Dag 1287: An extract from the blue book

My sun will shine
Like a sea of gold
over the mountain
pours the sun
with outstretched arms

Lead me
back onto the path again
for I am lost

Dag 1285: Big in Japan

Since seeing John Cale in Sheffield last January, I have been looking for more decent concerts to go to, without having much luck. None of the groups I like seem to have any tours planned but at some point it occured to me that David Sylvian wasn't on my list of 'groups I would really rather quite like to see if at all possible, please' so I added him to it.

I had never been a fan of Japan and so had never bothered listening to David Sylvians solo work after they split up until I heard the album "Gone To Earth" at a Yogilates teaching friends house (he didn't teach Yogalatis at the time as I think we were still in the 6th form at school and Yogalatis hadn't been invented then). I immediately reckognised the guitar playing of Robert Fripp and so picked up the album sleeve to see what it was. I was surprised to see it was by David Sylvian, but I bought it soon after and it has remained one of the best albums in my collection.

I had never heard of David Sylvian playing any concerts until I spotted the live CD Damage (also featuring Robert Fripp) in a record shop. Of course, by then the tour was over, but I would certainly have gone to see him if I had known about it at the time (but then that is true of most of the bands I like).

I recently found his website and saw that I could register to recieve news, so I filled in my email address and thought "great, now all I need to do is sit back and wait for an email - I don't need to keep visiting the site in the off chance of finding out he is about to tour."

As his last tour was around 4 years ago I thought I may have a bit of a wait on, so I got a bit of a surprise when about a month later I got an email telling me about the up and coming David Sylvian 'The world is everything tour'.

when I was in Japan

7th Sept: Stockholm, China Theatre
8th Sept: Oslo, Sentrum Scene
9th Sept: Copenhagen, Royal Theatre
12th Sept: Dublin, Vicar Street
14th Sept: Manchester, Bridgewater Hall
15th Sept: Glasgow, Royal Concert Hall
17th Sept London, Royal Festival Hall
18th Sept: Birmingham, Symphony Hall
20th Sept: Brussels, AB
21st Sept: Paris, La Cigale
23rd Sept: Milan, Conservatorio Sala Verdi
24th Sept: Reggio, Emilia Teatro Valli
26th Sept: Conegliano Veneto, Teatro Accademia
27th Sept: Rome, Auditorium Della Conciliasione
29th Sept: Torino, Teatro Colosseo
1st Oct: Eindhoven, Music Centre Frits Phillips
2nd Oct: Amsterdam, Rai
4th Oct: Groningen, Oosterpoort
6th Oct: Berlin, Schiller Theatre
7th Oct: Offenbach, Capitol Theatre
8th Oct: Cologne, Theatre Am Tanzbrunnen
19th Oct: San Sebastian, Teatro Victoria Eugenia
21st Oct: Lisbon, Centro Cultural Belem
23rd Oct: Braga, Teatro Circo
24th Oct: Madrid, Teatro Albeniz
27th Oct: Hong Kong, HITEC Hall B
29th Oct: Osaka, Geijutsu Hall
30th Oct: Tokyo, Orchard Hall

I looked through the dates and, although I very much liked the look of the first date, I saw that the nearest one to me was Manchester. It could have been better, but it wasn't too far away so I logged straight onto ticketmaster expecting to be one of the first people in there as I had got that special email telling me all about it.

I then had to think whether I would be able to find somone to go with me or would I need to go on my own? Feeling optimistic I put in a request for 2 of the best available tickets and wondered if I would be able to get some in the first couple of rows. After a minute or so I was offered 2 tickets in the gallery. How could this be? I tried the search again this time asking for just 1 ticket and it came back with one of the 2 seats I had just been offered.

I then noticed that tickets had actually gone on sale on 25th May and my email had arrived on 15th June. So it looked like I did need to have kept visitting the web site in the off chance of finding out he was about to do a tour after all. That'll teach me.

I felt a bit peeved that Mr Sylvian hadn't emailed me a bit earlier and thought that I wasn't that bothered about going all the way to Manchester if I could only get a seat in the gallery.

So I left it at that for a few weeks until I listened to some David Sylvian on my iPod by chance on one of my trips to the gym and realised:
a) just how brilliant his music is (his trees aren't bad either) and
b) if I don't go and see him on this tour:
ba) I may not get chance to see him play live again and
bb) he may not actually do another tour

So I now realised that I really did want to go and as I had lunch with my Dad last weekend I thought I'd ask if he wanted to go to it with me. He said yes, so I had a look on eBay on Monday and found that someone was selling 2 tickets in the circle as he could no longer make the concert. The best bit was that they had a buy it now price of £60 including postage (the face value was £29.50 per ticket) so getting these would work out quite a bit cheaper than getting them from ticketmaster when you add on the £4.25 per ticket service charge and the £2.75 postal charge.

So I bought them now and got an email that evening saying they were in the post. They didn't arrive the next day, but I didn't really think they would. But when they still hadn't arrived the next day I started to get the first tinges of IboughtsomethingoneBayandnowIthinkImayhavebeenrippedoffitus. I seem to get this everytime I buy something off eBay yet I have never yet not receievd what I bought. I don't know if anyone else has ever suffered this but it started off as a slightly nervous feeling but by the end of the day I wished I had never heard of David Sylvian and was chastising myself for not getting the gallery tickets from ticketmaster.

Of course they arrived the next day which meant my IboughtsomethingoneBayandnowIthinkImayhavebeenrippedoffitus had now developed into ImustbuyeverythingthatdavidsylvianmightpossiblyplayattheconcerthatIdontalreadyhaveitus. The only cure for this is to buy music, and lots of it, so I bought and downloaded Blemish (which he played in its entirety on his previous tour) the Nine Horses Wonderful World EP and the World Citizen EP by David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto.
I also pre-ordered his latest solo album 'When loud weather buffeted Naoshima'. I must admit this is the first time I have pre-ordered somthing that has already passed its release date.

After realising that this hadn't quite cured the symptoms of this strickening debilitation, I went out at lunchtime and bought Snow Bourne Sorrow by Nine Horses.

Note: If you didn't already know, you have probably guessed by now that, the band Nine Horses does infact include David Sylvian and, according to his website, he will be playing some Nine Horses material on his up and coming tour.

At this point I could give a full review of my latest purchases, but I think I'd better leave that for another time.

All I will say for now is that Blemish is fairly hard going, though good nonetheless, and Nine Horses contains songs that are equal to the best of his work to date. I felt particularly that the first track 'Wonderful World' (with Stina Nordenstam providing an elegant Scandinavian touch to the chorus) would go down very well in the Cloudhands office, and the second track 'Darkest Birds' is one of the best songs I have ever heard.