Kathy Diamond, I love you, but last night you brought me down. Your impervious, superlative debut album, Miss Diamond To You is a great record and one of the year’s best so far, all shimmering, smoked-out disco-soul of the highest order. Quite why you feel like you should denigrate the material in the live arena by belting it out like a hen-night fishwife with too many Vodka & Red Bulls inside you is completely beyond me.
An album as fine as yours deserves to be treated with the class and respect that only a full live band can bring, but instead you and Mr Maurice Fulton presented us with a glorified PA, Maurice looking all bored in back, spinning instrumentals from the album, you upfront giving it the bluster normally reserved for forgotten Europop divas desperately trying to salvage something, anything from the wreckage of a career that’s been reduced to a three-song hits spot at the local Ritzy’s.
I didn’t want to have to write this review, Kathy, but you drove me to it. The blatant, overly-showy mishandling of your beautiful music was completely uncalled for and my massive, crushing disappointment at this has led me to write this in the hope that you see it, take my notes onboard and go back to rethinking just how to make the songs sparkle in the live arena, because last night’s show was most definitely not the way to do it.
Hey, what the fuck do I know? I’m only a fan. How is it my place to tell you how to do your thing? It’s because I’m a fan of your work, first and foremost that I’m writing in this manner. I could have approached this review with the cold, detached air of a critic and ritually dismantled every one of last night’s missteps. The wretched bummer of last night’s gig was a killer blow after a month’s anticipation from buying the tickets to arriving at the club that has left me and I’m sure many others despondent.
Kathy, you seem like a lovely person and you and Maurice make a wonderful team on record, but last night, when you seemingly couldn’t have carried a tune in a bucket, you broke my heart.
Yours disconsolately,
James Morton
http://www.rachaelburns.net/html/music/2007/05/gig-review-kathy-diamond-el-diablos-4th.html
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