Katy at the Linbury Theatre, and I missed Nadya

Me and Mandy went to see Katy Carr at the Linbury Studio Theatre, under the Royal Opera House, last night.
It's a weird venue- you walk down and down and down deep black stairs, into a bright cave. She'd already started when we got there and that added to the drama. Katy has become very stylish and has got a band- Anja on accordion (she played on Dreaming of You), two female backing vocalists, a tuba, guitar, bass and drums plus a three-piece suite of strings. She also has dancers, and a clutch of new songs that are totally Katy but also very good indeed. They were all in forties chic- tea dresses and landscaped hairdos for the ladies, with back-projected slides of planes and orchids. It was really entertaining- Katy always lives her vision but has never really concerned herself with visuals before and it was a real pleasure to see this, especially as the band looked so into what they were playing. I always watch the string players and they were moving along, dancing in their heads and that's always a sign that they are enjoying what they are playing. They dynanics of what was going on musically were great, and you couldn't keep your eyes off the stage; the only bit I didn't like was the retro song section at the end, which Katy dedicated to her grandmother; it was a personal thing because those old songs like Lili Marlene carry images of bombsites and sirens with them in my imagination and I find them spooky and scary.
Steve Beresford was there, and I haven't seen him for ages; and Mr Wearsthtrousers e-zine too; of course I said all the wrong things as usual. He asked me if I'd finished the album yet and I told him I'd been listening to it today and thought it sounded crap then realised one of the speakers had fallen down the end of the bed. Once I'd fished it out and propped it up again, everything was OK. But you know, I'm writing the next one now, and I need to 'promote myself' like a proper artist, with gravitas and chips. Sorry!
So.. off to see Nadya's band, The Home Office, at the Elevator Gallery in Hackney Wick. Only problem was that the AA Routefinder had crashed yesterday afternoon and I had to try to create my route myself. Disaster. I found myself lost in Homerton, a mere sniff away from where they were playing, but totally unable to find the gig. Blast. And on the way home, in spite of the fascinating drama of driving through Stamford Hill and seeing Orthodox Jewish men in massive cylindrical fur hats, corkscrew curls and white stockings materialising out of the orange urban gloom, I managed to drive through Tottenham twice and arrived home with tears of frustration in my eyes. They had gone on later specially, and I did so want to post a photo of Nadya in her tutu and barbed-wire necklace!