Most recent update 20:15 09/12/11

I no longer write much about musicians (you can find previous interviews with artists, musicians, filmmakers and photographers on the right hand side bar beneath the comments) but one thing that motivates me is injustice, and having been to The Lemonheads gig at Sheffield's The Plug last night, I felt I had to write to redress the balance regarding criticism of certain gigs in the UK leg of their tour.

I don't normally read reviews of bands either, but not knowing much about The Lemonheads, having had my head into my babies and my own band in the nineties with little time for much else, I thought I'd see what the response was to this tour. Review after review online was criticising Evan Dando for not communicating with the audience. Jesus some people shouldn't be let loose with a fucking keyboard.

It's quite obvious even from only seeing one gig that this is a shy, serious musician who communicates to the audience through his music, you numpties. Not every performer is like Iggy Pop, leaping around the stage, making constant eye contact with the audience, and, in the case of their Harewood House gig near Leeds in 2007, reaching out to hold my hand. (This is not the first time I've had intimate contact with Iggy, but so as not to interrupt the flow of this rant against stupid gig-going bloggers and Facebook users I'll tell you the story of me and Iggy in Ladbroke Grove thirty years ago at the end of this article.)

The Lemonheads in their current line-up communicated with the audience brilliantly, all the way through, via the music. The audience fucking loved it; they were playing to a packed house and it was a blinding gig, so if anyone posts any more reviews saying Evan Dando doesn't communicate with the audience they're talking out their arse.

On the UK leg of this tour (the band have already played multiple dates in the US and are returning for more in the New Year) Evan is joined on this tour by guitarist Josh Lattanzi  (The Candles) and drummer Brian Nolan (American Hi-Fi).


Whilst googling about the line-up for this tour, I just had the following conversation with my husband Brian (he's in that still for the film Mercy on the top of the right sidebar.) Bear in mind I'm the guitarist, not him.


Me: It says here "Josh Lattanzi, guitarist." He was playing a bass, Brian.

Brian: He was. But at times he was playing it like a guitarist. The reason I noticed was because at one point he started doing these big power chords on the bass, almost like a lead guitarist. And another moment the bass rhythm disappeared near the end of one of the songs, can't remember which one now, and I noticed it, looked up and Evan looked across at him too and he'd started strumming the bass. It was just one of those little moments that you notice; it's not a criticism. But it did occur to me as a non musician that just briefly it didn't look or sound like a regular bass player. It was still great though.

Me: Oh really. That's interesting. I didn't notice.  I wasn't really looking at his playing style.

Brian (smiling indulgently): I know what you were looking at. 



Yasee, this is the other thing I want to rant about. Female reviewers. You want to be treated equal to men, right? Yet when writing about Evan Dando you keep falling into the same trap as stupid males banging on about Beyonce's arse.

It doesn't matter what he looks like. Yes, he's probably the hottest man I've seen IRL for the last five years. Forget that. Irrelevant. It's about the music.




I really liked his stage presence, he's obviously quite shy, and he gets into the music the best way, by diving into the deep water of the music and swimming around under the surface of it, eyes closed or cast to the ceiling. And that is the most effective way, in my opinion, of communicating with an audience. Musically, it's a pure way. In fact I believe it's the only way. It's what Amy did. It's what Gavin Clark does (you'll have heard his music in the films of Shane Meadows.) It's what Red Snapper did when we saw them at The Plug last month. It's what Sieben and then I Monster did at the UK's urban Glastonbury, Sheffield Tramlines, when Mal (from The Cabs aka Cabaret Voltaire) performed live for the first time in yonks to a mesmerised audience in the sumptuous and slightly eery surroundings of the City Hall Ballroom (Sheffield's best venue imo.)

Honestly, I feel really strongly about this. You don't have to be a musician to talk about or understand music, but if you really don't get how musicians communicate with the audience, then don't slag them off online, because ultimately, it says fuck all about the gig and everything about your own ignorance and stupidity.

A brilliant gig and I'm definitely going to see them next time they come to Sheffield. I might even offer to cook them dinner. With my clothes on.



Confetti, performed in Philly 2011:




My Drug Buddy, 1997. They're still as good as this...




And my favourite number from the Sheffield gig, Why Do You Do This to Yourself? from Baby I'm Bored. First time I've ever heard it and I felt so inspired I've just taught it myself on the guitar. My favourite chords and chord changes as well. The simplest songs are the best. Below, from a gig in Seattle earlier in 2011.



Oh god, I almost forgot to tell you about Iggy didn't I? Well, after I left film school in Manchester I moved to London for the whole of the 80s where I worked as a geisha girl in a Japanese nightclub in Mayfair, photographed bands and earnt a fortune busking on the London tube.

It's 1981. I'm 21, young and gorgeous. Iggy has just been dropped from Arista and is still into drugs. He's just published his autobiography, but his fame is currently on the wane. I still fucking LOVE him. I'm in Ladbroke Grove, in this really cool, backstreet second-hand clothes shop, located in an old Victorian terraced house. I'm walking up the narrow flight of stairs from the ground floor entrance up to first floor shop level and who should I see suddenly walking down the stairs towards me but Iggy Pop.


I look him straight in the eye. He looks me straight in the eye. We walk towards one another, and just as he nears me, we both lower our eyes and he turns his body to face mine as we squeeze past each other on the stairs, body to body, chest to chest, groin to groin. I feel like I'm going to faint. I just had Iggy's crotch against mine and he oozes sex appeal, it's just foaming out of him in a tsunami of testosterone. I carry on walking up the stairs, thinking "Really I should just run downstairs and ask him if he wants to go for a drink or something." But I'm 21, riddled with insecurity and far too shy.

I'd been out with musicians, and in the next year I was to have two songs written about me get into the top ten. But I was never into that whole groupie thing. What a fucking idiot though, twenty-one and in my prime, thinking I wasn't good enough to ask Iggy for a drink. Youth. TSK! Wasted on the young.