Peter Doherty, The Man Who Would Be King, There She Goes + Fuck Forever, Rhythm Factory 28.02.08

Peter Doherty Rhythm Factory 28.02.08 The Man Who Would Be King, There She Goes and FF from nearer dark on Vimeo.

"...twisting and turning to northern soul..." that's a beautifully evocative lyric, and there's some really nice guitar going on here, too.

That was a wonderful night, and for all that we looked as though we'd gone 10 rounds with a sauna and lost, I think most of us would do it pretty much every night of the week if we could. Well, if he played Sheepskin Tearaway and Breck Road Lover a bit more often, like...

Peter Doherty, Hooray For The 21st Century, Rhythm Factory, 28.02.08

Peter Doherty Rhythm Factory 28.02.08 Hooray For The 21st Century from nearer dark on Vimeo.

Peter Doherty, The Delaney + Death On The Stairs, Rhythm Factory, 28.02.08

Peter Doherty Rhythm Factory 28.02.08 The Delaney, Death On The Stairs from nearer dark on Vimeo.

Viddy well all the little screens capturing The Delaney. I have definitely been the paying the cab fare over type in the past. Theoretically I'm comparatively sensible these days. Right.

It was baking hot in there too - Peter looks as though he's melting a bit, so were the rest of us. Particularly people with thick jackets on and one arm stuck up in the air. And a small bottle of water wedged between their knees to avoid passing out. I did say "comparatively sensible".

Peter Doherty, Vertigo, Up The Bracket, What A Waster, Albion, Rhythm Factory 28.02.08

Peter Doherty Rhythm Factory 28.02.08 Vertigo, Up The Bracket, What A Waster, Albion from nearer dark on Vimeo.

The mass crowd singalong to Vertigo and continuing guitar lead weirdness provokes a broad grin and a mock hissy fit, and a "f-ckin' Rhythm Factory". And you can see how nuts everyone was going at the start of Up The Bracket by the amount of exciting ceiling footage. Oh, it was a brilliant night, it really was. And it's quite a nice characterful ceiling, really. And at least the audio doesn't vanish when Peter does. And there are occasionally two shadow men on the wall behind him, which is rather nice. And What A Waster - looks like I was getting knocked for six rather a lot there, but it was so worth it. And Albion - fascinating fact: there's a teacup being held aloft, which belonged to one of Red Roots, who were supporting, and the guy who's holding it up is called Lascaux Man. And that, and the high-pitched "Liverpyool!" aside - Albion is still one of the most beautiful songs ever written.

This was the third night of that particular stint at the Rhythm Factory, and it was pretty much right after the European dates finished, which were either side of the Arena tour and that other run of Rhythm Factory dates in December where everyone got flu, and Brixton was only a couple of weeks before this lot of RF dates, and there were other NME dates around that, probably followed by the last set of Euro dates (yes, I could look it up, but I'm busy writing this), so you'd have forgiven Peter if he was feeling a bit knackered by the time of this show, really, and wanted a bit of a quiet one. Except he's revelling in it, thoroughly enjoying it, and it's a brilliant night.

Peter Doherty, Ha Ha Wall + Baddies Boogie, Rhythm Factory 28.02.08

Peter Doherty Rhythm Factory 28.02.08 Ha Ha Wall and Baddies Boogie from nearer dark on Vimeo.

That guitar lead was still causing a few problems, but the Ha Ha Wall is still such a beautiful song. There's this forest of arms and hands and heads and phones and occasional faces, and it's like this giant mobile picture frame at times. And there's a huge singalong to Baddies Boogie.

Peter Doherty, Last Post On The Bugle, Rhythm Factory 28.02.08

Peter Doherty Last Post On The Bugle, Rhythm Factory 28.02.08 from nearer dark on Vimeo.

I went out with my camera again two nights later - I'd been kicking myself for not going on the Wednesday as well, as by all reports it was even better than the Tuesday show, but I'd attempted to be sensible and had stayed in. Which was fairly unproductive, as I mainly spent the time sulking. It's possibly slightly undignified when adults get into the mindset that goes "but all my friends are going and I'm not and it's not fair!", particularly when it's a blatant fib. But heck, adults can still sulk.

