Magnetic Fields show

Only problem was the minority of insensitive souls *laughing* during "Kissing Things" (and other songs; I just noticed it there the most because it's so quiet and unobtrusive). I'm not normally this righteously outraged, but there was a minority of people there who clearly had little interest in the music they were hearing ...

You REALLY need to get hold of the bootleg MP3s of Stephin singing Kissing Things etc. People laugh during that, because the songs are FUNNY. They're also sad, of course, but you have to laugh at sad things otherwise they - well, they make you sad.

Also this is what I was getting at in the Julie London piece about performance vs home listening. It's OK to laugh. Really!

Seriously, I don't find those songs at all funny. I can see why others who confuse humour and sadness more than I do would, though (and there are a few other MF songs I find outrageously funny).

-- "And the English air would soon be reeking with petrol fumes."

Wasn't Marc Almond shite? Stephin's songs require that you don't take yourself too seriously. I assume Marc was chosen for Volcana! because, like the song, he is over the top and camp. But Marc doesn't seem to know he is.

Still, I've got my tickets to see Marc at Union Chapel on the 12th!

Saw them for the first time last night. I made a CD for a friend last week, half the new album and half all my favourites from their previous albums, and, like Wire last year, of the 14 old songs I included, they only played one ("You Must Be Out of Your Mind"). They skipped "When My Boy Walks Down the Street," "Sweet Lovin' Man," "Famous," "The Village in the Morning," and all the others. So that was a disappointment. But there were a number of old songs that sounded much better last night than I'd remembered, and from the new record (which I still haven't listened to myself), "Quick" was great. The byplay between Merritt and Claudia is very weird. Merritt had some great lines, even though I'm sure he uses the same ones every show. ("We don't take requests...We took a request once, and that really didn't work out well.")