The shame of it

Went to Hoxton's trendy Hoxton to see avant soundscape mutterers Jackie-O Motherfucker. They were splendid, particularly their rickety take on Public Enemy's open-goal satire on US TV, 'She watch channel zero'.

They are the sort of hairy band (or perhaps 'collective') who grant the viewer much visual pleasure, though they may well disdain from such antiquated notions as 'putting on a show'. It was fun to spot extra members crouched at the back of Cargo's miniscule stage, honking or battering away at niche instruments. The harder you looked, the more there seemed to be.

However, I seem to be haunted by goons spilling their lousy opinions all over the music. I don't gain from hearing some high-collared Hackett expressing his view that a 25-minute choppy, abstract interpretation of an old American folk song is 'sprawling' or 'indulgent'. Similarly, I got to see the miraculous jazz-pensioner Jimmy Scott a few weeks ago, to have half his set blended with unflattering comments about his idiosyncratic voice. What did you expect? Or more importantly, what did I expect? If you don't want to hear the hell that is other people's opinions, stay home with your boxed sets.

Incidentally, I proved my peccable jazz credentials by gobbing on the next day about Jimmy's moving performance to all and sundry, dropping googlefacts such as 'he was Billie Holiday's favourite singer you know... Oh you haven't heard of him?' I was halfway through this routine to a taxi driver, who said 'so he's got the same name as the tennis player?' I had been lauding the hair-on-back-of-neck-erecting powers of Mr Big Racket himself, Jimmy Connors. You can't delete that sort of retrospective shame. When word gets out I may well be barred from jazz, and possibly tennis, for that.

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Jackie-O Motherfucker, Hoxton, Jimmy Scott, shame