Badly Drawn Boy -- 'The Shining' @ The Concorde 2 Brighton 27 Aug 2011

My favourite performance at this year's The Wedding Present-curated mini Festival by the Sea (which I also attended same time last year with some good friends), despite obvious close competition from the brilliant headliners and others, has to be this one from Damon Gough aka Badly Drawn Boy of course (himself a mate of The Weddoes' legendary Dave Gedge). I can't profess to being that knowledgeable about BDB's back catalogue (though I'll try to belatedly make up for that now), but I'd been holding out for this song, and when by this late stage in his set he started taking requests, I was well chuffing chuffed when he got almost cajoled into playing this breathtakingly gorgeous number. His apology at the start is for having already regaled us a few times with how so many songs were inspired by his evidently painful, initially seemingly unrequited courtship of his now wife (and mother of his kids) Claire. When I say 'cajoled', although he was very (& unjustifiably) self-deprecating about some of his songs, he nevertheless stood his own ground, shooting down one heckler with: "I'm bullet-proof mate, I don't give a f*** what you say!" (to which the crowd quite rightly yelled their/our support).

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Badly
• Drawn
• Boy
• Damon
• Gough
• The
• Shining
• Concorde
• Brighton
• Wedding
• Present