Gig Review - Spartacus Fest
Monday 25th May 2009 @ Komedia, Bath
Featuring Performances From: Laura Marling, With Love From Humans, Seven Days Of Sleep, Artisan Quarter, Fighting Fiction
I arrived at the brand spanking new(ish), lets-finally-get-some-culture-installed-in-Bath-for the-love-of-God Komedia early for the Bath Spa University Commercial Music students’ end of year performances. A couple of years ago Boris Johnson visited our lovely campus, set in the lush green hills, and snorted at this ‘Pop-music degree’, insulted all of us doing creative subjects and pretty much asserted that we were wasting our time and should be doing ‘crunchy’ subjects like Maths and Science. Well fuck you Boris because we’ve got a good thing going on!
The first band on tonight, Fighting Fiction, were musically tight and upbeat but could have lost some of the clichés in their lyrics. Their most impressive song, Sanctuary, was about what a good thing asylum is. Next up were Artisan Quarter, fronted by a happy looking hippy who sounded a bit like Brian Molko interrupted by dolphin cackles and swaying. I liked their trumpet and Mogwai-esque backing.
Seven Days Of Sleep had two cellos and a violin backing them and a cute, brown-haired female lead who had a soft, soulful voice. Her counterpart was a blonde keyboardist who provided lovely harmonies (when her mic was actually turned on) like on 59, a song about being infatuated with someone who really actually doesn’t like you at all. The pièce de resistance of the Bath Spa set was With Love From Humans, a funky mass of guitars and a trumpet who really had me dancing!
The evening climaxed with a headliner I was amazed was singing for our petit university do; the striking, angel-faced nineteen-year-old (really, nineteen!) Laura Marling. I think I am a little obsessed with Ms. Marling; her lyrics, as often pointed out, are far more mature than one would expect, as is her bewitching and prepossessing voice. She describes her songs as ‘optimistic realism’ which says it all really. For the first time in the history of all the gigs I’ve been to where I’m a fan of the band, I wasn’t standing there thinking ‘please play my favourite such and such song’, I was instead happy to be under her spell, to listen to whatever she wanted to sing and yes, here comes the bit where I agree that she echoes Joni Mitchell — but this girl is the next big thing with a capital T! She could be modern folk what Amy Winehouse would have been to modern jazz.
Towards the end of the night she asked us all; ‘I’ve never been a student and never will be, do you think I’m missing out?’ There was a mix of cheers and boos as the audience tried to answer but I thought some of us go to university to nurture and mould our underlying talent but with as much raw talent as you have Laura, no I don’t think you’re missing out.
Sophie Collard
Copyright © 2008
May 26th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
How did you manage to fail to mention the woeful audience that talked all over an already quiet laura marling set? and that she unsuprisingly didn’t appear to want to play to half an audience who couldn’t have cared a less about what lyrics she sang no matter how good it was.
if this is a critical review i’d probably say it warrants a little mention..
was it a good gig? no it might have been one of the most dissapointing gigs i’ve ever seen.
Ok it might have been a bath university ‘do;, but they marketed laura marling as an act, charged 12 pounds for the ticket and the venue or organisers failed miserably to justify the ticket price, by allowing the audience to ruin the performance for anyone interested in actually listening to it.
critical i know. well done on organising it, but hopefully its constructive.
May 27th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
I know the team organising this show and the reason the show was so over priced was because Laura Marling cost 2.5k and the venue cost 2k. If you consider that students and band sold tickets were only £6 then ticket sales would have only made about £4k, so the university actually made a loss on the night even though it sold out anyway.
Also the justification should have come in the fact that you’re paying £12 to see 7 live acts, if that isn’t justification enough then music, and more importantly live music might as well have no value at all. Luckily most people still feel it does have value.
It possibly wasn’t the best idea putting a semi-acoustic act on after all of the university bands, I agree. The audience were probably so used to loud music and having to shout to each other to get heard, which doesn’t justify it in any way, but not everyone there appreciates music in the same way because there not all there to see Laura.
May 27th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
I wanted to mention the audience talking but had too few words to include that complaint. It was very rude of those people and I thought ‘are you the kind of people who talk in a two minute silence? Is what you have to say really that important?’ but hey… students. It was good of that bloke to shout ’shut the fuck up’ to the back, at least Laura knew it was pissing us off too … I didn’t think the tickets were over-priced, I used to pay £12 every weekend to go to drum n bass nights in Bristol and I’m not even a massive fan. If I’d had more words I might have said everything critical, but hey that’s why you people get to leave comments : )
P. S. It’s Bath Spa University.
June 4th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
no sorry, i agree, the actual price (had it been a good gig) was very reasonable. apologies.
It’s not that it’s over priced, its the fact that fans are being charged to see a performance and the performance didn’t deliver due to poor policing and organisation of the gig.
No I totally agree £12 isnt expensive but thats not the point. It’s still £12 paid for results.
No different to getting a steak in the restaurant ,you ask for it blue and you get well done. The establishment didn’t deliver! frankly 6 other ok side dishes aren’t going to help me out when i came for a steak. (which i had every right to do as a paying customer) I wanted blue tender laura marling straight up, but it was covered in thick chatter.
Now my problem is, there are ways around this. Especially at a comedy club. Many others in the country eject people talking over an intimate gig, it’s house policy, it’s simple respect for others. Alas that didn’t happen, which suprised me. I thought that was fairly standard procedure for a comedy venue. That could have been talked about.
Ticket price aside, i’ll take quality over quantity at all times i think. My remark about the cost was mainly because i found it ironic students got to pay £6 and, i’ll hold my hands up if i’m wrong, i imagine they were AMONGST the disrespecting audience. Many who paid £12 to see laura marling perhaps weren’t, and suffered. Thats my problem with the price, it seemed slightly ironic at the time.
Anyhow, its just some things to think about. I’ll get over it, but if your all music students its somthing to bear in mind if your going into careers in events. It’s pretty constructive i hope.
Which band, what order, what policing at a gig… My biggest problem was the pretty fuzzy review up there. Things should be said and thats how problems get fixed.