I had also kicked myself for missing songs and bits of songs on the Tuesday, so this time I pretty much kept the camera running, apart from cutting it briefly between songs sometimes to save the battery. I was still very much learning how to do this, and there will be hands, heads and hats between the lens and the stage, because - heck, there were other people there, innit?

Peter Doherty, Ha Ha Wall + Fuck Forever, Rhythm Factory 26.02.08

On FF, every cameraphone in the place seems to magically appear, crowd goes nuts, I go sideways, my lens goes roofwards. I'm clinging to "atmospheric" as a descriptive, it works for me. And at some point Peter's mic stand temporarily vanishes, and a kid appears next to him and makes off with his flag.

"Yeah I know, this is the original..."

There are many things I love about FF, the only thing that I don't is that it tends to signify the end of the set. Except for the time when he played it first, which was a little alarming until he carried on and played something else.

Peter Doherty, Death On The Stairs, Rhythm Factory, 26.02.08

Actually one of the strangest things about filming like this is having to detach - you might be watching one of your favourite artists, but you have to concentrate on what your camera's doing and make sure it's following what's happening onstage, and you really can't start forgetting what you're doing and singing along when the rest of the crowd does. Or sort of jigging around a bit - dancing would really be stretching a descriptive point - or turning round and forgetting that you're filming if someone starts trying to have a conversation with your back.

So you try to avoid standing near any of your friends who might get a bit chatty or start dancing into you enthusiastically. Or bellowing. It's really quite a disciplined art, if you can call it that.

First attempt - Peter Doherty at the Rhythm Factory, 26.02.08

So the first time I tried filming was Tuesday February 26, 2008 at the Rhythm Factory. That's in Whitechapel, London, England, if you're not from round those parts. It's fairly small, with a capacity of about 400, it's quite dark and I guess it's maybe a bit scruffy, but as a result it's quite homely. It's friendly, the staff are really nice, the sound's good and a load of us go down together and huddle on the pavement having smoking breaks between sets. Or watch sets between smoking breaks, maybe. Or stand around chatting and keep going in to check whether we need to be in there yet. It's one of my favourite places, actually, venuewise.

So this particular night I'd taken my camera on its very first outing. I can be a bit of a perfectionist, which is fairly daft really, all things considered, as I can also be anything but. But I wanted to get absolute perfect footage on my very first attempt, and also to get really good sound - which means standing a fair way back from the stage, to avoid weird reverb thing from the PA, and standing a fair way back tends to mean rather obscured views.

Because Peter isn't the only very tall person at his shows - a whole tribe of other very tall people also turn out, and they tend to stand in front of me. Frequently wearing hats. And however much I try, some of those hats are going to bounce in front of the lens. And a lot of other heads and elbows and shoulders and things. And I'm not that tiny, I'm just quite a long way under 6 foot, but occasionally at gigs I can feel like a very small plant struggling for light in the midst of a very tall forest.

So I kept turning my camera on, filming a bit, losing Peter in the lens, giving up, aiming dark looks at the backs of the forest of tallness in front of me, and trying again. When I got home, although it had been a beautiful gig, I was feeling slightly dispirited at my lack of total abject brilliance on my first attempt at filming, but I captured the video to AVI and started watching it back, after panicking slightly as every 5 minutes of AVI ate up an entire 1GB of hard drive. (It's been WMV all the way since, although I'm planning on getting one of those 1TB external drives very soon, so I can play around with different formats and take the load off my laptop a bit.)

But the footage I'd got looked and sounded pretty good, and the bursts of suddenly obscured vision and consequent random camera movement were actually quite atmospheric, and however annoying some of the crowd chatter during sensitive acousticery could be, there was still something there that was really worth watching and listening to - and at some point while I was doing this, I got hooked. I seem to have learned very early on to make excessive use of the zoom function to try to get around the obstructed view problems, although I'm not quite sure quite how long I took to realise that I could gain a heck of a lot of extra height by standing like the Statue of Liberty and just keeping an eye on my screen. Probably a couple of minutes or so...

Anyway, enough of me wurbling. Here's What A Waster from that night, and yes, sorry, the very beginning is indeed missing.