Monday, July 27, 2009

Jarvis Cocker/Little Joy, July 27 at the Wiltern

How old is Jarvis Cocker? Whatever you want to say, he's still got it. He still writes great songs (though not nearly as great as Pulp's great days) and he still knows how to charm an audience (though not as massive as he would get in England, instead settling for a modest but ravenous sold-out crowd at the Wiltern; at least he's touring the States, which he didn't really do last time). And he has a beard now. But it's still a good show, especially being amongst aging Britpop fans from the '90s (like myself). This is a show I got a ticket for only a few weeks before, and I opted for a seat, in the balcony, instead of on the floor like I could have done, but ended up at the front of the section, and the Wiltern isn't gigantic, so I did the right thing. Of course everyone was there to hear Pulp tunes more than anything and of course everyone waited until the last second of the encore for it and of course he didn't play any old stuff but I can't imagine anyone being too terribly disappointed by the performance.

Little Joy opened and I got there in time to only see the last song or two but they rocked out a lot harder than I thought they would have. Their album is really sleepy (though still pretty good) but live they really crank it up (as well as having a lot more people on stage than they probably needed to create the music originally). They certainly didn't sound a thing like the Strokes but at this point Fab can pretty much do whatever he wants. Was Fab even playing at that show? I don't know. It doesn't really matter.

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