Great gig. Experienced a sort of vertiginous joy for the first couple of songs, monster renditions of awesome jams by superb musicians. It's hard to describe how cool it is to be digging a pumping band onstange, then to be struck by the fact that it's FUCKING MICK JONES AND PAUL SIMENON UP THERE and then they wheel on Bobby Womack and it's a mind-blower.
I mean, I don't like getting too idolatory re old rock dudes, but there's still something bullshit cool TO ME about seeing half the Clash posing like mad over a spectacular spirit of '83 groove.
I reckon I heard Mick Jones play about six notes all night, and suspect he is there mainly to look awesome and provide VIBE. It is like he is prancing about between big neon quote marks. I dig it.
Never liked Damon Albarn (having lived through the bloody Country House/Charmless Man phase of Blur is lifelong-scarring shit) but definitely appreciate that he has taken his measure of fame and influence and used it to do something nuts and wildly over-ambitious. Never really paid any attention to Gorillaz before tonight, we tread different paths, but this was a real triumph of a gig.
It struck me that the Gorillaz project is a positive response to the 21st Century, one that glories in the possibilites of a globally-connected and media saturated world. Most of the music I listen to feels like it is in opposition to this world - and much music I dislike is kinda in denial of it. It felt good to walk out of the gig straight onto a concrete flyover, look down at the lights of the monorail terminus and feel in synch with the night, with 2010. It was similar to the feeling I remember after watching certain Michael Mann films, another artist who can make the early 21st Century seem a pretty awesome place to be.
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