A little while back I attended an exclusive pop-up gig in Soho Square featuring Slow Club that was sponsored by HP UK and Last.fm, there was also one featuring The Boxer Rebellion that I wasn’t able to attend and then last night there was the final one featuring Ghostpoet aka Obaro Ejimiwe. You’ve probably heard of Ghostpoet, he was nominated for a Mercury Music Award (now prefixed by a credit card who I won’t endorse on account of their sky-high interest rates in these times of near recession)
Ghostpoet gained his nomination on account of his splendid album Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam which is really a story of how he went from where he was to where he is now. Do yourself a favour and have a listen, do him a favour and buy a copy, you won’t regret it.
Anyway, there’s not much I can tell you other than it was a great gig, an appreciative crowd lapped up all that he had to offer, bearing in mind this was essentially an acoustic set and he genuinely seemed to enjoy performing, even though he had a sore throat which he attempted to sooth with a cup of rather milky looking tea.
This time around I took my compact camera rather than relying on my phones camera, which was a wise choice as the flash on the Samsung Galaxy II wasn’t really up to the task, 8 mega-pixels it may be but pointless if it looks like you’ve taken the photo from deep inside a sewer! You can see all the photos I took over on my Flickr page, tho to be fair they’re just lots of photo’s of Ghostpoet, the drummer, guitarist and various photographers who didn’t seem to pleased that I was taking more photos than they were!
The most amusing part of the night occurred when I popped into Nandos to fill my belly prior to the gig. I was sandwiched between two tables with couples out on dates. One couple were obviously old hands but the other were a couple out on a first date. Now, they weren’t a young couple, probably mid to late 30’s and given I was sitting less than 6 inches from them I could hear everything they said. He had never been to Nandos and wasn’t familiar with the whole, order at the counter approach so she explained to him how it worked.
After poring over the menu he asked her what she wanted and got up to order, she then asked him if he wanted some money towards the bill; a deaf, dumb, blind guy could tell she was just being polite but after thinking for 10 seconds he replied, “yes, ok then” and stood waiting for her to rummage around in her handbag for her purse. It was all I could do to stop from choking with laughter, as he left to join the queue she furiously texted someone, her face bright red…this date was not going well!
It got worse, the guy returned 10 minutes later clutching a bottle of beer, the woman looked at him and asked, “Didn’t you get me one?” to which he replied, “Oh, you didn’t ask for one, shall I get you one?” She nodded and he strolled back to the queue, she did not look at all impressed.
Sadly I didn’t have time to find out how it progressed as I had to leave for the gig but there was a frosty silence for the ten minutes I was there with her answering his questions with one word answers which even I could tell were heavily laden with “Just don’t talk to me” overtones… I laughed to myself but secretly I felt a bit sorry for both of them, Monday night first date hell.
