I haven’t stopped playing ‘Luxury Problems’ since its release last summer, so even coming down with flu at the eleventh hour wasn’t enough to prevent me from missing the opportunity I’d been waiting some time for; to finally get to see Patrick perform, at Birmingham’s Bar Academy. Battling the worst, we make the train, and find our way over to the modest upstairs venue of the Bar Academy, where about thirty people are already waiting patiently. Inside this small but cosy venue, it becomes clear that this is going to be a very unique and special experience.

Just before tour mate Jim Moray’s set is due to start, Patrick wondered up the stairs into the Bar area, talked with Moray backstage, and then walked over to the gents with his toothbrush. Anxious that after giving his pearly whites the Colgate treatment, he may just disappear back stage, I decide to take the chance while it presents itself, and accost Patrick, after a few moments, in the gents (which, yes, in hindsight, could have gone horribly wrong!). ‘Hello Patrick, just wondered if I could have your autograph’, I said, as he was putting away his toothbrush. A welcoming smile beamed across his face, ‘Oh course you can!’. Patrick Duff is clearly not your average Prima Donna. Then we talk for a few minutes outside, and I tell Patrick that ‘Luxury Problems’ is an excellent record, and about my complete Strangelove collection - to which he smiles and says ‘excellent!’ And after signing my scruffy piece of paper with the charming ‘may you be blessed by angels’, Patrick shakes my hand, and modestly thanks me for supporting him. As it happens, Patrick does hang around for Moray’s set- lurking at the back and sketching out the set-list.

After Jim Moray’s set and a couple to cider’s to numb the flu, we settle ourselves right at the front; and a quick change into his platform boots sees Patrick up on stage, having trouble getting his guitar sound to come through the PA after a wrong connection in his pedal set-up. However, quickly amended, Patrick honours his promise to showcase the new material he’s been working on for a second album - in just one man and his guitar style. With Patrick literally only a couple of metres away, the uniqueness of this extraordinary situation becomes apparent, as that familiar, laconic voice explains how the first six songs of the set had been written over the summer.

Each new song is prorogued with the story behind it, such as the stunning opener ‘Dead Man Singing’, introduced by Patrick’s jaw-dropping declaration, ‘when I was 29 years old, I died for a few seconds’. Next is the dazzlingly hypnotic tremolo acoustic guitar of ‘Spiderwoman’; dealing, it seems, with a consuming relationship. The dramatic introduction for ‘Whatever I Do’ saw much impassioned ranting from Patrick, on the theme of the failure of doing things someone else’s way, along with more pedal trouble; Patrick had forgotten to turn off the Tremolo pedal he used on ‘Spiderwoman’, giving way a comic outburst of pedal cursing! After another ‘up-beat’ newie ‘Wake Up Richard’, the Cohen-esque ‘A Woman Who Don’t Talk English’ reintroduces some pathos, in dealing with Patrick’s confessed inability to have relationships with women. A hyped-up Patrick introduced the stunningly beautiful ballad ‘My Sober Heart’, in declaring ‘the only thing I give a fucking shit about is the love in my heart’, which he was going to channel out to everyone in the crowd. So, the preview we get of Patrick’s new material here showcases a series of more traditional song structures than some of the angular, spiky moments of ‘Luxury Problems’, which undoubtedly are exceptionally beautiful songs; displaying Patrick’s originality and the expertise of his craft as an extraordinary songwriter.

Then Patrick put his distortion pedal on for ‘Married With Kids’ (dedicated to his parents), broadening out this one-man interpretation, which sounded simply fantastic, and uncannily not unlike the record. ‘Mirror Man’ was given similar treatment and sounded wonderful, before Patrick’s power-chord thrash cover of the Stooges ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ - gaining the rather direct introduction of ‘this is a song by a band I love, and I’ve earned the right to perform it on a public stage’. ‘Here’s where we do our tricks’, said Patrick, as the main set was closed with tender ballad ‘Julie Of The Rose’, enhanced by mixing desk reverb and ambience.

But it was after some hollering for more that Patrick emerged again from his stage curtain, to carry out what really was the highlight of the evening. Instead of performing through the PA, Patrick grabbed his guitar and left the stage area to sit with us on the floor, calling everybody to sit round ‘like in the 60s’. In this most intimate of settings, Patrick then asked everybody’s name, so he could say he had been introduced to everyone at one of his gigs, ‘which I’ve never done before’. In this camp-fire like gathering, a relaxed Patrick treated us to an improvised selection of covers, of some of his favourite songs, beginning with The Kinks’ ‘Sunny Afternoon’. Then Patrick taught everybody the chorus of Syd Barret’s ‘Bike’, for us to come in after he sang each verse. After toying with doing The Beatles’ ‘Blackbird’, rather ambitiously, Patrick instead opted for ‘A Day In The Life’, which was, perhaps, marred only by Jim Moray’s persistence in contributing some out of tune guitar doodling to a song he was clearly having problems with (after all, Patrick had clearly asked him twice just to sing McCartney’s refrain). After graciously rejecting some Strangelove requests, (should have asked him to do ‘Refrigerator’ then, damn) the evening was eventually closed with the theme from Postman Pat! After the show, there was much hand-shaking between Patrick and the crowd, and I tell him that his new material is stunning. He tells us that that ‘I could really feel the energy coming off you two, and it really helped me through’. Wow.

BIRMINGHAM SET-LIST:

1. Dead Man Singing
2. Spiderwoman
3. Whatever I Do
4. Wake Up Richard
5. A Woman Who Don’t Talk English
6. My Sober Heart
7. Married With Kids
8. Mirror Man
9. I Wanna Be Your Dog
10. Julie Of The Rose

Encores

11. Sunny Afternoon
12. Bike
13. A Day In The Life
14. Postman Pat

Rob Hart is currently researching for a PhD in Modernist European Literature and Culture at the University of Birmingham, England. He also writes on music, is a visual artist and musician.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.