Just Us

It’s been a frenetic time of late even by my frenetic standards. Last Friday saw Steve Dixon and I travelling up to London to see Billie Marten at Koko in Camden. It was the first of four trips to The Smoke in seven days, Billie Marten’s album ‘Drop Cherries’ is my favorite album of 2023, so it was worth rolling the dice. Problem is the trains turn into rice paper this time of year and the slightest thing fucks them up. This proved to be the case with our trip. Our original train was cancelled on the day and the one we eventually caught ended up pulling into Paddington thirty minutes late. Cause Ms Marten was on early this nictitated a taxi across town. She can’t have been on long when we got to the venue, but that didn’t stop Mr D and I flapping about.

We eventually found a spot to enjoy the gig and very enjoyable it was! For one the venue - which I’d never been to before - was a stunning old theatre. Billie was great, funny and engaging. The gig did stop temporarily when someone fainted in the crowd, but after they were being safe and being looked it started again with a selection of songs from ‘Drop Cherries’ and the previous album ‘Flora Fauna’. I may have punched the air when she did ‘Just Us’ which has been on heavy rotation in Floyd Towers, and the semi-acappella song she did with her band was mesmerizing. The lighting was quite something, you could tell that I was a ‘out of towner’ cause I think I gasped when they switched on a mirror-ball. Pretty. My pen-ultimate gig of the year and a good one to - nearly - end the year on. Steve D and I left and - without a responsible adult being with us - wandered aimlessly around the Tube for awhile before we eventually managed to get back to Paddington for the last train home.