Alela Diane at St Giles Church

Alela Diane
William Elliott Whitmore
St Giles In The Fields, 30 March 2009

After a lot of confusion about just what church we were going to (there are a lot of St Giles churches in London it seems and Ticketmaster had sent out an oh-so-helpful email directing everyone to wrong one!) I made it to St Giles In The Fields, which is the church just off Tin Pan Alley, in time to secure a place in the front pew. Good thing too because, unlike the Union Chapel, which seems tailor made for music as well as services, the stage is very low and I'm sure I would have had difficulty seeing otherwise.

Omar Rodriguez Lopez at Dingwalls

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Group 
Zechs Marquise 
Camden Dingwalls, 11 March 2009

Before this show I had seen Omar Rodriguez-Lopez live in three other bands - At The Drive-In, De Facto and The Mars Volta (three times) - but I've never seen him as the star of the show and without right hand man Cedric Bixler-Zavala stealing a lot of the attention. Could he pull it off?

Vetiver at Cecil Sharp House

Vetiver  
Cecil Sharp House, 28 February 2009

The legendary Cecil Sharp House has to be one of the stranger venues I've been to in recent years. The headquarters of the English Folk Dance And Song Society, it's been host to some of the biggest names in folk particularly in the 60s, but the venue itself, supposedly a ballroom, with its wooden step-style seats on each wall and a tiny, almost floor-level, make-shift stage covering some of these seats, it appears more like a school hall, or gym although it would barely fit a small school assembly.