Friday, December 14, 2001

Jonathan has written an exhaustive summary of the Marc Almond show at Union Chapel, and Ian has given his thoughts on Marc's appeal, his weaknesses and his audience. All it remains for me to do is give a few of the highlights:
  • The queeny strop: Marc introduced What Makes A Man A Man by saying "I find this song very moving. I get quite choked up, especially in the third verse." So it was perhaps understandable that he lost his temper with the drunk couple in the front row who sang along, loudly, anticipating every word. At the end of the second chorus, Marc deliberately held back on the line, "Tell me if you can" so that the whole house could hear the people in the front. "Right!" he shouted, "Go on then, tell me if you can! Go on! You sing the song, why don't you? Do I come and interrupt you at your work when you're flipping burgers in McDonalds??"
  • The website put-down: The very first thing I did when I first went online back in 1996 was to search for a Marc Almond site. I found the Marc Almond Message Board, now resident at Indigo Blue - "a place for fans to meet, chat, share information, play, sulk and argue". Over the last five years I have made many friends through the site, most of whom were at the show last night. In fact, I sat directly behind the site's moderator, Alan. So it was pretty damn galling when Marc ranted about all the sad fan sites on the web. "www.twats.com or Indigo Blue or something. Not that I've looked at them personally - friends tell me about them: 'You won't believe what they've done now - there's a top ten worst albums list.' What a bunch of sad twats!"
  • The sing-alongs: perhaps the only time an audience has been encouraged to perform a mass sing-along paean to masturbation? "Mother fist never gets lonely, mother fist, she never gets bored..."
  • Broken Hearted And Beautiful: My favourite song ever. And I don't just mean my favourite Marc song. The lilting rhythm, the seedy atmosphere, the observant lyrics: "She thought she'd find his angel face in the bottom of a whiskey glass", the exact sense of place and time: "the man on the TV calls 'Cathy, Cathy come home".
  • I Created Me: A big two-fingers-up to his detractors: "I created me - a little irony - cuz I hated me. I created me from words that always hurt, the ones that cut you deep like bender and pervert, weirdo, sicko, freak, queer and faggot too."
  • Midnight Soul: I had tears in my eyes. OK, I'm a sucker for Marc's 'beautiful loser' shtick, but I can identify, y'know? "I'm tired of drifting, I'm tired of lying, I've been walking, when I could have been flying"
  • St Judy: simply sensational. Marc writhing in the pulpit, shouting "Kip Noll, John Holmes, and me - all in bed and we were going O.T.T. - what a sight to see!".

    Now let's see what Marcus made of it...
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