Cornershop, I'm very sorry that only 100 people turned out to see you last night, but timing your tour for finals week was probably a little silly. As it was, all the TAs in the city were there! We broke our 'weird drug occurrence at the Engine Room' tradition, but there *was* a very tall Scottish man who bopped around beside us a lot. I wasn't sure if he was 'flamboyant gay' or 'flamboyant lad' or perhaps even 'flamboyant gay lad', which is even more confusing as a stereotype; nonetheless, he made some excellent moves and sent supportive Scottish epithets hurtling towards the stage at regular intervals. Och aye the noo.

I want to stress the grooviness of Cornershop (whose new album is excellent and features erstwhile Memphian/Hi Records artist Otis Clay in an introductory soul revue-ish way!) - their Hindu-language (?ignorant me) version of 'Norwegian Wood' is very cool, and their guitarist, bassist and drummer are all badasses, and they're great at that 'groovy drone' thing, and I'm all for sitar and wacky percussion being used much more often on stage, generally - but the really memorable part of the evening was how much the support band *sucked*. I mean, *hard*. They actually made me angry! (I did of course try to be polite, because, you know, they're up there on stage and I'm not, but my quietly intense bitching reminded Brent of, in his words, 'an angry leprechaun'.) Honestly, someone they really respect needs to grab the drummer and the keyboard/synth guy (grrrrrr, *particularly* the keyboard/synth guy) and tell them to stop playing music *forever*. Mr. Synth was using sounds that only Jean Michel Jarre on tour with the Scorpions could have topped in sheer bad taste. BLURGH! Look, I like the Brand New Heavies and Morcheeba as much as anyone, but whatever it was on that nu-jazzy-triphop-soul spectrum that these people were aiming for, they well and truly missed. Here's a sample lyric to complete the picture: "Do you realize that this too shall pass/Every heartache's stabbing strain won't last/Since we've all been there/This is inspiring for it only magnifies/The majesty of your character/so striking". GAAAHHHHHH! Somewhere, Alanis Morissette is taking notes. Thank you, India.