Peter Doherty and Frédéric Lo, Tonic, Southsea, Mar 23
I
was very much indebted to my nephew for knowing that Peter Doherty was playing
only a 35-minute walk from my house. Two shows, at 5pm and 7pm, in an
‘intimate’ venue that does good work for ‘mental health’. Heaven knows, we
might all need some of that from time to time so I booked myself in for the
first show, thinking it would be the more genteel for one of my advancing
years. Damien Morris here, www.theguardian.com, was less than impressed by the album, possibly missing the point that much of Doherty's insouciance involves a baby-ish shambles which may or may not be part of the desired effect.
One might think the Libertines shows pay the
bills for Peter these days while he indulges himself with other projects, including making Margate a new epicentre for bohemian types with Tracey Emin. With his appreciation of English pop culture and pop music, The Epidemiologist
is
not the sort of title we expected of a single from Slade in the 1970’s but it’s
pretty, almost movingly gentle in its self-referential way. But Uncle Nod was never
reduced to quite such intricate self-examination as, The best laid plans can oft go to
fockery
Run down B&B's can turn into luxury
A wish that is wasted still can be granted
Hope that is doped still can be planted
I search and I search
I lurch headlong into atrocities
With an exponential known only to epidemiologists,
which, if anything, is trying too hard. But, until recently, being English meant being European, too, with not only Chaucer and the sonnet having their roots in Italy but Philip Larkin knowing more about French Lit than he was prepared to let on. So, not only is Peter's latest comrade French but so are some of the references in the songs.
'Intimate' means a sold-out capacity of 120 which Peter said was like his first ever gig at school. Keen to get in with it rather than late or not even present, as he once might have been, they did a couple of songs not from the set while more people were expected to show up but I'm not sure they did. It can be hard to tell with such studied casualness whether it's part of the act or not but then they basically played the album, I think, with guitar and keyboards and Peter simply on microphone. Thus they began with the only two current pop tracks (for some years) I'm familiar with, the title track, The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime and the single quoted above, Fred putting in the donkey work for the most part but the keyboard the basis of The Epidemiologist. It is more of what we expect these days, gentle, a bit nostalgic and also a bit knowingly so. You Can’t Keep It From Me Forever and Keeping Me On File were the most immediate and likely to remain among the more memorable for being perfectly good pop songs. It's cute to end quietly and, with Fred taking over on the keyboard, Far From The Madding Crowd, with yet more classic Eng Lit reference, was a gorgeous finish, a long, long way from anything traceable to the 1976/77 revolution and it's only a pity The Carpenters couldn't have covered it.
You can't believe what you read in the papers from young journalists, not even in The Guardian. What does he know. I've looked him up. He was writing about Bad Boy Chiller Crew a month ago ( ! ). For the faintly boho, mainly middle-aged select few at Tonic, Peter probably couldn't have but didn't anyway do anything wrong. It was almost as low-key as a poetry reading compared to the manufactured riots of Libertines appearances.
I thought, having declined The Magnetic Fields later this year, that my pop gig days were surely over. I was grateful to have this brought to my attention because it was great. I thought it was all over. I think it must be now.
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