Temper Trap at OSLO

I have been on a good run of gigs lately. Temples at the Garage was brilliant. This was a chance to see another astonishingly fine band at a ridiculously small venue, OSLO. Indeed I had never come across the place before, partly because it is new, partly its far too small for most of the bands I want to see, and partly because its in Hackney which is far too cool for me. Indeed only because I have friends living in a very cool flat round the corner do I ever venture there. I feel my friends only invite me over as I make some ironic statement by being ultra untrendy in a ultra trendy area.

Indeed we started off with dinner - a Vietnamese takeaway - on their spacious balcony with the warm setting sun behind us - a fabulously warm Mediterranean style evening, for which London is not exactly noted. Their balcony offers splendid views of both the City and Canary Wharf. Could almost match Hong Kong, were it not for Victoria Harbour being replaced by the multiple tracks of London Fields Station right below us.

OSLO is in a Victorian building with a bar/restaurant below and the club above. Its a not particularly large restaurant, which gives you an idea how small the venue upstairs is since obviously it shares the same footprint. We eschewed the support act for a drink at the bar  - well outside it given how warm the evening was, and the fact that there appeared to be a game of bingo going on, the numbers being called in a strong French accent. Bizarre.

As for Temper Trap, well they were imperious. Apart from a rather odd intro choice of an instrumental rock number - odd when by far your strongest suit is your lead singer's voice, not his guitar. But we were soon into Trembling Hands, the best song off their second album. Danny Mandagi just has the most sublime voice. It is truly stunningly brilliant. One is used to blokes singing falsetto. But this is none of your Bee Gees screeching. This is strong perfect pitch vocal throughout, with no straining. One thing that also became evident from listening to this act from about 10 feet away was that the support vocals are really good too, a fact easily missed by being blown away by Danny's voice. They played a few new songs too, with a third album to come which I will of course purchase on release.

And I always admire a band for inserting some interesting twist into their repertoire, if even just to show off that they can do it. Tonight it was inserting the old Clash song,  "Rock the Casbah" into the middle of their instrumental piece "Drum Song" (which as the title suggests is heavily based on drum beats, Danny forgoing the vocals to band away at the drum introduced centre stage). Unsurprisingly they finished their encore with Sweet Disposition, their breakthrough hit.

Anyway, terrific night. And right next to Hackney Central station. We pegged it over to the next platform for the incoming train. My trainee made it; I did  not. "I thought you were just behind me" he texted sheepishly from the comfort of his moving train. Yeah, but I'm twice his age and half his height! Ah well, it was a pleasant enough evening to spend 15 minutes on a platform with Sweet Disposition running through my head.

Shappi Khorsandi - Work in Progress

Having failed to interest any of my friends I went to this comedy gig on my own.

Shappi is a female comic of Iranian descent so ticks several PC boxes. I have seen her a couple of times before and enjoyed her sets. This one not so much, but then again "Work in Progress" was the title and that was the point. She was trying out new material and the Soho Theatre often puts on well-known comics out trying to refine their material. I have often heard it said that as a comic you only really know if a joke is funny if you put it before an audience and they laugh. So we were the guinea-pigs.

Well this was still worth going to if only to see comedy at a developmental stage. Not word perfect, and some jokes, as she noticed, didn't quite work. Some of the one liners were the best. I liked for example. "My brother is going to be gay....When my father dies."

Shappi has quite a winning personality - she did very well with a heckler - well no, "heckler" is the wrong word - a very drunken Aussie lady who had gone past the stage where one recognised that everyone can hear you talking. One felt that just chatting to the audience would have worked pretty well. A headline slot at my local comedy club would suit her perfectly. She just didn't fill a whole hour consistently.

As with many other ethnic comics there is just too much emphasis on racism. I think this is a pity. Much better was her stuff about her relationships and kids and dating - stuff that is relevant to the audience. The thing with anti-racist material is that its just so bland - it's hardly controversial, and its almost always played out to a young, liberal and white audience. Its just such an easy target, but also one that is far from relevant. Which was also evident from her material on this, which related to her childhood. Of course it did, as in these PC times there just isn't enough racism out there to be amusing about. It's in the same category as jokes about posh people or the royal family - just easy, lazy targets. Its a bit like doing anti-Thatcher material and trying to pass it off as current. Above all, its just been done so much there isn't anything new. And to the extent there is new stuff to be done on it, Paul Choudhury does it so much better.

But I am sure the finished product will be better, and I certainly don't regret the evening out - not least the £10 ticket price - except perhaps for the un-air-conditioned Tube journey home twinned with being held up due to signalling failure. Oh for the Chinese Metro with air-conditioning, spacious trains and seemingly no signalling...

Anniversary Games

I attended the 1st Anniversary Games last year at the Olympic Stadium and it was a fine event. This year they still held it, but with the Stadium being renovated for West Ham, held a sort of street games in a temporary stadium in Horse Guards Parade. What a rip off. Truly woeful event. At this rate of decline next year's games will be formed of an egg and spoon race and a disability sack race.

