Katipo Cafe, Wellington, 2 June 2005

Mooched up to Katipo around 8:00pm. Got there in time to see the sound-check. Hung around and chatted with several people I hadn't met before, and some I had.

Y'know, I haven't hung around Katipo regularly for a while, but I 've been there twice recently, and I'm beginning to think it's a good place to go, especially with it's red walls and eclectic music mix!

Anyway, got in some Montieth's Winter, and waited for the gig to start, and it started with a bang, with D doing a great version of Van der Graaf Generator's "Ship Of Fools". Man, that was a flashback!

She then played through several favourites, the audience really enjoying "Abomination" and "Crowley in a Previous Life". I just grooved out to these, and I was glad to see Kate Barker there to hear the song whose lyrics she had written ("Rush") and which was very moving.

I realized that, when I had tried to describe Daph's work earlier I had missed some things, with the synthesized keyboards, some tracks are reminiscent of bands like Rush. Of course, as always it's dangerous to compare artistts to other artists (especially when they know you! :) ). It's better just to hear some of their stuff yourself. This gig would have been a good intro.

Daph was really singing her heart out and putting an lot of emotion and feeling into the songs, and she looked great in the red reflects glow of the walls, cuddling up to the microphone. The venue is very intimate and certainly suits the style of the softer numbers.

Daph finished with a great rendition of "Weekend Witch", the first song I ever got into of hers, and then was convinced to perform an encore.

And what an encore! Imagine it, in a red room, a known hang-out of those on the fringe, under the low ceiling, buzzing away happy and Daph hits us with the Redskins "Bring it Down" !

And she really did burn bright! Reminded me of revolutionary fires I used to tend before I became fat and comfortable and lazy and started living mainly on imaginary worlds.

I enjoyed it so much, the whole gig could have been planned just for me! The whole evening was quite wonderfully friendly and inclusive.