Act One
“I put a seashell to my ear, and
it all comes back,” said Rod McKuen memorably in his poem The Gypsy Camp,
with that beautiful setting by Anita Kerr and the San Sebastien Strings. That
line, which many of us heard first via the immortal ‘Barefoot in the Head’ by the
supremely cool A Man Called Adam, has been in my thoughts recently. This was
partly through hearing ‘Night and Day’ by Everything But The Girl played very
shortly before Jessica Pratt took to the stage at the Barbican on “strange and
unsettling day” after the US election. It sounded so right, and I hope it was
Jessica’s own choice. If not, it was still an inspired selection.
Coincidentally, or not, I had been thinking about that song, and how it was a huge part of the summer of 1982 for me, just as Jessica’s Here in the Pitch was this year. But also, how Tracey and Ben, largely because of that song, performed a handful of numbers with Paul Weller onstage at the ICA right at the start of 1983, only a few weeks after The Jam’s last concert. And I am still wondering why I wasn’t there at the ICA. I was, however, there to see Speakers Corner Quartet a few days before Jessica’s Barbican show. Both of these recent performances were pretty incredible. Maybe just as incredibly it had been 38 years since I had seen a live show at the ICA.
