Patti - Meltdown - 17 June 2005

[Andrew F Wilson <andrewfwilson>]

Tonight's concert at the Royal Festival Hall was Rachid Taha,
supported by Carbon/Silicon.  Patti came on stage at the very start,
and introduced Carbon/Silicon, a new band fronted by Mick Jones.  They
played a capable set of new songs, somewhat marred by a mix that
seemed to place an inch of lard between them and the audience.  But
they had many fans in the audience and went down well.  Unexpectedly,
they came back for an encore and swung into Hey Joe.  Very appropriate
I thought, as it's Patti's Festival.  Then, even more unexpectedly,
Patti strolled on stage after the second verse and took over the
singing.  A spine-tingling performance, even if, as she admitted the
next day, it was in the key of C "and that is NOT my key".

The Algerian singer Rachid Taha clearly has an enthusiastic fanbase,
and they were here in large numbers for his set.  Despite this being a
fully seated venue, designed for orchestral concerts, most of them
were determined to dance too.  The front of stage area quickly filled
with dancers, and the security wisely let them stay there.  Having no
knowledge of Arabic, and frankly struggling to follow Taha's idiomatic
French or his four words of English, I can't make much comment on the
music, except to say it was consistent with those records of his I'd
heard and the combination of Algerian rhythm with some rock guitar is
a potent mix.  Taha was billed somewhere as "the Algerian Johnny Cash"
which rather built up a false expectation.  The only link with the Man
in Black that I could detect was the colour of his wardrobe.  If you
wanted a better comparison, the shaggy-haired, microphone swinging
singer struck me as more like "the Algerian Roger Daltry".  At other
times he had the mien of a tired and emotional Jim Morrison.

In the middle of the concert there was a surreal interlude when Taha
brought two audience members on stage.  Faced with an enthusiastic
group of female admirers he chose instead two male misfits - one
slightly embarrassed, who probably wished he'd not accepted the offer;
 the other a show-off with an obsessive-compulsive phone-cam disorder.
 The purpose was ostensibly to translate a tricky bit of Arabic into
English for the London audience, though it degenerated into a battle
of wills with the phone-cam man.  Taha eventually rubbed the phone
against his crotch in an attempt to discourage him from taking further
photos (it didn't work).  It was an amusing reminder of the "dance
contest" routines that Frank Zappa used to do at concerts, but I
suspect that Zappa is not one of Taha's main influences.

The next diversion was the arrival of Patti, to play clarinet with the
band on two songs.  Taha was suitably chuffed when she arrived "Elle
est belle, l`!" he shouted with genuine enthusiasm.  Patti's
performance was not very audible - she explained the next day that
neither of her two clarinets was in the correct key for the songs. 
But one of the players had said to her after the concert "Wrong key,
but right spirit".  Patti and Taha were entertaining to watch - Patti
did a snake-charmer routine, whilst Taha loped around stage like a
seedy Groucho Marx.

Patti left the stage after two songs, then returned for the finale -
together with Mick Jones  to play a rousing Rock El Casbah.  Patti
played clarinet on this one and sang on the chorus.  No encore, but
the printed set-list showed that Casbah was supposed to have been the
encore.

kind regards


Andrew