Héhé, salut, mes amis français
Thanks again "French dude". Aren't you glad I finally got the flash to work in the end
I'm sure glad I met you!
Here are the videos I recorded from that night. Sorry the quality isn't so good -- but at least I kept my mouth shut!
www.youtube.com/user/PrinceOfCatsInAHat#grid/user/E7C1866A87FC408CHere's my lengthy account of the night:
Paul Dempsey (solo)
Wednesday 19th May 2010
Monto Water Rats Theatre Bar, London
Last night, I thought things couldn't be any more perfect.
I was wrong.
Set list:
1. Have You Fallen Out of Love? – He introduced it as “a song about the end of the world”.
2. The Great Optimist – He said that after a song about the end of the world, he should play a song like this (to lighten the mood). When it was finished, he asked if there was anyone from last night here too. I put my hand up (I’m not allowed to scream or sing, remember ;p). He thanked “returning customers”. He said the thing about not believing in set lists again – that would be too “professional”; he said he prefers for it to feel like we’re all in his “imaginary bedroom”. Someone made a noise and he said, “Not like that!”
3. Bats – Again he introduced it as a song about Melbourne. He said he wrote it like Melbourne was “like a love interest, or something”. When finished, he took off his blazer.
4. Say Something [Something for Kate]
5. Stunt Show [SFK – by request]
6. Ramona Was a Waitress
7. Theme from Nice Guy – When we started singing along at “la da” etc., he said, “How much longer can you do that?” I thought he sounded so hot and persuasive lol (like a lover!) so of course I had to join in singing too! (Hey, he asked for it!) He said last night was better though (maybe because I sang along as loud as I pleased? Lol ;p) and Eskimo Joe night was the worst – but he said it wasn’t Eskimo Joe’s fault. I tried a little zooming in this song. My camera and phone don’t have smooth zoom functions so I don’t like to use them while recording video, but this proved worth it because you can see his face more clearly.
8. [new song] – This is starting to grow on me! The new friend I made tonight informed that on Eskimo Joe night, someone asked what this song was called and he said it's called Survival Instinct at the moment, but that could change. Looking back at the videos, I think he played it better this time around. At the end, we cheered and he said, “Give it till 471”, then said nobody understood that. I said I did. (i.e. Will you still like it after you’ve heard it 471 times? / Will the song still sound like this after 471 times?) He’d said the first night that it may or may not make it onto the new SFK record. People started yelling out requests. Someone suggested Slow and he said, “You are fucking shitting me.” I yelled for Pinstripe and Anarchitect but he chose to play Fast Friends.
9. Fast Friends
10. All the Things that Aren’t Good about Scientology [SFK] – My request! People were yelling out requests and I said, “Scientology!” He stopped and looked in my direction but not at me and said, “Sorry?” I repeated it and he looked at me, and I said, “Please?” At one point or another he gave an interested “Ooh!” – not sure whether it was before I repeated myself or after. He said something like it was a good idea, but warned that he might not remember all the words. I said, “I can,” and he said to me that if he didn’t get it right, I could get up on stage and push him aside. Hehe. A woman near me looked at me and said, “It was because you said please!” in a slightly jealous way. After that everyone started saying please after their requests
Unfortunately I didn’t get this special moment on camera but I have witnesses! He told everyone the song’s full name before playing it. I couldn’t really hear people singing along, so I feel like I’ve proven to him how hardcore a fan I am: I know, love and asked for one of the obscure b-sides and even claimed to know the words better than him, lol. He didn’t get it wrong, although he almost got one word wrong: he said “f . . . working”, but you can’t really hear it in the video.
11. Out the Airlock
12. Man of the Moment – I think it was this one that he introduced as being about the joys of “religious indoctrination”. Unfortunately my camera memory decided to run out just before the end of the song
13. Take Us to Your Leader – I switched to using my phone to record video here, but for some reason the file is damaged
You can only watch the first one and a half minutes or so of the song, and the rest is kind of scrambled D: I’m gutted TT^TT I tried playing it on my phone and was able to watch the video until the end, but the sound started getting scrambled after the 1.30-oddth minute. Please tell me there’s a way to fix this! D: I don’t know what the hell went wrong! None of the others are like that (thank goodness!)
14. Safety in Numbness – He said “Cheers” when he was finished, and tried to leave. But we wouldn’t let him XD
15. Ashes to Ashes [David Bowie cover] – He said he hadn’t done this in a while so maybe he shouldn’t, but he did
He kind of forgot the lyrics at one point
16. Impossible [SFK] – He seemed to forget the lyrics for a second here too XD In his defence, he does say before the next song that there are a LOT of lyrics in his head.
