CATE LE BON

CATE LE BON/MEGA BOG AT ENGINE ROOMS, SOUTHAMPTON – 14/3/22

ENGINE ROOMS is situated on an industrial estate in Southampton docks. It’s a strange place for a music venue. Not at all like the normal places where you find music venues. At the end of the road there’s an impossibly huge ship towering above a little car rental place. It gives me the fantods. Really big stuff like that always gives me the fantods. There’s just something about really big stuff like that that just isn’t quite right, like really big stuff like that just shouldn’t exist somehow, like it just shouldn’t be allowed. I just don't think things should be too big, or too popular, that's all.

MEGA BOG emerge punctually. “This is the first time we’ve played together,” says Erin Birgy. “Well, I’m stoked about it,” she adds when there’s no response at all from the audience. In fact, the audience is strangely unresponsive tonight and - apart from a phone going off during a breakdown in a song, prompting Birgy to mutter, “Turn your fucking phone off,” into her headset microphone – very quiet. It is a Monday night. Maybe that’s why. 
  The music is like a desert, sort of spiky and strange and sultry, and seems totally at odds with the industrial setting. “So tired,” says Birgy at one point, “so cold. It’s England!”

At odds

I want to live in a world where people sing CATE LE BON songs in stadiums. Imagine ten thousand people sing, “Did you see me putting pain in a stone?” or “Sipping wine through a telescope,” or whatever the hell she’s singing up there. I want to live in a world where grannies dance to Mother’s Mother’s Magazines at weddings. I just want to see what that world would be like. 
  The last time I saw Le Bon was a truly life changing moment for me, and I have a feeling that I will only appreciate the profound significance of this experience at a later date. Le Bon is a visionary artist and her live performances have mystical qualities that defy articulation.

Mystical qualities

I don’t understand why there aren’t more people here, and I don’t understand why the people that are here don’t seem a little more enthusiastic and appreciative. It’s strange, but it’s almost as if, post-pandemic, we’ve forgotten how to be an audience. 
  Outside the big ship is still there, towering over everything, but it’s not giving me the fantods any more.

Too big

The next morning, over breakfast and times tables, I play Pompeii to my daughter. I sing along, holding back tears that I don’t really understand.