A small pleasure (fortunately oft-repeated) of being an ex-pat in San Francisco is that occasionally bands that were HUGE in my youth, or at least, slightly popular in England few years ago, come to town and play tiny venues. Last night was one of those nights with the Beautiful South playing at The Fillmore, much to the delight of the displaced British ethnic minority of San Francisco.
Braving midly chilly weather they came; the Mancunians, the Liverpudlians, the natives of the Beautiful South's hometown, Hull (would they be Hullonians?) - and of course with them came the slightly reluctant American girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands and wives of the same. But what a treat!
In theory, the Beautiful South were here on a 'Promotional tour' for a new album but there wasn't much promotion in sight as the band simply did exactly what the assembled fans wanted and belted out their unbelievably catchy greatest hits set. It must be fun to re-live your hey-day with people the same age as you, all of you pretending it was 1989 again. Well, it felt like it.
And so I shuffled to the beats, Emma whirled to the words, Anu shouted for 'Happy Hour' a lot (they didn't play it) and the South rifled through all their hits. Ninety minutes, three encores, one blurry cameraphone pic and a lot of smiles later, it was over...save for a challenge from Anu that he would "blog about it before you!" Get yourself off to AnuDattaDappen to see if he was right!
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