Solid Ground feat. Meem @ Ruby Rabbit, Sydney (24/04/08)
And so it is that on this Anzac Eve I am off to Ruby Rabbit for the first all locals edition of Niche Productions’ “put ‘em in your diary in letters of fire” Solid Ground series. I don’t know whether anyone else gets Life of Brian moments from the name of this venue (“Welease Wuby Wabbit”, anyone? No, just me then), but walking in this evening I also get Chinese lantern moments as I note that a large number of the globes that light the upstairs room have been lanterned. I spend a little while trying to work out whether there is complex mathematical formula behind the lantern placement, but after a while I conclude that there probably is not.
Kavi-R is just finishing his set while I am considering lantern calculus, and then Regal takes over and begins to slowly unwrap the sort of set for which he should justly be more famous. Starting with beats that are broken, but a flow never in danger of that, he plays some hip hop early, and a Breakestra track, before progressing the set from one that gets the head nodding to one that speaks directly to the feet. Nothing for it but to dance.
Next up was Mickey Morphingaz, and of the live acts in Sydney who perform with a stuffed python wrapped around their heads, he is plainly the best of them. The field is small however, and he was without the partner in crime who had performed with him the last time I saw him (instead he was playing with the Least Excited Violinist Ever in the History of Everything). It wasn’t quite what I was after so I wandered downstairs where El Gusto of Hermitude was rolling out some funk of the warm and deep variety, and also managed to fall into a conversation about cross-media ownership laws, as you do.
It was a good conversation but not likely to be as good as Meem’s set upstairs, so I vaulted back upstairs to catch Regal laying the perfect platform for Meem, who then kept the crowd moving as one for the next hour (and it was lucky we were moving as one; the room was full enough by this stage that if we had been moving as two, we would have tripped over ourselves). The new Meem live set involves (from left to right) trombone, trumpet, Meem and two female singers. The new EP is mighty, mighty groovy and the live show captured and delivered that in spades. Meem spent the entire set beaming from ear-to-ear, and as my parents always taught me that it is rude not to have fun at a gig when the performers obviously are, I smiled too. This is a performance well worth your catching.
Then just as we were thinking that things couldn’t get any better, Simon Caldwell appeared behind the decks. What were the odds that Simon would have the perfect record to play after Meem’s set? Although that’s a rhetorical question, if you ever want to bet against Simon having the perfect record in any given situation, let me know and I’ll tell you where to send the money you’ll lose. He had a number with a somewhat skittery percussion pattern but wonderful warm synths, and it was just the right record.
Simon continued to do his customarily excellent work as I wandering onto and off the dance floor, found this gig had a very high proportion of Awesome-People-Who-I-Haven’t-Seen-For-A-While-And-Am-Glad-To-See-Here. It seems to be a bit of a feature of Niche gigs, that one. And then, after I had done my catching up, and paid due respect to the fine groove that Mr Caldwell was continuing to provide to the dance floor, I slipped away into the night, solidly pleased with the events of another Solid Ground.