17. You Only Hide [SFK – by request]
18. Asleep at the Wheel [SFK] – He said it’s his favourite song from The Official Fiction and Clint and Steph hate playing it. He hasn’t played it in a while. He said he was comfortable enough with us “nice bunch of people” to “fall flat on [his] face”. For a second there, the sound stopped working, probably because he had nudged or stepped on some cords on the stage. To be honest, I actually gave that album so little attention compared to other albums that I actually forgot the name of the song (yet I remembered the lyrics!) and had to open iTunes just now to remind myself of it >.<
19. Whatever You Want [SFK] – I had to record this song in two parts because I tried deleting some stuff from my camera to make this song fit, but it didn't, so I recorded the start of the song on my camera and the rest of the song on my phone. Before he left, he said, “See you in a couple of months” >_<!!
I was late to the gig because I was talking to my boyfriend online, plus I wasn’t worried because I knew there’d be a long wait, plus support acts. I got there at about eight and just after I’d got my wristband, Steve from last night came through the door. I didn’t get a chance to say anything to him though because one of the staff asked to check my bag.
I went in to find the first support act, a band with one female lead and four guys including a double bass, tenor sax and trumpet player. One song that jumped out at me was something to do with pirates, lol (are they a Pastafarian band??). Another one was called Romeo and Juliet. I didn’t get their name though. The receipt for my ticket says “Alex Vargas (Vagabond)” but the receipt for the previous show’s ticket didn’t list any support acts, so I’m not sure if this is correct. I had to delete the blurrier pictures I took of this band to make room for more video recording.
After they left, Steve from the previous night came on again, but I had to delete the photos I took of him to make room for more PD videos.
Steve played again after the first act. I had to go to the bathroom so I missed the first song, but I could still hear it even when I was in the bathroom in the basement. When I got back, the trumpeter from the first opening act opened the door to the theatre area for me. I think Steve played all the same songs he played yesterday and probably in the same order, only today I liked them better because they were growing on me. The first was called Astronaut and the second was called Running Away – he explained it’s about being in the last stages of a relationship, when you find everything the other person says or does annoying. He said sorry for starting out so “morbid”, now here’s a song to lighten things up – and played that song about never having been in love. He said it’s called something like God Is Laughing at Me. It felt like his performance was over a lot faster this time. He used some of the same gags. At one point we were talking about the FIFA World Cup, and he said something about cheering “us” on, and I said, “Who’s us?” And he looked at me and said, as he did last night, that he’s from Sydney and he’s been living here seven years. He asked me, “Do I sound like a pom?” I said yes and he went, “Awwwww!” in disappointment. Unfortunately I had to delete the photos of him from tonight to make more room for video recording.
I had to set the video on my camera to half the size of the resolution I used yesterday to try and save more memory for recording more video. My phone was stupid and sometimes didn’t record on command.
Before Paul came on, a lady near me asked if I wanted to move closer to the stage. This would put me right at the front and I wasn’t sure I was brave enough for that, so I said no thanks. But in the end I did move to the very front right (my right) of the stage. I talked a bit with a girl next to me. She seemed young, perhaps just old enough to get in. I told her she should get a photo with Paul. She said she already had: after the doors opened, she found him just sitting in the pub area, chilling with a beer, undisturbed! (How does he keep doing that?? Unrecognised at his own gig?? With his height??) Too bad I missed out on that because I was late, but I don’t think I would trade it with what I got afterwards
Paul wore a white V-neck T-shirt tonight (I could see a little bit of chest hair, lol), and the rest was the same as last night. He took his dark blazer off after Bats.
At some point, Paul mentioned he’d gone to the Tate Modern on Tuesday. Too bad I hadn’t gone.
Some time late in the show, probably around the time of the encore (I think there was only one long one), Paul said he could go on all night like this (I was of course happy about this, but especially because it meant he was happy too), but we probably have to go to work tomorrow. Someone yelled, “The Tories are in power; who cares!” He made some eye contact with a member of staff to check if it was okay to keep going after eleven, because he’d thought there was a “curfew”.
I’m not sure when it was that Paul said that this was “Atheism Hour with Paul Dempsey”. There are a few songs of his that sound like they’re about atheism, but so far I’ve only heard him talk about two of them that way – Have You Fallen Out of Love and Man of the Moment, and he didn’t talk about the first one that way tonight, but last night. Maybe he said it somewhere between Scientology and Man of the Moment. But anyway, I was glad to hear that he and I are on the same page.
