Evan Dando at the Macbeth, Hoxton

It has been a long-held belief of this writer that ‘guerrilla’ gigs are thoroughly deserving of their peculiar name on account of the fact that they, like so many militant rebel organisations, are badly run, short on cash and full of lunatics. This week’s musical insurgence at The Macbeth in Hoxton proved to be no exception.

Evan Dando, erstwhile of early ’90s, stoner-pop group The Lemonheads, is in London to play a handful of low-key solo shows. Judging by his confused, pallid expression, he’s also here to take an awful lot of drugs. His show on Thursday night at The Macbeth was a ramshackle, impromptu affair ahead of shows this/next week at Cargo and Brighton’s Great Escape Festival.

Dando shuffled onto The Macbeth’s tiny stage at 10.15pm to receive the doe-eyed applause of dozens of 32-year-old women whose bedroom walls he once adorned when, back in 1993, It’s a Shame About Ray became the sing-a-long summer soundtrack for daydreaming adolescents the world over.

His disoriented, mumbling performance was at times painful, though completely in keeping with the heritage of The Macbeth. For those readers who neither frequent the darker back alleys of Shoreditch nor the equally murky pages of the NME, The Macbeth pub is something of a mecca for London’s very hippest indie scenesters. It has played host to many a Winehouse/paparazzi photographic collaboration and prides itself on its reputation as a shop window for upcoming indie heroes and starlets.

In short, it’s a lot of fun. The gents’ toilet, comparable in visibility and stench only to the very jaws of Hades itself, is worth the entrance fee alone. So too the surly attitude of the promoter, whose lacquered comb-over did as little to cover his shiny pate as the air freshener did to conceal the malignant odours emanating from the aforementioned pit of evil masquerading as the gents.

Dando meanwhile stumbled on through a set of time-honoured crowd favourites. Before long however he was joined on stage by a young blonde lady from the crowd who, despite not knowing the words – nor it would seem, how to sing at all – proceeded to take a mic and sing along loudly, to the great amusement of herself and no-one else.

Dando was, of course, blissfully unaware of this wailing stage-invader because he was, in the immortal words of William Shakespeare, absolutely wankered. To be fair to the singing blonde girl however, you can’t knock the courage and conviction of anyone who steadfastly refuses to leave a stage even as a booing crowd begins throwing things (cigarette packets, lime wedges, bottles).

Inevitably, the music petered out rather meekly and Dando scurried off, presumably in search of another score. Nevertheless, the night as a whole was a rather compelling experience. The guerrilla gig format still has its flaws – this writer will always be a stickler for gigs with proper sound equipment and toilet facilities that comply broadly with universal human rights – but it’s the sort of curiously enjoyable, one-off night you only really get in dingy, oddball London boozers. Recommended. Kind of.

Evan Dando plays the Stag & Dagger Festival, Cargo, London, Thursday 21 May.

www.cargo-london.com

The Macbeth
70 Hoxton Street
Shoreditch
N1 6LP