Report: Rockfeedback @ iTunes Festival Night 23 Graham Coxon, 23/7/09
4/5
By: Matt Tomiak
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This year, Rockfeedback is delighted to be the official blog partner for the rather exciting iTunes Festival, taking place at London’s Roundhouse every night in July. Over the course of the festival, we’ll not be missing a night, delivering morning-after reports on everyone from Oasis and Bloc Party to Franz Ferdinand and Kasabian playing intimate sets to fans lucky enough to have won tickets to the shows.
There’s an incident in perhaps the finest episode of Peter Kay’s great TV comedy series Phoenix Nights which comes to mind at the iTunes festival this evening. Kay plays Brian Potter, the irascible proprietor of heroically antediluvian Bolton working men’s club The Phoenix, who attempt to draw a new demographic via a trendy, student-oriented stand-up comedy evening called The Funny Farm.
Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t go well. “You spend a lifetime Waiting for Godot” deadpans one cerebral young comic to a room full of bemused northern pensioners supping on pints of mild. “And then three turn up at once.” A horrible silence falls, before in his broad Lancastrian tones Potter bellows “Tell us a joke we know!”
Now, Graham Coxon is no Brian Potter. But that exchange says much about the inherent conservatism of British audiences and their desperation for established artists to remain within a prescribed comfort zone. The Blur guitarist has stockpiled enough goodwill over the years to be allowed such “indulgences”, though. Coming hot on the heels of those reunion shows, he could probably get away with emulating Andy Kaufman-esque situationist pranks; a read through of ‘The Great Gatsby’ in its entirety would be willingly written off as ‘just a bit of fun –oh, that Graham!’
Eschewing the exuberant pogo-punk of his last two solo LPS, a stripy-shirted, stool-bound Coxo good-naturedly rejects inaudible requests mumbled “‘Awww, ‘ah’ve done that one about a million times….”) in front of video images of gentle pastoral scenes. His current brand of understated, folky AOR (indeed, new album The Spinning Top is performed in near-entirety) does allow for an ever-rising tide of background chatter. A pity, as the morbid ruminations of ‘This House’ and ‘In The Morning’s Nick Drakeian bucolic ponderings don’t deserve to be overlooked.
Artists in this article: Graham Coxon, Blur
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