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The Borderline show in London last night was so brilliant that I just have to talk about it.

The Borderline is a basement club that holds no more than 275 people, with a tiny, low stage in front of a blank wall and a sometimes too noisy bar to the side. Apart from about six stools in the music area, everyone just has to stand, sometimes packed in, and a basement club with no windows in the summer—--even an English summer—--gets incredibly hot. But no one let that dampen their spirits (just their shirts were dampened, ugh); the crowd was wonderfully responsive and lively, though I suspect Dar inspires that in every one.

After two varied and interesting support acts, Dar strolled casually onto the stage with her acoustic guitar at about 9.35pm, wearing a sleeveless black fitted camisole top and presumably something to cover her lower half, too, or there would have been more excitement, but I was not able to see below her waist all evening (given a choice of two halves, I was quite happy with the top one, which was working miracles on stage that night). She was wearing her thick hair down but with the top section pulled back into a barrette, and she was wearing fairly glamorous jewellery, including shiny new rings on her wedding finger, of course.

She immediately launched into a fabulous rendition of I WON’T BE YOUR YOKO ONO, as the Borderline discovered what it classifies as a light show—very light-hearted, about three circles of bubble gum colours transmitted onto the wall behind her, sometimes jiggling a bit, with a yellow light shining constantly on Dar, which she joked about later in the evening. She sang this song better than I have ever heard it done. In fact, all evening, her voice was absolutely stupendous, in top condition, despite being at the end of her tour here—--albeit only a week long one. She plunged confidently into every deep note and easily reached every high note with impressive clarity. On some live recordings I have heard, she can sound slightly raspy on the odd note, apparently tired, but tonight there was none of that; she delivered an exceptionally professional performance but draped it in fun.

When she finished, she confessed that she was having difficulties because during this tour she was travelling not just with her tour manager but also with a massage therapist, and right now she had massage oil all over her hands, and so we were suffering for it, as it made playing the guitar properly challenging. I have to say she struggled through nobly as I doubt any of us would have known there was a problem. In any case, she said, the sincerity of her performance, at least, was in tact.

Then she informed us that she had just decided to change the order of her set because she had heard several people singing along with the first song, so she would now play a song that she usually left ‘til near the end, because she liked people to join in and thus usually had to wait ‘til later in the evening when everyone was more drunk. This would be a landscape song, she explained, and there would be a seascape song later. Most of us knew what song was coming. ‘Are you all Americans?’ she paused to ask. Upon hearing a resounding ‘No!’, she looked stunned and said, ‘thanks for finding me, then!’

Having established that few people in the club would know much about the state of Iowa, she explained how flat it was but that it had curvaceous parts, too. She had decided that it would be interesting, in a song, to drop a neurotic person into that voluptuous landscape. ‘So sing voluptuously,’ she instructed with a giggly smile. A woman in the audience shouted back ‘Be careful what you wish for!’ which really tickled Dar. With that, she launched into a warm rendition of IOWA, her guitar pounding away impressively. The audience joined in for the chorus, but apparently not enough people were singing, as Dar actually stopped mid-song to give a pep talk to the shy non-singers. She tried to reassure them by claiming that they needn’t be embarrassed that she would be watching them, as the aforementioned yellow light was shining right in her eyes, so she could see nothing. She said the light was so bright that, if she walked towards it, it might turn out to be death itself. More people seemed to join in then.

When she finished, she referred to what the second support act, Fischer Z, had told her about his set, that he had played his stadium material (indeed his electric guitar and livid voice did rather overpower the teeny club), which she couldn’t do as she had no stadium material. In fact, she was worried about us, as we seemed to be packed in and it was hot. This level of care for the audience was probably unprecedented, she realised, and said ‘I’m sure Mick Jagger never told anyone to hydrate!’

Next came an absolutely gorgeous performance of IF I WROTE YOU, with strong, clean vocals, and most of the crowd hushed in awe.

Dar then quickly tuned her guitar and tested it out by ‘doing some sort of Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head chords to cleanse our palette.’ She then began her tale about SoHo in New York, ironically whilst we were just a block away from London’s Soho, and about all of the New Age vibes enjoyed by the geniuses and artistes in the area. She said that she had sat in a ‘franchised coffee experience’ (as I had done shortly before arriving at the Borderline) and worried about herself, as she was not part of this soul searching movement. With the audience already in hysterics thanks to her delivery, which made my friend suggest that Dar could easily take up a career as a stand-up comedian, she expanded on her self-discovery. That revelation was that she could skip the transformation into a better person in tune with herself if she simply invested in something like an expensive aromatherapy candle that she could leave in her flat and point to occasionally. This, of course, was the lead in to SPRING STREET, the best performance of it that I have ever heard. Her voice was sensational and both the highest and lowest notes were exceptionally sung.

