Tired And Emotionless

The Troubadour is such a poorly laid out space, that unless you race in as soon as the doors open and grab one of the handful of seated tables, you have to stand in the crowded area by the door. I did that for the first half, but then luckily nabbed a spare pew for the second half. First up was Davey himself delivering twenty minutes of slurred ballads. He seemed totally pissed to me, unable to hold a tune, or remember the words, and his between song banter was unintelligble gibberish. I have a feeling that this is a fairly standard performance these days though. He looked the part, still a very solid six feet plus, dressed in DJ with straggly wooly tie, with a thick wiry head of greying ginger hair, and just the faintest hint of a ponytail. Does he ask the barber to leave this suggestion of a whispy whiff at the nape of the neck? Why?

Next up was Emma Tricca, last seen at the Green Man, she seemed more confident there, and had a second guitar player, here she was timid and easily ignorable. She only did three numbers, and was then followed by another quiet female guitarist called Jen something (too quiet to hear her name properly). she was accompanied by a violin player and started well with a French chanson, but then gradully petered out.

That was it for the first half, but act II produced the highlight in a very young guitar player called Jamie Carmichael. He only played four songs but they were all totally different, and displayed a casual but assured mastery of the geetar. He was followed by an old American codger called Duck Baker, who ran through a number of jazzy/bluesy guitar instrumentals, but really shouldn't have followed the new kid on the acoustic block.

Finally Davey Graham returned to the stage to turn in an equally inept instrumental set. Even his fingers looked pissed, as they rummaged around the guiter neck, trying to find a tune hidden somewhere in a skip full of twangy garbage. The fact that he could manage to play at all was incredible, though his presence as kind of twatted Spike Milligan/Viv Stanshall was endearing in a car-crash kind of way.