Yesterday evening we went to see Mitch Benn at New Greenham Arts, on the site of the former Greenham Common airbase. Most of our friends have never heard of Mitch (they don't listen to Radio 4 as habitually as we do), so trying to describe him to them can be difficult -- I've settled on him being something of a cross between Bill Bailey, Weird Al Yankowic and Tom Lehrer, but definitely with his own style. Basically, he does cleverly written and (with the help of his talented backing musicians, The Distractions) wonderfully executed musical humour.
The show was great, with my personal highlights being "Ikea" (about the vikings who are "conquering the world with our self-assembly, flat-packed furniture"), "Now He's Gone" (a touching song about a girl who has a novel solution to ensuring that her boyfriend never fools around) and the spectacular "Macbeth (my name is)" (an Eminem style rap about the classic antihero who is told, "by man born of woman your butt is unkickable"). Oh and there was the one about the teaparty. And the stadium rock. And the West End musical. And...
Mitch and the band seemed quite fun in general: bassist, keyboardist and vocalist Kirsty turned up outside during the interval for a swift cigarette and a chat with those assembled, and there was a good opportunity to meet them (and buy albums) afterwards where we learned that it is easy to set Mitch off on one of his rants.
We'll be keeping an eye on his tourdates in future...
2 comments:
Thanks for the review. He's appearing in Newport on November 17th. I've always enjoyed him on the Now Show but wasn't that keen on his solo series on radio 4. We'll definitely go to the concert if he's doing the Ikea song. Did he do the 'phone me during Dr Who and I'll kill you' song? That's one of my favourites.
Sadly there was no mention of Dr Who during the show, though chatting afterwards, Mitch did say that he had more positive response about that song than pretty much anything else he's done.
Also, far be it for me to gloat, but we found out that I remembered the song better than <3, who thought it was "...I'll flipping kill you". :o)
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