson act of situationism from beyond the grave? Make people suffer for the consumption of such art.

I think my next Vini Reilly experience will be listening to the new album sat down on a large sofa with a glass of wine and a book about Victorian industrialists.

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