South American Fun

I should be in an absolutely foul mood, as right now, this minute, I should be in São Paulo watching Devo in concert. Arrangements were made, and a flight was booked. Or so we thought, until the next day, when we discovered that in fact the reservation had 'gone' and the price had doubled. And much as I would love to see Devo in concert, I can't justify spending a weeks wage on going to see them.

So instead of weeping to Whip It as I should be right now, I am sitting at home writing this, and I am feeling just fine. That's because yesterday I found out that the mighty LCD Soundsystem are coming to Brasília next Saturday. This city, for all it's strengths (it's clean, safe, and easy to get around) has a live music scene comparable to a Saharan backwater. You would hope for better from the capital city of the fifth biggest country in the world. The only non-Brazilian acts to play here in the last year have been the Black Eyed Peas, Madeline Peyroux, New Order and Dionne Warwick, which explains why LCD's appearance seems so miraculous and unlikely. So I have been saved from an evening of moodiness by Mr Murphy and a very kindly promoter, who I need to befriend urgently.

When it comes to the cultural spoils, São Paulo gets all the good stuff. That's why we went there two weeks ago to go to the Tim festival. This is an annual music festival in three cities in Brazil, sponsored by a mobile company (alas not a very nice man called Tim). It was an outdoor event, with a capacity of 3700, thus making it the largest event I have attended since the Reading Festival in 1996. They have really improved the sound quality of these things nowadays haven't they? I remember at Reading how the slightest gust of wind would send the sound off swirling around the site. There were no such problems here and the speakers were about an eighth of the size.

The first band on were Spank Rock. I am always slightly worried about hip hop shows, as 90% of them are absolute rubbish. Bad sound, no effort to make a performance and cliché upon cliché ("Throw your hands in the air! etc") are recurring issues for me. Fortunately, Spank Rock understood their role as the 'party stater'. They came out leaping, and despite the fact that it was still light when they began, they succeeded in getting everyone in the mood. Their music is lyrically pretty stupid (they have just released a tribute EP to 2 Live Crew), but as a fan of hip hop I have developed the ability to turn off that part of brain and just focus on the beats and the bass. And as the pre-eminent B-more troupe, the bass was big, and loud, and guttural. Lovely stuff. They also had live drummers, and two turntable operators, and stage diving, and it was all fun, and a perfect way to start.

Next were Hot Chip, who like Spank Rock before them, were playing to an audience who, in the majority, had no idea who they were. And they too coped with this admirably, kicking off with new tune Shake A Fist, and then playing all your favourites with a fair smattering of new songs. The new stuff sounded great, as did the old. They are one of the best British bands around, and one of my favourite of the last few years, because they have a precise understanding of how to write a great pop tune. They can take all of their disparate influences, like LCD, and turn them into something of their own. There is a unique pleasure that comes from watching a band that can simultaneously remind you of the Human League and Robert Wyatt.


The headliner (for us at least) was Bjork. As I stated before, I think she's a genius, and this show proved it. She has reached that stage in her career where she has a big enough back catalogue to perform random singles and album tracks, and you feel like you have just seen a greatest hits set. It's only afterwards that you realise the songs she didn't play. So we were treated to Army of Me, Hunter, the Pleasure is All Mine, Joga, Hyperballad, the Anchor Song, and my favourite, Pagan Poetry. I really enjoy watching a performer who has been doing this for a while, because they really understand how a show must work, with the rhythm of the setlist, the importance of the visuals, the balance between old songs and new etc. Despite her eccenticities (and really, aren't we tired off discussing how 'crazy' Bjork is? Don't all of our favourite artists have an idiosyncratic streak, and isn't that part of why we like them?), it's obvious to me that she sees her job as a pop singer, and therefore she has to entertain you, both with spectacle (lasers, costumes, lights, flags) and with sound (the combination of songs, a ten piece, all female, Icelandic brass group), and she does a brilliant job of it.

I also have to mention the two musical instruments she has on stage, the JazzMutant Lemur multi-touch interface, which looks like someone is playing a graph, and the now infamous ReacTable, which is controlled by blocks of plastic on a glowing blue table. I don't know how they work, but the sound awesome:



I mentioned here that the line up was perfect for Bruna and I as it kindly put the three bands that we wanted to see at the beginning, and the ones we didn't at the end, so we could leave nice and early (well, 11pm). So I can't report on Juliette and the Licks, Arctic Monkeys and the Killers as we weren't interested, and neither are you, probably. Now roll on LCD...