DEERHOOF

DEERHOOF/YAMA WARASHI AT LAFAYETTE, KING’S CROSS – 21/08/23

When you live in London you imagine that it belongs to you somehow, and you to it. But London is a beast. It belongs to no one and possesses nothing. At least these are my reflections as I drive through Hammersmith on a sunny late summer evening listening to a Dub Store Records mixtape that I made a couple of days ago. I feel like a failed wanderer returning home to find that everyone he loves has disappeared with no explanation. Who are all these people, he thinks. Where have they come from. Were they here before. He has to adjust and knows things will never be the same, but finds he is quite happy to watch from the fringes as an outsider. And maybe, he writes – using his recently discovered technique of resting his notebook on his thigh so he can write while driving – being an outsider is the only route to freedom left. So he thinks.

 

Recently discovered

The band have requested that everyone wear face masks at tonight’s show so he bought one at B____ on his way here. He doesn’t like wearing face masks and only ever wore them reluctantly. But his motto at the moment is “Try not to be a cunt” and so he bought the face mask and he will wear it. He is trying.

In all my years of living in London I don’t think I ever walked along Regent’s Canal, but here I am as a tourist – or a visitor at least – doing just that.

Just that

You can tell the people who live here because they’re talking loudly on their phones about all their upcoming plans. “I’m meeting Ralph on Thursday,” says one woman. “You’re welcome to come if you want.” Or else they’re sitting in tucked away bars and covert restaurants talking animatedly about everything they’ve got going on. What lives these people lead! So much to do! What a lot to say! Plans! Arrangements!!

What lives!

I sit on a block of concrete at King’s Place where I am joined by a young man called Y___ who fumbles for a lighter before accepting he doesn’t have one. I don’t have one either, though I expect myself too. He was born in Greece before moving to Brighton and now London. I think Peckham he said. He makes weird music, he tells me. When his friend arrives I make my excuses. I go and have my portrait taken in the photo booth we always go to. The first one takes me by surprise but the rest are all poses. I never used to be a poser but I am now.

Poser

LAFAYETTE is a nice place full of hip London people. Falling Asleep At William Tyler, one of the original Rough Trade Tote Bag Guys from Nights Out, is here, standing right in front of me, right at the front, clutching his face mask (not a cunt) and readying some sort of digital recording device that he keeps in his front pocket. Haven’t seen him for a while. Do you remember him? He looks well. He always stands right at the front which you have to respect. I could try and talk to him but what would I say. “Hello, you’ve become a character in the fiction that is my consciousness. I call you Falling Asleep At William Tyler because I once saw you nodding off at the front of a William Tyler show at Café Oto.” No, I couldn’t say that. Could I? No, that wouldn’t do. Or would it?

FAAWT

YAMA WARASHI is not her name. It’s the name of her band. People sometimes call her “Yama”, which means “mountain” in Japanese, even though she’s not a mountain. One of her songs is about a Japanese coffin because she likes ancient stuff, which may explain why she lives in Wiltshire, near Avebury and Stonehenge, where she saw strange things flying in the sky. Another song is about veganism and how if you cut a leaf in half it can still live but if you cut a person’s head off, they die. It’s a definite vibe.

Mountain in Japanese

DEERHOOF have a lot going on. They are a busy band, their songs constantly rearranging themselves, folding in on themselves, like a musical kaleidoscope. It’s a very precise sort of mayhem, really. Somehow, it shouldn’t work but it does. Somehow, it shouldn’t make sense and doesn’t, by and large. At least not to me. But, actually, I think we should all just stop expecting things to make sense. Why should things make sense. It seems unreasonable to expect them to. Singer Satomi Matsuzaki comes onstage in a sort of Robin Hood pixie costume, or maybe it’s supposed to be a watermelon. The guitarist looks like a Greg to me, but he’s actually a John, and the drummer, who is a Greg but looks more like a John or maybe a Peter, is all flailing arms and hair and skinniness and odd socks and kind of lurches over to the microphone to make a series of rambling monologues in which he speaks very slowly and seems to be constantly fishing for words that just won’t bite. 

Works