Butch's Mixtape

So, 6 months ago I never heard of this guy. My friend Ivan who I trust dearly to recommend me excellent music (all based on the fact that he loves John Waite as much as I do), told me I should listen to Butch Walker and Dishwalla and I bought both, ending up listening to Butch Walker's "Letters" once a day at work. A few weeks ago I recieved a message about Butch making a one-off gig in London and I didn't think twice about booking flights with Ryanair and about the same time I asked my fiancé if he wanted to come as well and we decided to make a trip out of it, including a shabby-chic Bayswater-hotel to the event.

Butch played the London Barfly on January 31 and I don't think I ever will see nor hear anything like it ever again. It was more than brilliant.It was lifealtering. One of those moments when you know that nothing really will be the same again. The world might look the same, but it isn'r cause you've had one of those experiences that makes the difference. Butch was up on stage alone with his acoustic guitar and a piano. He was dressed like Bruce Springsteen but with a George Michael-fashion sense. I don't know what I was expecting but I know what I got. I never heard of the Marvelous 3 before, the hit they supposedly had in UK might have been a hit in Sweden as well but that doesn't mean a hard rocker like myself would have heard it. So, when everyone else is screaming their lungs out to the music I am discovering new tunes :-)

I have been to lots of concerts, I mean, really a lot of shows but nothing like this. Trying to think of something I've enjoyed in a similar way would a club gig with Ian Gillan solo or Jimmy Barnes in a smokey place. Or Joe Satriani in a really beautiful concert hall, with seated audience. Nights that noone wanted to end and when they did, you didn't want to leave, you didn't want to go home. You just wanted to sit there, forever, discussing the magic as if you were afraid it'd be gone the second you came home.

Butch has a voice with such a power it's unbelievable, he really know how to sing!! And he does it, in every way. It's pure magic. It doesn't matter if he's by the piano singing as soft as a whisper or with the guitar around his neck giving it all - it never breaks up, it's always constant. Fantastic. I am amazed.

He performed new somgs mixed with old songs and unrealesed stuff as well as "I Don't Like Mondays" - the old Boomtown Rats song... mr Geldof never sang it with more feelings that's for sure...

At the end, he really wanted to leave the stage, but couldn't. It was too small and he'd have to go thru the audience to get backstage... so he did what no one else would think of - he ran over (crossing the audience) to the bar and jumped up on it and sat there, still singing, still playing and when people still wouldn't let him go he did another song, laying on his back on the floor... and that's when the concert ended. How poetic. How remarkable. How absofuckinglutely wonderful...

A night to remember...