• The luminaire is shutting down

    26 Kas 2010, 00:21 yazan underpangs

    Wed, 24th Nov 2010

    It is with sadness that we have to announce the closure of The Luminaire and The King's Head on 31st December. It's been a labour of love for a while now, and at this point it makes no sense for us to continue. We hope to be able to do some final farewell shows, probably in late March, and we'll let you know about those through the usual channels.

    To all those who supported this independent venue, and the great artists who played here, since we opened back on 1st March 2005; you have our grateful thanks.

    We were nothing without you.

    Andy, John and all at The Luminaire-http://www.theluminaire.co.uk/content/blog

    Well, that sucks. When I moved to london the luminaire was the first venue I fell in love with. The creative director at my old company was friends with Andy, and used to help put on a night there occasionally.

    Dutifully a bunch of us trundled along after work to support it. I was immediately blown away by the venue and the gigs it put on. …
  • The Blow

    1 May 2007, 00:54 yazan anorakhighst

    Mon 30 Apr – The Blow

    I saw The Blow this evening. It was brilliant; easily one of the gigs of the year.

    It was just Khaela Maricich, alone with a microphone on an empty stage, singing along with a backing tape and dancing mekanik (as Kraftwerk might say), doing songs from her various albums. Then, a few songs into it, the inter-song banter grew into these long stories, supposedly autobiographical ones about her very fraught relationship history and insecurities, blossoming into touchingly sincere observational comedy, or possibly indie comics. (Among other things, she revealed that Hey Boy was about a guy in a band in LA whom she had a long conversation with at a party and thought things were going well with, though didn't say what happened after he heard the song on the radio and they got in touch again.)

    The supports were Death Sentence: PANDA! (who were OK, though they're one of those lots-of-variants-of-one-song deals, in this case one with lots of clashy drums and wild reed instrument solos)…