Duffy, Hiro Ballroom, NYC. Nightmare of You, Ash, Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. 3/18/08.
A year or two ago I saw Lily Allen get on stage at the Hiro Ballroom for her first ever New York City performance. How I got those tickets is beyond me, but I was there! It was like her coronation into our American hearts, and her debutant ball all in one. Last night’s Duffy performance wasn’t much different.
The teeny tiny 19-year-old soulful singer took the stage like a woman twice her stature and twice her age. Confidence spewing out and looking like she walked out of a photoshoot from the 60s (or at least a photoshoot doubling as Broadway’s Kristin Chenoweth). She should be called Duffy Springfield.
Springfield comparisons aside, if Duffy were Nancy Sinatra, Bernard Butler from Suede would be her Lee Hazelwood, at least on the night’s opening song, “Rockferry.” The track was a standout in her set last night, flowing through psychedelic imagery and sounds.
Check out her performance:
With graceful arm tosses and wrist flips, she diva’ed out on a set of songs that could’ve been on David Bowie’s more soul-ful albums, and a backing band that actually resembled the one he had in 1974 on the Dick Cavett show.
The set consisted of songs aforementioned “Rockferry,” “Hanging on Too Long,” “Serious” and the iTunes free download of the week, “Breaking My Own Heart.” The latter caused the poised Duffy to joke “It’s the free download whatever that means in today’s technological times,” which in retrospect isn’t that funny of a comment, but it caused the entire place to burst out in laughter. Her set was peppered with moments of humor and self-awareness that will make us love her.
I hopped on a train following Duffy’s performance and went to the Williamsburg Music Hall in Brooklyn (by the way, from 8th ave to Bedford is only 7 amazing minutes via the train), to catch Nightmare of You and Ash perform a very Irish St. Patrick’s Day show. Yes, members of the audience were wearing green. Lots of them. Lots of them were also drinking… but there was not one single green beer in sight.
This was my first Nightmare of You show since their self-released Bang! EP, and while I would’ve been extremely happy if they chose to play all the songs off the EP, I was glad to hear at least two of the songs. This was also their first NYC show with drummer Mike Fleischmann, formerly of Permanent ME, whose youth is delicious to my eyes. God, he’s so adorable.
You can see him in this live video of “You’re Very Dear to Me”:
The two new songs that the band played in their “My Name is Trouble”-less set included the ode to S&M and Psychiatry “You’re Very Dear to Me,” and Brandon Reilly’s self-aware ode to himself “I Was Never a Normal Boy.” I remember hearing the final mixes of the song that ironically gets shorted to “Normal Boy,” while driving around Long Island with Brandon a few days after he had been let out of a psychiatric hospital, his attendance had caused NOY to cancel their big US tour with Cartel. Talk about a tell-tale song. Glad to see he’s better now.
Check out the video for “I Was Never a Normal Boy”:
I was so excited, beyond belief, that Ash were playing on St. Patrick’s Day. With exclusion of the Pogues, there’s no other Irish band I wanted to see more yesterday, than Ash. Considering Ash was one of my beloved bands from my youth, I felt like i was 19 again, particularly when they played “A Life Less Ordinary.” Oh, I would love to be 19 again, dancing in my shower while listening to the soundtrack to “A Life Less Ordinary” and pretending that I was singing to Ewan McGregor, which I will admit, I did every single morning. I was such a stoked out little monk.
Ash played for two solid hours, looking and sounding as amazing as they did years ago when I saw them play in the states for the first time. I didn’t miss Charlotte’s place in Ash once, maybe even liked her being gone, because it meant that I didn’t have to deal with a bunch of meat-heads pandering her guitar playing. I got noticeably drunker as the night went on, diving into my non-Irish heritage to celebrate the extremely amazing occasion of having Ash play in Brooklyn on St. Patrick’s Day. ASH! IN BROOKLYN! ON ST. PATRICK’S DAY! Surely, that is enough to make any British teenager boil over with jealousy! God, I’m jealous of myself. I remember looking at the Reading/Leeds lineup when I was younger and petting the page where Ash’s logo took a spot at the top of the line-up, and here they were, before my eyes. UGH. So lucky.
