Tricky in concert, not performing Maxinquaye

On Twitter, they’re baying for the artist’s blood – or a hauling over the coals for violating the trade discriminations act, at the very least. The offence? Announcing the performance of a much-loved album, and then doing as little of it as possible on the night.

With hindsight, this weekend’s series of onstage car crashes should have been spotted well in advance. The latest nostalgia trend, in which artists past their prime look back on kinder royalty cheques and agree to wind back the years to perform their best selling album in its entirety, is exactly the kind of thing you’d expect from The Charlatans or Oasis (Liam has the Morning Glory anniversary tour pencilled in for 2015). 

Noel Fiedling and Julian Barrett © Michael Burdett

The geography of Nick Drake’s London was never exact. His record company famously claimed they had no idea where he lived; received wisdom has it that he spent much of his time in and around Hampstead, possibly Haverstock Hill; the only journalist that ever interviewed him noted that he barely existed at all. And so the shadowy streets and decaying railway arches of Shoreditch seem congruous enough to stage the next movement in the making of Nick Drake’s myth. Michael Burdett – a TV composer by trade – presents a 160-strong collection of photographs entitled the Strange Face Project at the Idea Generation Gallery until February 12. However, Drake fans should not come expecting previously unseen snaps of the tragic singer-songwriter – instead, they’ll find photos of people listening to his music.

Hatsune Miku, live in concert

Before you read on, I should clear something up. I’m not the kind of person you’d expect to find at a Hatsune Miku concert. I don’t own any kind of games console, and I spent most of the journey to Zepp Tokyo reading the recent Keith Richards autobiography. I stepped onto the platform at Tokyo Teleport wearing rolled up blue jeans, desert boots, a parka and a Fred Perry bag. I’m the kind of person you’d expect to find on a London street corner circa 1964; the kind of person who would dismiss the idea of a hologram concert as futuristic witchcraft.

‘Blacko,’ barks the intense slab of face from behind the trestle table; ‘Who’re you shootin’ for?’ It takes a second to realise that the first statement is the face’s name, and the second is aimed at the camera hanging around my neck (which I forgot about when I thought the intensity might escalate into vehemence).

I’m at Marz to shoot a different band, but Blacko has an urgency about him that I think would be unwise to ignore. He implores me to stick around to see the last band, his band, and I agree quickly and prudently. ‘Its Irish music’, he promises in an equally intense Dublin accent, ‘but with a difference.’

Based on last night’s performance, Prince is an artist whose recording career could benefit from the kind of back-to-basics shift that so often breathes life into rock’s flagging elder statesmen. His Yas Arena show, performed over two hours with five encores in front of a 30,000-strong crowd, was built on a clear love of two key things: live performance, and live performance of a little thing called funk. Stick to this agenda, and I reckon he has at least an album or two of quality material left in him.