I’m the boy with the bubblegun
My friend Adam Frankel and I went to see the Hotel Cafe Tour 2006 at the Carling Acadamy in Islington, London. It turned out being quite a emotional rollercoaster panning from bad, ok and excellent. Overall the evening was a disappointment.
The main reason to my disappointment is probably that I was expecting an evening with Tom McRae, and not an evening with a mixer/blender effect of 5 artist doing 2 songs at the time and taking turns on playing with each other.
Tom didn’t disappoint me, he was brilliant. On stage he was very relaxed, personal and funny. The singing and playing was spot on. I’m quite sure that if the evening had only been with Tom, I would have been more than satisfied.
But it wasn’t.
After Tom’s beautiful, charming, personal and promising start, the whole evening got an increasingly aftertaste of plastic image and bad lyrics. From time to time I was proven wrong, but those moments were among the exceptions.
At one point I turned to Adam saying:
Adam, we are standing in a venue named after a beer that has more similarities with pee and water then proper beer, listening to an American songwriter singing “I’m going to the country” in front of a big backdrop saying;
MYSPACE.COM + (RED)
The Cafe Tour 2006
Adam quickly replied:
Yeah… I know, they surely could have left out the ‘2006′ bit.
The highlights of the Evening were:
- Tom McRae’s presentation of the artist.
- Steve Reynolds guitar playing.
- Jim Bianco performance of his sing Painkiller.
- Last but not least; Tom McRae preformance of the evenings, and his, final song - I’m the boy with the bubblegun.
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I’ve seen the Hotel Cafe Tour three times now and every time they have ALL been excellent. Perhaps you should broaden your horizons and open you mind. These artists are all unique and all very very talented. Tom McRae is a great artist and I love his stuff, but Cary, Jim, and Steve are exceptional as well. Jim’s style, Cary’s catchy songs, and Steve’s insane guitar skills are very well developed and never disappoint an appreciative listener. Also, this group does a great job of entertaining the audience with their hilarious small talk.
Thanks Jake for sharing your thought in my journal.
Sorry, but I don’t think I need to “broaden my horizons” and open mind any further. I actually believe, in this case, that my horizons are to wide and i’m being a bit of a twat and bit elitist.
But than again - we (humans) are not all the same, and therefor we do appreciate different things on different levels.
We (as in you and me) obviously have a different options when it come to music, songs and “very very talented” artists and “insane guitar skills”.
It’s probably a culture thing as well. Am I right in believing that you saw the tour in America?