The gig was
at The Buffalo Bar, right next to Highbury & Islington tube station. I
struggled to find the venue at first, because I relied on that small and thin and
rectangular device I never leave home without, which I usually use to answer
calls, reply to messages and other delights of the 21st century. I
trusted too much in the technological sense of my little black friend, forgetting
my good old common sense. Almost like when you tell your mother to stop calling
a friend in primary school because it’s not as fun to play with him anymore. Mistake.
I ended up wondering around in the cold like a muppet, looking for secret entrances in Kebab stores, before realising
that I had walked next to a perfectly normal venue entrance 20 minutes ago.
When I
finally got in, I left my jacket with the girl at the door, who also happened
to be the Cloakroom Manager. She suffered from high cloakroom stress or
something. She looked quite annoyed when I gave her my coat and paid. She
looked even more annoyed when I asked her to include my scarf in the bundle.
Strange vibe, I thought, and I went in.
Shortly
after I had bought my first beer (small San Miguel bottle, 3.50, only cash
accepted), Kate Goes, one of the
supporting acts, started playing. How should I describe them? It was a 3-piece
band, playing keys and all kinds of other instruments, ranging from a triangle
to one of those rubber cubes for babies that make high-pitch noises when squeezed.
These girls would shyly smile to the audience, almost constantly. They would
occasionally look at each other and wink both of their eyes, lifting her
shoulders up and showing her white teeth in an accomplice gesture. They
probably started doing this with their imaginary friends when they were eight.
Now that I think about it, they probably keep those imaginary friends nowadays,
and they were amongst us in the crowd.
I haven’t
yet said a word about the music, but there’s not much to say. The tunes were
written for a kindergarten audience, which is not an uninteresting concept at
all, but the execution was poor. Even some parts of the show felt a bit like that
scene in My Best Friend’s Wedding, in
which Cameron Diaz sings Aretha’s “I say a little prayer for you” in the bar,
starting scared to death and singing like shit, but then managing not to crack
and go on (still singing like shit though) with the support of the crowd. I
guess the main difference here is that these girls where never scared. That was
good. It was probably because they felt protected by magic fairies and flying unicorns.
Before the
main act started I had some time for a second beer, and to look around a bit.
The venue was quite cool, very small. The sound was very low as well, so low
you could hear all kind of conversations even with music playing. The crowd was
female predominantly; a kind of Daria meets Annie Hall type, most of them thin,
tall and with thick round glasses in black frames. You could smell yoga and
organic courgettes in the air, with bits of Simone de Beauvoir and a hint of
suicidal thoughts. Definitely a different crowd from the ones what I´m used to.
After a
long interval, Haiku Salut strated
playing. Again a 3-piece band, again all girls, but this time not only with
keys but with some other “traditional” instruments (classic guitar, a few
drums) and the coolest kid in school,
the Mac Book Pro. I had listened one of their songs before the show and I
thought it was interesting, definitely worth hearing more of. So I was looking
forward to the start of the show, especially after the traumatic childhood
regression from a few moments before.
The show
started low... and continued like that until it finished. I’ve read somewhere
that there’s nothing wrong in “borrowing” stuff from other artists for
inspiration; Picasso even used to say “good artists copy, great artists steal”.
But nothing of what I heard from Haiku Salut sounded remotely original. I don’t
think they even bothered to combine the diverse thefts in a creative way to arrive
to something different. Everything sounded too three-four metered and too much
like Yann Tiersen and Beirut, but in low res. Pixels all over the place. They
even had a problem coordinating the samplers with the live instruments. All
this would have been fine if they displayed some kind of energy on stage.
Nothing. Flat lines. A black hole. The previous Tinker Bell girls at least had
a good time while they were playing. These behaved as if they were undergoing
surgery on stage.
Somehow I managed to keep up until the end of the show. After it finished I went straight to the entrance, where the Cloakroom Manager was having an argument with someone who couldn’t find his tiny receipt. I’m glad she didn’t have a Cloakroom Assistant; that would have been one poor devil. I asked for my coat almost timidly, grabbed it and took off, still thinking about the imaginary people that remained inside for one last drink.