PJ Harvey

Thanks for the question you texted me Laurie Hulme. I’ve seen PJ Harvey play sixteen amazing gigs in ten different cities. I saw her eight times on and just after the “Uh Huh Her” tour when the band included brilliant bassist Simon Ding Archer who has also played bass in The Fall, Black Francis band and Bobbie Peru and currently As Able As Kane and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry. It’s a shame that band never recorded an album. I saw three early gigs when she had her hair in a ponytail and dressed all in black. I saw three solo “White Chalk” gigs, in Barcelona, Madrid and from a seat close to the front at Bridgewater Hall. Perhaps the best gig I saw her play was in Hulme NIA Centre when she and John Parish played the whole of “Dance Hall at Louse Point” accompanied by three dancers who were upstaged by Polly’s movements. I reviewed that one for a local newspaper based in Hulme and so I was on the guestlist as I was for exactly half the PJ Harvey gigs I’ve attended, although I was on the guestlist of L7 for the Cult in the Park one day festival where Gallon Drunk also played, and two of them (James Johnston and Terry Edwards) are in PJ Harvey’s current live band and play on her most recent album “The Hope Six Demolition Project”. So I have seen her play less gigs than Killing Joke, Wire, Thalia Zedek, Shellac, Mudhoney, The Fall, Bardo Pond, Brainiac, Girls Against Boys, Fugazi, Throwing Muses, Pavement, Dinosaur Jr, The Breeders, Leatherface or Therapy but more than Sonic Youth or Swans or Nick Cave or Neil Young. I started writing a much longer version of this but it seemed to be turning into a book and I don’t want to give google copyright.