I’ve attended—and subsequently forgotten the details of—a lot of concerts, but the one I might forever cherish most took place on this day, Sept. 19, in 2015. Martin Newell, who’s normally loath to travel far from his Essex home to play pop star, was persuaded to stage a London edition of his annual September showcase The Golden Afternoon (the 2021 iteration of which occurs today in Colchester) and I was fortunate to be visiting the right place at the right time. The venue was St. Giles in the Fields, half a block up from 22 Denmark St. where The Cleaners from Venus recorded the Going to England LP in winter 1986. (If you’ve got the album, you’ll recognize the western, Flitcroft St-facing side of the church as the the spot where Martin and Giles Smith are posed on the back cover.)
As society becomes more secular and churches, like English manor houses, become underutilized and too expensive to maintain for their originally intended purpose, I can only hope that they follow this model of doubling as concert venues. The video contains a verse from that 2015 performance of “Julie Profumo”, just Martin with his guitar—just listen to that note at the end of the chorus (“…love will slip a-WAY”) resonate in the space. Glorious.
