RIP Isaac Hayes and Simon Gray. Rather different creative artists who nevertheless share one thing in common. They both ended up as personifications of specific pleasures. Respectively, sex (Hayes’s character on South Park) and smoking (Gray’s unexpectedly bestselling diaries).
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Recent outings. To the V&A with Ms A for the Supremes show. Frocks and costumes from Mary Wilson’s collection, as worn throughout her career with the group, with and without Diana Ross. Fantastic exhibition, particularly impressive when the dresses worn for album sleeve photo shoots are displayed next to the album sleeves themselves. One sleeve next to another, in fact. I’ve been familiar with those albums for so long; such distant glamour, such perfect music. To be face to face (or face to sequin) with the gowns in question is utterly thrilling. Best of all are the psychedelic butterfly-winged frocks, as seen on the cover of their last studio album with Miss Ross, ‘Cream Of The Crop’.
Also on show are US magazines from the Supremes’ heyday, illustrating how such immortal music arose amid somewhat less immortal attitudes. Sample 60s magazine headline: ‘Are Negro Women Getting Prettier?’
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To the Cadogan Hall (a few weeks ago) with Ms S, to see The Magnetic Fields in concert. Same band set-up as their first posh London gig, the QEH circa ’69 Love Songs’: grand piano, cello, musicians sitting down on stools, no synths, drums or drum machines. An atmosphere of hushed, stately reverence.
Which I’m not sure is quite the best setting for the MF songs. Not for two whole sets, anyway. It’d be fair enough if every song was in the same vein as ‘The Book Of Love’, which just needs Mr M’s voice, a solo instrument and indeed, hushed reverence from an audience. But the Merritt ouevre includes jaunty, upbeat pop songs, swaggering waltzes, and unashamedly silly Dr Seuss-like ditties, too. If your music falls between stools, it seems strange to stay sitting on stools to play it.
Mr M notes this disparity, particularly as this ultra-quiet, mostly acoustic concert is promoting an album of ultra-noisy rock songs, ‘Distortion’. ‘If you like our records,’ he announces, ‘you probably won’t like the way we’re playing the songs tonight. And vice versa.’
When I first saw them at the tiny 12 Bar in 1996 (for the launch of the ‘Get Lost’ album), I think the format was Mr M and Ms G both standing up, with a synth, guitar, and possibly a drum machine. They did the same thing a day or two later, for a support slot with the Divine Comedy at the Water Rats. Amelia Fletcher joined them on guest vocals, wearing an Orlando badge. It remains my favourite Mag Fields concert memory to date, though I’m obviously biased.
Still, I can hardly blame them for wanting to take the leap, as they successfully did with ’69 Love Songs’, from entry-level indie rock bars, straight to civilised seated concert halls, the kind more suited to classical recitals. And I guess the stooled-up, ‘shhh! haughty genius on stage’ format suits Mr Merritt’s temperament to a tee.
‘Aw, he’s so miserable and stand-offish!’ says Ms S to me afterwards. ‘Don’t you just LOVE him?’
