13 Most Beautiful at The Carnegie Hall in Dunfermline
July 9, 2009 – 7:53 pm
Lou Reed in 13 Most Beautiful
Hazel and I arrived in Dunfermline for last night’s 13 Most Beautiful in plenty of time. We headed up to The Carnegie Hall and milled around for a few minutes hoping to bump into Dean & Britta – because I can do “bumping into” I’m just no good at “hunting down”. Having failed to bump we headed for a stroll around the town taking in the sights – the Abbey, Carnegie’s birthplace – before heading back up to the hall. This time we did manage to bump into Dean (as well as a friend from Edinburgh who’d come to the show). We chatted with Dean and Britta for a while and then headed into the venue.
The Carnegie Hall is a smallish theatre on two levels, the circle wasn’t open for the performance but, despite my worries and someone on Twitter’s suggestion that attendance would be low, the stalls were pretty close to full by the time Richard Rheem’s surly demeanor appeared on the screen to its drony electronic accompaniment. The show progressed beautifully until about 30 seconds into Susan Bottomly’s screentest when a loud pop was followed by sudden silence and the vague smell of burning electrics (although Hazel thinks the smell was in my head). The band pulled back and the house lights came up while the crew fixed the blown fuse and rewound to the beginning of Susan’s test for a second attempt.
Dean and me after the show
No more unexpected drama accompanied the rest of the films and the show was exquisite. Ann Buchanan’s tears made me sad, and Paul America’s good-looking cool made me smile, and just seeing the way that Ingrid Superstar couldn’t leave her face alone… I’d seen all the films before on the DVD but with the band beneath them made it a different experience – it was hard to know whether to watch the films or watch the band… I think I mostly watched the band!
Finally, Jane Holzer smiled and spat out the last of her toothpaste, and 13 Most Beautiful’s only UK performance was over.
The band were summoned back for an encore of Tugboat and Strange, which, as you can possibly imagine, left me fairly weak with delirium. A fantastic show.
We hung around in the bar afterwards hoping, once again, and Dean came over and chatted to us some more. I am genuinely chuffed that Dean & Britta (and in fact everyone I’ve met connected with A Head Full of Wishhes) are such nice people. Finally Dean headed off to load their taxi and Hazel and I headed back to our “taxi” (Hazel’s dad – it was like being 14 again!)
7 Responses to “13 Most Beautiful at The Carnegie Hall in Dunfermline”
looks like someone was hiding upstairs with a camera ….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l8W-ESTGM0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LpaSQZg3sA
apparently there was a few celebs in the audience, Paul Haig from Josef K, Stephen Pastel from the Pastels – even man about town “Teenage Bobby Awe” from the world famous Shock And Awe was spotted hanging out with the band
By Murray on Jul 10, 2009
I think it was my twitter you mentioned. My mate who got our tickets bought them only the Thursday before and we got row D, the lady in the box office said to him about the poor sales.
It was good to see the hall fill up and there was quite a queue at the box office so I guess there was a healthy last minute sales. It was T in the park weekend too which might have had an impact. I spotted a lot of Glaswegians in the audience so I dunno if there were many locals.
Anyway, it was a cracking show. Highlight for me was the music for, erm, the bloke who danced out the window. It had that great chug/riff groove they do so amazingly well (or the live ‘69 version of ‘what goes on’ sound as I think of it – sorry for making the tedious VU comparison).
Despite the power problem the sound was lovely and it really worked for Dean’s signature sound of that “glistening shower of crystals” note flurry (sorry for the VU again, but I mean the ‘Pale Blue eyes’-ish guitar).
Also liked the Nico one for the nearly unrecognisable Dylan cover (probably unoriginal comment from my mate, that’s nice, they’ve put a Bob Dylan song to music).
Tugboat was beautiful though, though I had something in my eye, or maybe somebody was peeling onions, as thats the only explanation of why a bloke of a certain age like myself appeared to be having a “wee greet”.
By SandyBlair on Jul 10, 2009
Hey Andy, Sorry I never got a chance to meet you. The burning smell definitely wasn’t in your head. Unless it was in mine too. Ha ha.
Send me your regular e-mail addrss will you? Thanks.
best,
L
By Lindsay Hutton on Jul 10, 2009
Thanks Lindsay, so me checking the location of the fire-exits while the house lights were up was the right thing to do!
By Andy on Jul 11, 2009
Dean’s hair looks much like Syd Barrett’s in this photo:
http://sydbarrett.net/images/66-68/Gothic/JunkYardShootUPGRADE.jpg
By Jeff on Jul 12, 2009