When she finished, someone Stage Left handed her a folded note, which Dar grabbed enthusiastically and then, returning to her microphone with the note, said in mock disappointment, ‘Awwwww, I thought it was money!’ Then she announced that she would perform a new song, which she had started writing during her last trip over here when she stayed in a Rock ‘n’ Roll Bed and Breakfast establishment. It was inspired by a man with a terrible lack of judgement, she said, and she gave a lengthy description of this man who was something in the 1960s but through a series of presumably bad decisions, was now living in this humble place. The song was called MERCY OF THE FALLEN, but not because she considered that man to be ‘the fallen’, so for that reason she stressed that it was not a song about him. Leonard Cohen, she said, could also be graced with that title as he had completely surrendered. He had a charismatic approach to complete self-knowledge. Rather than dismissing all of today’s music as complete rubbish, as many stars from the 60s were prone to do, he would say about any particular modern artist that he ‘admired them as a performer.’ She carried on with a fair old chat on that subject, the audience lapping up in laughter everything she said.

The new song was full of clear, lovely long notes, and yet was not too sleepy to be quite catchy. It was instantly likeable, terribly beautiful, and its general sound made me think that it could almost form some sort of an anthem. I could see it being dubbed over some film footage of a tattered American flag flying. Dar would probably gag to hear that. Certainly its lyrics weren’t patriotic; for some reason the music just left that image on my mind. ‘I got lost in my travels,’ Dar sang, and ‘They have no claim to know what’s right.’ It was a wonderful depiction of the inspiration she had described.

Afterwards, Dar said that she had another new song, which she had submitted to her people, who had put it to the judging committee and, it was a bit of a scandal, but they decided that what she should do with the song was sing it. For those of us whose working life involves numerous committees, this humour particularly struck home. She explained that the song had been inspired by country ballads, and by her friends who had once wanted to breed Superchildren in a rather fascist way but who now, in their 30s, had grown out of seeking the fruition of that concept. The song, THE ONE WHO KNOWS, was truly gorgeous, sounding like a premium soft love song. ‘…...Time was I had a dream, you’re the dream to me,’ she sang, and ‘I’ll show you how this life became a miracle to me.’ Looking around at my fellow audience members, we all appeared to have one thought filling our minds: Wow!

Dar said that she had decided to introduce another ‘inadvertent sing-a-long’, which she hadn’t even practised. The song, WILDER THAN HER, had been requested on various occasions on her tour. It was a Fred Eaglesmith song, and although Dar didn’t mention it, he apparently has been known to introduce the song when performing it in his own shows as a ‘lesbian version’ because Dar had performed it without changing the gender of the lover. Dar told us all about some themed events she had attended, playing Barbra Streisand during the year with the disco theme (when the critics had written about her hideous wig, when sadly it transpired that she had not been wearing one) and Loretta Lynn during the country themed year. She saw this song as a bit of a homage to Lynn, Dar said, and after a false start, she sang the song very much in the style of Loretta Lynn, with such a throaty, trilling traditional country voice that someone hearing the music trailing up to the street might have thought Lynn was in residence. I am not a country fan, but this was fascinating, fast and fun, and invoked several ‘Yee-hahs!’ from the audience. Dar was bouncing enthusiastically whilst performing it and never stopped smiling.

She then reminded us that we had enjoyed her portrait of a landscape earlier, with Iowa, so it was not time for her to paint a seascape. She explained that the song involved three voices, ‘a me, the you and then there’s this thing that gets the last word.’ Our part would be that of the thing, THE OCEAN, so we were instructed to sound ‘cruel and enveloping.’ She also referred to this song as her ‘sea shanty gone awry,’ and explained that she had once thought she was visiting a wonderfully quaint seaside town only to discover that it had a highly subscribed enthusiasm for heroin. Her performance here was so lovely and wonderful, as she pounded away powerfully on her guitar and the audience sang ‘di-di-di-di’ in a cruel and enveloping way, that even the bar staff were drawn into Dar’s magic.