When it was finally over, most of the people left, but I stuck around, determined to get another chance to talk to Paul. I’d been convinced I should hug him by one of my friends (who has hugged the guys from Travis), who said that this may be my only chance, and my boyfriend, who said that Paul probably gets it all the time. I noticed a couple of other people who lingered too. One of these people has now become my friend, but the other one left before the confrontation took place.
The theatre area emptied, the staff collected the discarded glasses. One of the staff announced that they’re closing the theatre area so we all had to go into the pub area.
I didn’t want to leave without talking to Paul unless they kicked me out. I sat and waited at an empty seat. I saw the guy who would soon become my friend standing nearby.
Mere minutes later, Paul emerged from the side door that led to the staircase. He’d changed from the white top to a grey one, just like the one from last night which you can see in my photo. (Either it’s the same one or he has more than one top like that.) His blazer was back on. I stood up and nudged the guy who was about to become my friend, because he hadn’t seen Paul. We talked to each other for a little bit while we waited for Paul to be finished talking to some people that he seemed to know (there was a dark-haired woman he kissed, maybe on the lips – one of his sisters?) and while he got a beer.
Finally it was our turn. My new friend talked to Paul a bit. They mentioned one of the songs he played tonight which hadn’t been played in a while. I think Paul said it was cool that songs make the rounds like that. I don’t remember what else they talked about. Why didn’t I pay more attention to what Paul was saying, even though he wasn’t talking to me? Why? I think they talked about how Paul would be coming to play around here more often, as living in New York, just “across the pond”, would mean shorter flights than flying here from Australia. I jumped in and actually used the words, “a word of advice” – and told him not to play at the Monto again because the toilets are so dodgy. He was like, “Yeah, I know” and . . . something else. I don’t remember, because he was looking right at me and we were so close and my mind just kind of got . . . well, it blew my mind lol. This was just after we’d taken a photo together, I think (he told me to get up on the steps leading from the lower floor of the pub area to the higher floor of the theatre area, and I said, “Do I have to?” – I wouldn’t mind getting a shot of Paul and me where you can see our whole bodies and the height difference – but I obeyed him anyway XD). I thanked him for playing Scientology and told him tonight was definitely more than fifteen percent better than last night, referring to the promise he’d made last night about performing better tonight. As we were getting ready for the photo, I first put my arm around his shoulders, then decided it was better to just put both arms around his waist (I felt more like I was gonna fall off the steps with just the one arm around him, but two arms give better support!), so I did (unfortunately I clamped his left arm to his side in the process so he couldn’t have put it around me even if he’d wanted to). I think my friend laughed, and Paul went, “. . . Okay,” in a sort of “Hmm, that’s interesting” way. I got him to sign my wristband again, this time with my own pen, which he struggled to get working at first as he rested the wristband on his palm. He thanked us for coming. (He thanked us!?) Finally we shook his hand and I said it was good to see him again, and it sounded as if we were now acquaintances who see each other every so often. (I’d shaken his hand the first night too but his hand didn’t feel so incredibly huge this time. And it didn’t feel markedly rougher or softer than mine.)
My new friend and I retired to the McDonald's across from my hotel, got some food and talked a while. When we got out of there, we stood in front of the entrance to the Underground and talked some more. A little old man with two cans of Stella Artois said something to us – I think it was “Do you love her?” – but it was so slurred (or maybe he’d forgotten to put on his false teeth) that we were like WTF? Haha weird.
To sum up the whole experience over the two nights, I’m gonna say it was worth every single penny. It was worth the dodgy hotel and the dodgy toilets and the living off cheap McDonald’s for two and a half days. This is exactly the win I needed after missing out on getting Coldplay tickets when they played Exeter at Christmas, getting Glastonbury tickets (because they're too expensive) and getting Muse tickets last year. I don’t know if I’ve ever been this happy. I don’t want it to end. My only hope is that Paul would keep his promise about coming back again “in a couple of months” and more often.
In the meantime, I have two new friends and lots of good memories
And my lesson is, if ever PD or SFK are playing more than one show consecutively anywhere, and I am able to, I must see all of them! I loved it that Paul mixed it up and didn't play all the same songs or in the same order.
Keywords: sublime; euphoric; spiritual; high; orgasmic; better than sex and chocolate!
I'm sure glad I met you!
Unfortunately I didn’t get this special moment on camera but I have witnesses! He told everyone the song’s full name before playing it. I couldn’t really hear people singing along, so I feel like I’ve proven to him how hardcore a fan I am: I know, love and asked for one of the obscure b-sides and even claimed to know the words better than him, lol. He didn’t get it wrong, although he almost got one word wrong: he said “f . . . working”, but you can’t really hear it in the video.