To be fair, next year they will have the Olympic Stadium back, but frankly they just shouldn't have held this at all, or if they did they shouldn't have been so greedy. £75 for what were not even the most expensive seats, for an incredibly thin programme, split into afternoon and evening sessions to maximise ticket revenue. The few proper events were filled out with disability events, chosen essentially by whether we had a paralympic champion to put out. Unfortunately athletics now seems stuck with these events and no one (well except for me as I don't count) is allowed to point out the low objective quality of these competitions, nor that they are heavily influenced by the degree of handicap as much as the effort put in.

The simple point might be made is this one. How many able-bodied people are there between say 18-35? And now how many say, below the knee amputees in the same age-range? To achieve in athletics proper you have to compete with millions of others. In these disability events I imagine one is talking thousands - not thousands of athletes but just thousands of people who have the right affliction. Or to put it into a football context, it would be like watching Germany v Brazil, and then San Marino v Gibraltar, and being asked to accept them as equivalent quality contests, both being competed for by the best from their respective pools of talent.

However, the recent European Court opinion that obesity may be a disability should presumably open up the disability classes to a more populous and therefore higher level of competition, albeit with suitable accommodations. I look forward to the 100m for the morbidly obese - 8 huge blokes waddling down the track, mounds of flab swinging independently from their bodies. Obviously with a break after 50m on health grounds.

Anyway, much emphasis was put on the iconic venue. Which is indeed fair comment. But then again, Horse Guards Parade actually exists all the time, for free.

 

We were introduced to the new mascot. Still not quite making up for the  lack of class athletes.

 As the swathes of empty seats made clear.

The track events could only take 4 athletes at a time, so the programme could get stretched out further by having A and B races. Andy Turner here won the B race (A man I have met up close in European Championships. Nice bloke, but at 33 you know his best is behind him now. Hence he featured in B rather than A).

This is the disability women's long jump. At least the winner, right, is shaped like an athlete while our second string, left,  just isn't (although she seems stronger in the actual leg count department).

 The line-up for the 100m Hurdles A race. Minus the real start David Oliver who had pulled out, but still including world record holder Aries Merritt, centre in the day-glo yellow vest. He came a distant  last the other three finishing in  a line together in 11.24 seconds

Best event was probably the women's High Jump, a sizable high quality field, with a fine jump of 2m from Blanca Vlasic eventually taking it.

Isobel Pooley

Iwan Thomas does a valiant job at talking up the action, but that just makes it all the more annoying, as what one is watching doesn't live up to the hype. His description of the disability shot putters as "legends" would have been more believable if he didn't have to carefully peer at his script to read off their names, never clearly having heard of any of these "legends" before, like most of the rest of us. (Although the sight of one of them walking around carrying his spare leg strangely amused me.)

And you know you are in trouble when introducing the women's pole vaulters ("The best of the best." Err, no clearly not. Try looking at the rankings.) when the heights aren't being compared to world records, but to double-decker buses. This is dumbing down big-time. Similarly the disabled long jump was likened to jumping the length of black-cabs, as opposed to the length you would expect to see jumped at a decent school-sports day.

But probably the ultimate condemnation of the games as a sports event was when the video screen had to cut away from the men's long jump (minus its big draw Greg Rutherford who pulled out leaving Steve Tomlinson to beat a field with his main opponents being non-specialists, ie a triple jumper and a decathlete) in order to show members of the crowd kissing (sponsored by magnum ice-creams) which is obviously more important than watching sweaty blokes running and jumping. 

In the big disability climax, Jonnie Peacock just lost the 100m for amputees below the knee. Starting a rush for the exits to get places to watch the free events down the Mall.

 First up a women's mile.

 Inevitable Ethiopian winner.

Followed by a men's 2 mile. As a spectator, obviously these street races are pretty hopeless. Apart from the few at the one end, the rest of us just see runners dashing past (for the 2 miles, four times) without seeing who wins, or is even in contention towards the end. But we knew it wouldn't be Mo Farah as he had of course pulled out with the upcoming commonwealth games.

 And we finished off with a wheelchair race so that David Weir could win for Great Britain.

As even after all this it was still mid-afternoon so I went to the BP Portrait Award exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. I would always recommend this for a trip. It never disappoints, and its free.

I liked this Titian-seque modern portrait

This is the winner

My personal favourite - a portrait of the artist's son first thing in the morning

This is probably the cleverest, the portrait of a forger - with a distorted mirror portrait in reverse beneath it.

Franz Ferdinand at Somerset House.

My China holiday meant I missed one of my booked gigs at Somerset House (Kodaline) but I did get to see Franz Ferdinand in my first week back. And a glorious warm night for a summer gig it was too. And there can be few finer places than Somerset House's courtyard - not a typical rock venue.

The support act performed what I would class as world music. The band were called Francois & the Atlas Mountains and with that name you won't be surprised to learn they are French. And they were jolly good too, but this isn't my thing. Certainly interesting and complicated musically, but  that was the problem. The percussion is just far too complicated and going off at odd angles to the rest of the songs.

Franz Ferdinand by contrast also have complex songs, at least by indie rock standards, but at least the the rhythm seems to be pulling in the same direction as all the rest. They have now a sparkling back catalogue. I loved this gig, as did the other pension lawyer whom I bumped into down the front. We get about!