Damon Albarn's
Gorillaz swam to shore from the safety of their fictitious Plastic Beach to the blustery streets of the south coast's time-warp town Portsmouth tonight. Backed up by Mick Jones (guitars) and Paul Simonon (bass) alongside duos of keyboardists and drummers, Albarn demonstrated that it'd take more than 50% of The Clash and a handful of quite exquisitely dexterous session musicians to prize the immortalised glory of what has largely been regarded as his hip-hop opus from those nimble fingers of his. Albarn, warming up for his cartoon troupe's headline show at next month's Californian Coachella bonanza, seemed nervous and almost rattled initially, disregarding the smoking ban and ordering bottles of Stella to be delivered to his piano stool, whilst reeling off the 80s retro glamour synths of Last Living Souls and Stylo with hesitant vigour. Already confirmed from the horse's mouth is a slew of UK shows come September, with a handful of Roundhouse gigs also in the pipeline for the forever nearer future.
Tonight, Gorillaz played:
Orchestral Intro
Welcome To The World Of The Plastic Beach
Last Living Souls
O Green World
Stylo
On Melancholy Hill
Kids With Guns
Some Kind Of Nature
Rhinestone Eyes
Broken
Dirty Harry
White Flag
Superfast Jellyfish
Glitter Freeze
DARE
El Mañana
Don't Get Lost In Heaven
Demon Days
To Binge
Clint Eastwood
Feel Good Inc
Either from the chilling gusts whistling down Pompey's deadpan streets, or through sheer nauseating anxiety, I'm still shaking from a brief, almost silenced encounter with an inspiration gorging on baked beans from a polystyrene container. Muscles tensed like hunks of nondescript flesh hanging in a backstreet butchers and a (pretty) vacant gaze, it was perhaps one of life's more forgettable unforgettable moments. Whoever said you ought never meet your heroes presumably never had one worth knowing. A full review of tonight's bare-boned gig is set to follow shortly on Dots & Dashes.
