Frost* In July

To use a sporting comparison, if the Royal Albert Hall (RAH) is like Wembley Stadium, then the O2 Academy in Islington is more like Dagenham & Redbridge's ground. With a capacity of just 250 (all standing), the O2 holds about a twentieth of the number of punters that can fit into the RAH and while the RAH is an eye-pleasing piece of Victorian design, the O2 is a somewhat featureless hall in a shopping centre that is unlikely to win any prizes for architectural merit.

Frost* in July (and June).

Both fulfil similar purposes as concert venues, and I've been to both in recent months. In May I was at the RAH to see Yes (see A Fragile Drama), last Saturday I was in Islington to see Frost* and as well as a contrast between the venues, there was some contrast between the experiences and the shows themselves. The show that Yes put on at the RAH was, as one might expect from a band that have been recording and performing for nearly fifty years, thoroughly professional but - and this was probably due more to the fact that I was way up in the circle - lacking a certain intimacy. No such risk of a lack of that at the O2 Academy where I ended up about ten feet from the stage, which inevitably put me at a similar distance from one of the speakers, hence the fact that from the moment I left until nearly twenty-four hours later I was afflicted with partial deafness and a ringing in the ears.

My (somewhat distant) view of Yes at the Royal Albert Hall.

My rather closer view of Frost* at the O2 Academy, Islington

For those of you unfamiliar with Frost* (and that asterisk is part of the name, not a reference to a footnote in this blog, by the way), they are a prog-rock act formed in 2004 by singer-songwriter Jem Godfrey, who has written for acts such as Atomic Kitten, Shayne Ward and Holly Vallance - about as far from prog as one can imagine. Frost*'s first album, Milliontown, was released in 2006 and was on repeat on my CD player for quite some time after I received it. Experiments In Mass Appeal followed in 2008 and then there was a hiatus until Falling Satellites came out this year. As you might expect, the most recent album featured heavily in the live show, meaning that in the weeks leading up to the gig that album got a number of spins so that I could acquaint myself with it. And how joyous was the sound of tracks like Signs and Closer To The Sun, but for me (and I suspect I was not alone), the highlight of Frost* at the O2 Academy was the encore, consisting of Black Light Machine and The Other Me from the Milliontown album. I left the concert buzzing, metaphorically and in the case of my ears, literally.

The walk back to Liverpool Street (engineering work on the Northern Line meant that Angel tube station was closed) took me through parts of Shoreditch that were also absolutely buzzing. The area, which has undergone considerable gentrification in recent years, has become one of  London's most popular and fashionable quarters, even if the hipster sub-culture that has become synonymous with the area has courted some controversy, viz the protest at the Cereal Killer Cafe in September 2015. The walk also gave me time to reflect on Frost*'s support act, which actually consisted of fifty per-cent of Frost* themselves, namely Jem Godfrey and John Mitchell, playing under the name Twats in Hats and who played, among other songs, the fabulous Losers Day Parade.

The night before the Frost* gig, and back at the Royal Albert Hall, the BBC Proms featured what the corporation's website described as "A celebration and reinterpretation of the music of David Bowie with the Berlin-based, genre-defying musicians’ collective s t a r g a z e and its Artistic Director André de Ridder." Following Bowie's death in January this year, this show was both eagerly awaited and tickets sold out within an hour. Had I had the opportunity I would have loved to have been there, but as it happened watching it on television was in the end probably preferable, since it was a show that was quite difficult to enjoy. In truth, had I been there for it I would quite possibly have walked out before the end.

Now, I don't have a problem with weird stuff, and given that David Bowie was a great innovator and an artiste who constantly reinvented himself, it was both inevitable and appropriate that the concert was anything but a slavish copy of his material; it was fitting that it reinterpreted his songs, showcasing them in a new light. But much of this was not a reimagining, more a mutilation. It started well enough, though. Despite the fact that Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy looked disconcertingly like a young David Blunkett, his performances on Station To Station, and particularly This Is Not America were excellent, even if the rapping from Kid Elf on the latter song did not contribute much. But thereafter it went downhill. 

David Blunkett - sorry, Neil Hannon, performing Station to Station

Marc Almond's rendition of Starman was slightly better than his attempt at Life on Mars (which was terrible), but not much. John Cale, looking like Billy Goat Gruff in a skirt, performed a version of Space Oddity that might have sounded fine in his head, where there was obviously a tune quite different from that being played by the musicians going on,  not that the tune being played by the orchestra bore more than a passing relation to the one penned by David Bowie. Meanwhile a highly truncated version of Rebel, Rebel concluded with the conductor,  André de Ridder, asking the audience, "Recognise it?" to which the answer in our household was a resounding "No", and judging by the lukewarm reception given it by the audience in the RAH, a similar one was on their lips too.

John Cale, whose arrival on stage was greeted more rapturously than his performance.

But the highlight of the concert in the Woods household (one which reduced Val to tears of laughter), was the performance of Jherek Bischoff. Bischoff is an American musician whose album, Cistern, was partially recorded in an empty two million gallon underground water tank under Fort Worden in Port Townsend, Washington. It's that sort of fact that immediately makes me think that the resulting output is going to be pretentious twaddle with more than a shade of the Emperor's new clothes, although having now heard parts of it, I'd just say it is more dull than anything else. Bischoff's performance at the Prom was bizarre, although I imagine it was quite normal for him. Playing guitar with eyes tightly closed, his melodramatic style of playing was at times quite out of keeping with the music. Looking like the tune playing in his head was Johnny B Goode rather than Blackstar, he seemed poised to burst into a Chuck Berry style duck-walk even during the most sedate passages.

Jherek Bischoff (centre), contemplating a duck-walk.

There's a school of thought that Bowie would rather have enjoyed the adaptation of his music as performed in the Prom; I suspect he would have enjoyed the concert more than the audience at the Royal Albert Hall did, but I doubt there was an audience anywhere in the country who enjoyed a gig last weekend as the one that saw Frost* in July.