Next she treated us to another new song, instructing us to tell her if we liked it (yes!). YOUR FIRE, YOUR SOUL was a catchy, fast tune that enabled her to stretch her vocal chords amongst both high and low parts whilst rapidly beating an impenetrable depth out of the guitar. It really was enormously catchy and is already one of my favourites, so I hope she records it for us soon! The chorus was amazing and the lyrics evoked Dar’s usual kindness with such examples as, ‘I think your darkest days should have some light this year.’

The next song, she explained, was one she had written to impress her sister Julia, who had given her a copy of The Trial of the Catonsville Nine by peace activist Daniel Berrigan......... She then rushed through a wild and rapid story about the radical lives of Daniel and his brother, both priests who had been imprisoned, and one married and had to leave the priesthood. In the end, she was thrilled to have been able to meet these people, the pulse of the American peace movement. She said that, tonight, this song was dedicated to Steve Earle, who had recently written a country rock song (called John Walker’s Blues) that compares American Taliban John Walker Lindh to Jesus Christ and was receiving a lot of strong criticism and negative press, including some demands that radio stations should ban it from playlists. Dar said that she saw him as a brave hero, and most of the audience cheered. Dar’s performance of I HAD NO RIGHT was magnificent and came across as being more poignant and memorable than the album version of the same.

This is a request, she said before the next song, and she felt that she should try and make it ‘geographically specific’. So she introduced the song with a long story about a niece from, say, Nottingham, who was travelling to her uncle’s house in, uh, Brighton, with her vegetarian friend. Dar really played this up, and imitated the uncle, who was thinking of how his wife was upstairs trying to find a guest bedroom that had two single beds, and he’d have to tell her that he thought the niece and her ‘friend’ would be able to make do with the double bed. The audience just loved it. Naturally, the song she played next was THE CHRISTIANS AND THE PAGANS (UK version, I guess!), and a lot of people joined in and boldly sang with the chorus.

Next, she sweetly commented that all the people who had been taking flash photographs during her set surely would really want something more interesting to photograph, so how about if she now posed in a yoga stance or something, and she tried a few poses (nothing with her feet wrapped around her neck or anything) as everyone laughed. She then thanked everyone who had helped with the tour, including—and she forgot the promoter’s name at the club, and the bar staff shouted out ‘Barry!’ Dar said, ‘you see? That’s why I shouldn’t have a microphone when I do this!’

And then we came to what Dar warned us was our last chance to sing! And boy did they! She launched into an incredibly lively AS COOL AS I AM, with everyone singing with her, particularly effectively when the line ‘I am the others!’ was shouted up at the stage from the shockingly hot masses before her.

By now, it was just before 11pm, and we come to the fact that sometimes I truly hate being a commuter. We had to leg it to the station to catch a train a few minutes later, and although Dar had left the stage, she returned, as expected, for an encore just as we were climbing the stairs to escape the club and reach street level. Admittedly the oxygen we reached there was a Godsend after a stuffy, hot and smoky club without windows, but we were still quite sad to be missing out on whatever Dar played next. Someone else will have to fill us in.

All in all, it was an absolutely brilliant evening. Our only qualms, really—having got over the lack of air to breathe thanks to Dar’s support in commenting about hydrating ourselves—focused mainly on not getting as clear a view of Dar as we had expected. We got there at a shockingly early hour, long long before even the first support band arrived, just so we could get a good spot, and then eventually a couple pushed in front of us. That would be acceptable had they not then proceeded to have the most graphic clothed sex right there amongst us, which any porn star would be proud to patent. I have nothing against people loving each other intensely and I’m sure that Dar would approve of that, too, but I do rather have a lot against people loving each other intensely on my foot, and doing so after deliberately placing themselves between some of us who had gone there with the intention of watching a concert and the performer we had intended to watch. It was a distracting struggle trying to find a gap here and there between the two women so that we could peer through to Dar, even though we weren’t far from the stage at all.

I know I’m apparently turning into Victor Meldrew here, but it seems to me that if you had a choice of going to a concert or getting a room, then the latter would be appropriate for what they were doing, whereas the former was appropriate for what we were trying to do, having paid to see Dar rather than to see them cavort throughout Dar’s set.  Mind you, there are people who would have paid to see them cavort like that, but they were in a different type of club around the corner in Soho. Anyway, if that was you, I congratulate you on finding someone you care about so, but surely the traditional ‘make out’ (to vastly understate it) spot is in the back? Oh well, this just proves that Dar has a variety of fans, even grumpy old Victor Meldrew types. Despite those small difficulties in focusing on the concert, we had the greatest time. Dar was in magnificent voice and delivered her amazing music in exceptional form, complete with hilarious humour. What a wonderful evening!

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