Two noteworthy gigs this month. The first was Oomph at the Casablanca - Oomph are the funky side of Ben Sarfas and his friends, Brighton's brightest up-and-coming musicians. (see last month's diary for comments about the Ben Sarfas Quartet). Oomph is an eight-piece - a tenor/alto/trumpet brass section, bass, drums, guitar, keys and out front is Ben's younger brother Sammy, who has not only a voice to die for but can beat-box better than Razell as well.
Ben's jazz quartet will make your mind and senses sing, but Oomph will make you dance your socks off.

The other gig was a two-day spectacular at the 491 gallery in Leytonstone, the occasion being Pony's birthday.
Saturday night rocked to Kokopelli, who were lovely, and Tarantism who lived up to their name.Tarantism is a highly excited and often lethal state resulting from the poisonous bite of the Tarantula spider, with frenzied dancing being, by popular belief, the only way to avoid death (hence the Tarentella dance) - or maybe that was just bollocks put about to escape persecution during times of religious prohibition of dancing. In the same way, probably, as baby-boomers are discovering the medical benefits of marijuana (Pain relief, officer, and for that I put up with feeling stoned, although I don't like it...).
Sunday's highlight was indubitably Martha Tilston and the Woods, who are now quite simply the authentic voice of contemporary British folk - and the word is really getting out, with even the stodgy old Folk Award mafia taking notice. In two hundred years time, mark my words, some willowy young woman with a bewitching voice will be rediscovering and reinterpreting Martha's 'Milkmaid' in exactly the same way that Martha has reinvigorated 'Silver Dagger' (both on 'of Milkmaids and Architects', highly recommended).

I was blown away by both these gigs, and pondering the difference in background and approach between Ben Sarfas and Martha Tilston - both very different and both stars of the future. These deliberations led me to consider one of life's mysteries - the difference between men and women. The following insight occurred:

Deadbeat Sociology - the difference between men and women (no. 12)

Men, it is often claimed (mostly by women) never really grow up, they just get ever more expensive toys. Clearly that is twaddle - men mature just as women do. But they don't stop being men. Maturing as a man does not mean becoming more like a woman (even if some women wished it did). The childish need for the expression of creativity, for example by the ability to become lost in wonder - trapped, unthinking, in the moment - is one of the unchangingly male attributes.

Thus, even a quite clearly middle-aged and emotionally mature man, learned and rounded as an individual and with the impetuousity of youth well behind him can get engrossed in playing guitar and forget to take the bread out. (Not just stoned and stupid, as The Girlfriend insists).

Women, on the other hand, do grow up. They grow up when they have a baby, at whatever age that happens to them. If they don't get pregnant, women grow up in their late twenties - by which time mother nature has certainly planned for them to be mothers themselves.

Growing up, in female terms, does in fact mean leaving behind the childish mindset - connecting with reality, becoming grounded and thoughtful is a necessary precursor to effective nurturing. Not the end of creativity, certainly, but the end of childish self-absorption of the kind that burns the baking.
This change of outlook also does not see the positive side to war and the gung-ho, risk-taking ultra-competitiveness which men also haven't grown out of. Well, some men have but mostly they aren't the ones running industry and countries.
The leaders of men are almost always the most ridiculously driven, testosterone-ridden tossers who were beating up the nice boys in the playground when they were children and, unfortunately, haven't grown out of that either. It's not all men who are the problem, it's some men, and those men are everyone's problem, not just the women's.
The thing is that when women grow up they find themselves in a world which is dominated and run by men who are determinedly acting not just like children but like the worst behaved 'oh when will their Mummies take them home' sort of ill-disciplined, hyperactive boys. And it is into this world that our grown-up women bring their children and try to raise them. Faced with this reality most women go slightly mad. Not the 'carted away and locked up' sort of lunacy which gets children taken into care (which, clearly, does happen but surprisingly seldom), but lower-grade slightly dotty madness. The sort of grown-woman oddness which is only really recognisable as potty by comparison with the fresh-faced sanity of the girl before she grew to maturity.

So that is one of the differences between men and women. Men don't grow up. Women do, but the strain of being grown-up in a world run and dominated by children drives them mad.

It's spring next month and lambing time, so expect cynicism commensurate with the birth of hundreds of thousands of Sunday roasts.

cheers,

Deadbeat