Hawley Hits Holmfirth

Friday night was gig night - and fortunately we didn't have very far to travel, just over the hill to the Holmfirth Picturedrome where Richard Hawley was on fine form. Through the wonders of youtube, and someone who was stood much closer to the stage than us, here's one of the highlights...



Something occurred to me while watching this gig. I'm a big fan of Richard Hawley, and have bought all his albums... yet apart from two or three obvious 'hits', I'm not sure I could name any of his songs. We listen to different artists in different ways. Being a lyrics man, I often obsess over the words of many of my favourite artists - and not just the ones I've been listening to for years. (One of my favourite lyrics albums this year has been the debut from The Indelicates,and I've pored over their lyrics like a teenager these last few weeks.) Yet there are other artists - and Richard Hawley is one of them - where the lyrics take second place to the music. Or they're just part of the overall package and they don't matter as much, because the music itself is so beautiful. Not that there's anything wrong with Hawley's lyrics (he has a nice habit of writing Sheffield colloquialisms into his songs for example), they're just not the hook. The hook is Hawley's voice, and the music itself.... you can just lose yourself in that, it's perfect.


Well... ahem... you can if you're not getting TOO annoyed by audience arseholes. I've written before about the woes of sharing a venue with people of the idiot persuasion (such as the 8 foot Yeti who waits until the gig starts and then chooses to come and stand right in front of you, or the pissed up loons who spend the entire gig filming themselves on their mobile phones to prove they were there... and not actually watching any of the show they've paid £20+ to watch), but Friday gave me a little more cause to whinge.

First there was the Creeping Couple. Imagine you're an actor on a stage and your position has been marked by the floor manager with a taped cross. That's where you're to stand to enjoy the gig. Only Creeping Couple want to stand there too. Exactly there, and nowhere else. So how do Creeping Couple achieve this objective? They creep. Closer and closer. They shimmy and they sway with the music until they edge their way into your personal space and you're either butting up against them... or you're forced to shuffle back yourself to escape their slithering ways. They get where they want to be by a kind of passive-aggressive skin-crawling. They deserve pushing down a bottomless well into the stygian depths, and had a bottomless well been present at the Holmfirth Picturedrome at that moment, this is where they would be now.

Then there was Older Man Desperately Trying To Impress Younger Date. By talking and cracking jokes through every song, not listening to one note. Fortunately, I had my secret weapon with me on Friday night. After a couple of songs of this, Louise turned back to him and declared, "Do you mind? I paid to listen to Richard Hawley - NOT YOU!" Shut him right up. You. Go. Girl.

Finally there was Pissed Up Teddy Boy, quiffed to glory and wearing his best mock-Hawley gear, who spent the entire gig walking around bumping into people and saying (by way of apology) 'He's great, Rissshard Hawley, innee? I luv him.' Unfortunately, he made the mistake of tripping over Louise's bag, and was promptly booted down a well that had just opened up in the Picturedrome floor. If you listen carefully in the background of the video above, you can still hear his forever falling scream...


Right - this is in danger of turning into a music blog. Not that there's anything wrong with music blogs, just that there are other people who do that sort of thing far better than me (step forward, JC). So tomorrow, for variety's sake, I promise - no music. We'll get back to it later in the week though, obviously.