Jonathan Coulton at Dingwalls, London
Yes, Jonathan Coulton in London! His first time performing ‘over here’ and yes, he did sing Over There — he sang it first, after saying he thought he should get it out of the way and then not being able to start because he was trying not to laugh.
The atmosphere prior to the start of the concert was absolutely incredible. I’m going to keep comparing it to Loreena McKennitt at the Barbican, because there was the same sense of being part of a group of really dedicated fans, and of extreme anticipation. In her case it was because she’d not toured at all for nine years. In JoCo’s case, it’s because he’s never been here at all.
With a group of people from JoCo’s forum, I was right near the front of the queue. The doors didn’t even open until the advertised start time, which is not how I usually understand these things to work — the time on the ticket is usually the show’s intended start time. Therefore the concert started later than expected, and the whole transport situation became rather more stressful than it should have been.
However, the show itself was worth waiting for. After Over There — complete with derisory boos during the ’saved their asses in World War Two’ line — we were treated to a good cross-section of JoCo’s music, although unfortunately not including the new Lady Aberlin’s Muumuu. Particular highlights included Skullcrusher Mountain with virtually everyone singing every single word and the last chorus as an audience solo; Re: Your Brains as a concert-ender with audience participation (as if we hadn’t been participating already, as he acknowledged) where we had to learn to sing it like a mob of zombies, not like a Viennese children’s choir which has been turned into zombies. ‘Perhaps your mouths don’t work properly since you became zombies’.
I can’t recount all the wonderful moments as I’ll be here all day and I need to go shopping and do some cooking, but we did get the world premiere of Code Monkey sung with the accompaniment of JoCo’s new Tenori-On.
What do you mean, you don’t know what a Tenori-On is? Get thee to Google! Away, away!