This band is the best. Joan rules. And their gig this Monday in Berlin is probably the best concert I've been to. The setting at Volksbühne was great, it being the avantgarde punk rock theatre, or whatever, that it is - a grey concrete slab on the outside, a 70s GDR glam theatre inside. And the music you can check out for yourselves. But it's really the amazing charisma of the band that does it... Joan herself is of course the star and immediately fills up the whole theatre with her amazing presence, just by the way she walks onstage and sits down in front of the grand piano, all the while holding a small white coffee cup and taking occasional sips from it. She makes you follow her every move. At one point I thought I was going to have to become a total victim right there, but luckily she has this easy, charming way of laughing at herself and everything that makes her appear less intense. For example she will tell little anecdotes in between songs, like how during the soundcheck all the seats were covered with canvas covers, until, like in some sudden modern dance sequence, a horde of people came in and wordlessly removed all the covers from the seats in a weird, choreographed way. She has this slightly odd, ironic way of telling the story that makes it funny. Sometimes she will just stop talking and breathe down the microphone in a way that has the whole audience laughing with its mock-erotic charm. Or, after a particularly weird moment of doing that, say 'I am a strange person! Nice to meet you!' You can see that I'm starting to go on about her...
The other two band members are not effaced by her presence in any way though, you can really feel that without them she wouldn't be there doing this and vice versa. It really showed how well they work together on 'I Defy', where normally Anthony of Anthony and the Johnsons sings with Joan. Since he wasn't there, Rainy the bass player and Ben the drummer took turns singing his parts. It was great. By the way, the first time I listened to Anthony and the Johnsons - at full volume - was during a road trip in Lebanon's Chouf mountains, courtesy of Amer from Jordan. On a sunny day when we drove up the mountain real fast in search of the 'cedars', which we never found,instead winding up next to some ex-Syrian surveillance equipment, horsing around really high on thin mountain air. But I've written about that on this blog somewhere....
Back to Joan and the gig - respect is also due for their choice in support band. 'Rythm king and her friends' are two girls in their early twenties doing really, really bad electro-punk-rock stuff with full-screen words like 'industry' and 'desire' projected onto the stage background (in pink). A courageous choice on everyone's part, and great fun.
Jeff Buckley was a lucky guy, is all I can say.
