
Eleanor – Red Rum Club (2020, Modern Sky Records, Taken from ‘The Hollow of Humdrum’)
Live gigs during lockdown were an incredibly strange beast. They were streamed live into your room via the medium of Zoom or some other platform and there we all sat watching a band over a computer. It was a very weird experience.
I watched one computer streamed gig during lockdown. That was a charity fundraiser hosted by Frank Turner for the Cavern Club in Exeter, which remains, my most favourite live venue on earth (although I tip my hat to the bar in Los Angeles where I saw this lot in 2007);
Saints – Army & Navy (2008, The Fever Zone Records, Taken from ‘Army Navy’)
And so I was happy to spend the £7 connection fee, knowing that the Cavern were going to make money from it. To try make it as gig like as possible, I pissed all over my bathroom floor to recreate that authentic toilet venue smell, paid my wife eight pounds to pour me two heavily watered down pints of beer and every now again, I got her to shove me in the back for no reason other than the fact I was standing in front of her.
Miranda – Frank Turner (2022, Polydor Records, Taken from ‘FTHC’)
Red Rum Club were the first band I saw after lockdown, it was of course at the Cavern Club and they were incredible. In a strange sort of way it was like being transported back to my teenage years, because I’d sort of forgotten some of the minor aspects of a gig. That sound a plastic pint glass makes when you step on one in the dark. That uncomfortable feeling you get in your shoes when you have been standing on a dancefloor saturated in spilt beer for too long and its all sticky. That bizarre feeling you get when you step out of the gig and retreat to the bar and you sort of hear your ears breathing a sigh of relief (although at the cavern club it depends where you stand) as you order another pint. That odd smell as beer mixes with sweat on the tshirts of the folks that have been dancing away at the front and they walk back past you. All of it came back and all of it left me grinning like a loon for at least a week afterwards.
There are two other songs in my music library that have Eleanor in the title. The first one will be pretty well known to everyone who reads these pages.
Eleanor Put Your Boots On – Franz Ferdinand (2005, Domino Records, Taken from ‘You Could Have It So Much Better’)
The Eleanor referred to in the song title is supposed to be about Eleanor Friedberger, who is the singer in the band The Fiery Furnaces, with whom Ferdinand singer Alex Kapranos was in a relationship with when the song was written. Here is a song by them which has a name in the title.
Ray Bouvier – The Fiery Furnaces (2009, Thrill Jockey Records, Taken from ‘I’m Going Away’)
The other Eleanor song in the library only arrived a few weeks ago.
Eleanor – Hot Chip (2022, Domino Records, Taken from ‘Freakout/Release’)
Tomorrow – ‘Joni’ who will be drinking a case of you.