The Pandaman’s task at the start of 2023 was maddeningly simple: go to see 365 live performances through the year, then fall over a roundabout round about Christmas. There are no rules, as such, although for the most part, we are avoiding the pain and perils of checking out any old rubbish in any old rubbish venue just to get the numbers up – surely there are enough half-decent live turns out there to check out, right?
Right! Indeed there are so many half-decent live turns we have been on a roll. Such a roll in fact that come the close of November we have amassed a total of 347 live performances beneath our beery belts. All we need to do is catch 18 more actresses in action in the final month of 2023 and we will have hit our targets and we can retire, slightly deafened and quite rightly hungover, but happy.
What can possibly go wrong?
Heaps, it turns out. When the Pandaman was a wee cub gigs were all-enveloping affairs: from the Lyceum when we were living in the ‘80s to the indie tumult of the Bull & Gate and the Dublin Castle of the 1990s a gig was scarcely a proper gig without four bands on the bill. Nowadays many’s the time we’re confronted by more and more bills with fewer and fewer bands – frankly, a night out with just two live acts is a devilish affront to the Pandaman’s nocturnal statistical ambitions.
Have we mentioned we need to see those 18 acts in December, the month when Christmas parties rule the diaries and fuel the venues? Not only that, but the Pandaman lives out in the stickiest of sticks in the middle of Suffolk. This means that any gigging adventures beyond the county lines are beholden to strikes affecting trains, engineering works affecting trains and indeed stormy weather affecting…yep, you’ve got it, trains.
Worry not, there are still local gigs for local people. No need for any trains to get to the John Peel Centre For Creative Arts, aka TJPCFCA, in the heart of Stowmarket, where JAMES YORKSTON and NINA PERSSON are in town. The sometime Fence Collective collaborator and the Cardigans’ songstress have worked together on an album called ‘The Great White Sea Eagle’ with The Second Hand Orchestra. The Orchestra couldn’t be with us tonight, so it’s just James, Nina and a fair share of gently melancholic melodies washing over a seated John Peel Centre crowd.
It’s all very serene and sweetly mournful: “Today you found an upturned crab”, they croon at one point, a tribute to the children they’re missing on tour. It’s December so we get the saddest seasonal song ever called ‘Mary’, which is asking about the beggars in the Edinburgh Christmas market. It being December they are also elf-deprecating (I thangyew) as they mock the facilities at the local Travelodge clinging onto the side of the A14 halfway to Ipswich, their home for the night.
James: “Did you get the swimming pool?”
Nina: “I got the golf course!”
It’s lovely and duetty and slightly dotty and perhaps a tiny little bit like The Carpenters if they ever did a Peel session, which is something which almost certainly never happened, not even in our craziest dreams. A bit of sweet George Gershwin swings on the Suffolk breeze. A punter offers the life turns a scotch from the bar – an offer which is gratefully accepted. It’s that kind of un-starry starry night. No less intimate – and indeed matey – are JADU HEART over at the Portland Arms in Cambridge.
The last time we saw the mysteriously shadowy duo was as a full-on synthpop beast playing at a sold-out Islington Assembly Hall. This time around, adhering to their admirable DIY ethic, they are doing a tour of pubs to warm our cockles in the bleak midwinter, with all tickets a fiver upfront and nonchalantly gothic merch lurking at the back.
The boozer concept has already been undermined – they were supposed to be playing the Alex Arms but that pub had sound deadline issues, so the show has been upgraded to the Portland. It’s our second seated live show in five days, which is a tad alarming, although not as alarming as the fact there is NO SUPPORT.
It’s a one-band bill! Are they trying to destroy us?? Gotta make those supercheap tickets work within a gigging budget, we guess. And, happily, the Jadu Heart heart beats to a different drum on this jaunt. It’s another stripped-back acoustic affair, with the Jadu duo joined by a delicate violin and coy drums. It’s all very dainty and snuggly and sometimes downright spectrally weird, although ‘Blame’ has some Arcade Fire vigour in the folkie furriness. Songs are started, stopped and restarted.
‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ gets a lairy airing. The percussionist has a tambourine gaffa taped to his foot. It’s that kind of shambolically cheeky night.
When Greater Anglia’s rolling stock isn’t being rocked by industrial action, Chelmsford’s new town builds, flooded stations or barmy winds bouncing trampolines onto the mainline we make haste into London Town for the odd devious excursion.
SUNDARA KARMA is on epically sunny form at a sold-out Electric Ballroom, ably supported by vigorously intense Leeds tigers L’OBJECTIF, objects of the Pandaman’s indie desire a few months back at the Old Blue Last. Over at DIY mag’s Class of 2024 show at Hoxton Colours FAT DOG gives it some underplay welly, all casual ravey attitude and klezmer-marinated chaos topped off by a drummer with a canine head (and having signed Wet Leg and Fat Dog one hopes Domino Records’ next signing will be Fur Jam or Hot Cat or Wom Bat or some such).
Around the corner a few days later at the Old Blue Last, proving that there is so such thing as a lost gigging cause for the Pandaman, we stumble across SHOEFIG, who are two girls playing drums and guitar in an adorably fragrant shoegaze kind of way. We’ve never heard of them before, let alone heard a note of music, but they are a delightfully fruity last-minute addition to the Pandaman’s list. Sometimes the best surprises come in shoegaze duo-shaped packages in a dark room above a pub.
So we give it out very bestest shot. But it’s December 22nd, the last Friday before Christmas, we have reached a grand total of 360 with the Shoefig show and the gigging world has pretty much shut down.
You could say that with these attempts to hit the magic 365, we are flogging a dead horse, which would be heartily ironic because the last band we see in 2023 is actually called DEAD HORSE. They are a covers combo playing The Pickerel in uptown Stowmarket on New Year’s Eve Eve, the birthday of the little baby Jeff Lynne. Sadly Dead Horse aren’t delivering any Mr Blue Sky thinking by flogging ELO’s greatest hits –
rather, their heavingly heavy rock oeuvre gallops from AC/DC to Papa Roach and beyond and they go down an end-of-year storm with the wise old beards and the youthful headbangers in the pickled old Pickerel because Nu Metal still lives on, out here in the ‘burbs where no one can hear you dream of yet more gigs in 2024.
THE PANDAMAN’S MADDENINGLY FRUSTRATING 2023 TOTAL: 361
