My uni friends and I did a 'secret Santa' thing for our first Christmas together. I'm not sure how, but I found out that my Mexican flatmate Alex had been unlucky enough to pick this blogger's name out of the hat, and, like a total knob, I made it vee clear that I wanted 'The Best Of The Lemonheads: The Atlantic Years' on CD. VEE clear. And, although I didn't really deserve it for being such a 'me, me, me' tosspot, he bought me said album. I'm not going to feel too bad about it mind, as the Lemonheads became one of my musical obsessions during my time at uni as a result of getting the record.
The Lemonheads split in 1997 and frontman Evan Dando, who'd been wolfing down the recs since the early 90s, had disappeared from public view. He'd gone off piste somewhat in the mid 90s when he cut off all his hair, started following Oasis round with a tambourine like a lovesick gonk and was 'befriended' by both Courtney Love AND crack cocaine. The poor sod. The music press would occasionally print rumours about the poor state of his mental and physical health, with the implicit suggestion being that he was unlikely to perform again.
Imagine my surprise then, dear reader, when I saw an ad in the NME for a handful of UK solo dates in early 2001. I was psyched. Back in those kerazy pre-internet (taking off) days, buying tickets for a show in another city meant ringing up a record shop and ordering. I called Manchester's Virgin Megastore and had a conversation with some oik who asked me lots of questions about the Lemonheads before he let me purchase because "we can't have just anyone going". I doubt Richard Branson would have been impressed.
My flatmate, Chris 'Wu-Tang' Chang, and I arrived in Manchester around 8pm and headed to the Union. We got to the Hop & Grape (now the Academy 3) in time to see the last couple of songs by Ben Kweller, former front... child of Radish, a decent grungey / poppy mid 90s band, who'd had a minor hit with their song "Little Pink Stars". Kweller had ALL GROWN UP by 2001 and was playing songs from his forthcoming debut album proper, 'Sha Sha'. The couple of tracks we heard were enough to persuade me to buy the LP when it was released the following year. It turned out to be a superb power pop record and I was gutted that we hadn't got to Manchester a bit earlier so we could have caught the rest of Kweller's set.
Ben Lee was up next. His songs weren't a million miles away from the power poppy stuff Ben Kweller played, although he had a slightly more 'mature' sound. His melodies were ace, but some of his tunes could be a tiny bit... dull. I feel bad saying that because, on the whole, I really enjoyed his set. I bought his album 'Breathing Tornados' a few months after the gig and I really enjoyed that too. Even if its late 90s production sounded dated, even then, its cover was, litch, THE ABSOLUTE WORST I've ever seen. Imagine a kind of melty, computer 'enhanced' Lee standing in front of some Cheerios on sticks. When the album was released in America and Lee's native Australia it had a different cover. You'd thing it would be better but it actually gives the European issue a run for its money. This time Lee sits in a slightly over-large dentists charge in front of a desert landscape with out of proportion rock formations over his shoulder. To Google with ye...
Evan Dando came on around 10pm and played a Lemonheads-heavy set, featuring only a handful of new songs. The tracks were stripped back to just acoustic guitar and lead vocals, with Dando using a distortion pedal when required to compensate for the lack of other instrumentation. Not many people could get away with that sort of thing but Dando possesses such an amazing voice and his guitar playing, while rudimentary, is full of such feeling and charm, that the tunes sounded fantastic. The new songs, "All My Life", during which Dando was joined on stage by the two Bens, and "The Same Thing..." hinted that post-Lemonheads life could be pretty good if the drink and drugs could be tamed. Almost every Lemonheads song of note was given an airing, with "Into Your Arms", "Alison's Starting To Happen", "The Outdoor Type" and "Stove" being among the highlights. I hadn't heard the latter before as it appeared on the out-of-print 'Lovey', which was extremely difficult to get hold of at the time. Luckily, a few months after we saw him in Manchester, Dando released a live album of a gig at the Brattle Theatre in Australia, one the first 'comeback' shows he'd played, which featured the song. It was an Aussie only release but I managed to get hold of a copy. And I'd heartily recommend that you do too.
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