Two sold-out gigs at Shepherd's Bush Empire. Tickets secured at the last minute on Sunday afternoon via the internet and a cash transaction with a man at the end of the 94 bus route at Acton Green.
This is what it gets you: the only almost completely backlit gig I can remember seeing, slight eye strain from the blinding white light behind the Beach House for some of the songs and a sense that they'd be better off streaming their magnificent tunes on Spotify then sitting back and relaxing.
Extreme back lighting
The Baltimore duo's recorded sound is fabulous. Shimmering guitars, drum machine backdrop and vocals that sound like Nico with Liz Fraser's range and Lana Del Rey's sultriness. The Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil mashed up with the Velvet Underground and The Cure. Lovely.
The ethereal new album, Bloom, is exactly the sort of dreamy sound you'd want to take to your imaginary beach house. Especially in this weather. It opens with a wistful wind-bell, ebbs and flows on gentle seahorse waves and washes over you like an invigorating dip in the Atlantic ocean.
Live, not so much. Drum machine complemented by a real life drummer, Victoria's vocals even less discernible than usual, and performed in silhouette. It's as though they don't want to be recognised. The most rock and roll they get is Alex's bent-double Stratocaster-bobbing and her sequinned sparkly top. It's also admittedly difficult to get into a Beach House zone on a freezing Monday night in west London when an Arctic wind whistles round your neck every time the entrance door opens on the first floor.
What's that lady saying?
Banter? Forget it. "It's so nice to see you," Victoria ventures 15 minutes in. Wish we could say the same, we think, squinting into the light. Later, "It's our nineteenth time in London. You're like an old pony." Yes, that's what we are - an old pony. You'd just think the stagecraft stuff would be so much better after 18 previous efforts in London alone.
What's even more bizarre is the downbeat contrast with their bright and vibrant videos. The clip for the majestic Wishes is like a cross between the superb Friday Night Lights TV show, a Coen brothers film and a Flaming Lips stage show.
So how come for the live gig Victoria settles for the odd swish of her long hair behind her coffin keyboard and Alex can hardly be arsed to get off his stool for most of the gig?
The reason? They don't have to. The gigs sell out, the new album is brilliant and the sound is everything. If you want showbiz bugger off to watch another duo like the Pet Shop Boys or something.
White indie media crowd better lit than the band
Nothing to see here. Move along. Just listen. It's wonderful.
Technical notes if you're going tonight: Beach House were on stage at 9.30pm and the set lasted 90 minutes. The support act, Marques Toliver, is an astonishing solo soul-singing violinist who samples and loops his fiddle brilliantly and gets exasperated when people talk through his set.
A fabulous concert from first song to last. It just got better as Ron's rich voice warmed-up and filled the hall over his hour-and-half on stage.
The best moment was genuinely moving. The nostalgia of the elegiac Deepens With Time was made even more poignant when Ron told us his mum and dad had made the trip from Canada for the show. "Here we are, Ron!' shouted his dad, and the house lights went up to reveal his folks in a box at the back of the hall. It's a classic Ron song - poetic, wistful, vulnerable, maybe even a bit sentimental. He wrote it for Faith Hill. But it's his song.
That voice reminds me a bit of Paul McCartney, especially in a song like Love Shines with its Springsteenesque opening line, "In every nowhere town, there are somewhere dreams."
Ron spoke with genuine pride about working with Don Black on his new album, the man who wrote the lyrics to Born Free. And with the same pride about getting a good luck message on the night from a classic piano pop-maker from a previous generation, Gilbert O'Sullivan. Alone again. Naturally
Like Gilbert's flat-cap and braces 70s persona, Ron doesn't look a classic pop star. He's got a troubled, chubby face - an outline caricature version of it in lights formed the backdrop last night - he wears a big check jacket, crumpled grey slacks, an acoustic guitar hung round his neck and seems a bit uncomfortable on stage. He leaves any movement to the lead guitarist and keyboard guy in his four-piece band.
He self-deprecates all the time. He seemed a bit offended by someone in Amsterdam who'd criticised his use of a synthesiser instead of a real strings section. As he said, he's not the kind of guy who can afford to travel with an orchestra, even if superstars like Michael Buble and Elton John have swelled the coffers with some covers of his songs.
When he came back for a three-song encore he made a quip about never understanding the tradition of walking off at the end then back on again. It got him another standing ovation.
Good job I'd been to see the two famous Hyde Park Bearded Tits in the morning. My £20 seat was so far back in the circle that without my binoculars it could have been any willowy blond American troubadour.
But the Leicas confirmed it was Aimee: jeans, black boots, jacket, scarf, black-rimmed glasses, guitar. The same Aimee who once dueted with Elvis Costello in her fabulous 'Til Tuesday days; who went on to provide that magnificent soundtrack to Magnolia in 1999. Wise Up, Save Me - the best songs she ever wrote, the last one robbed of an Oscar by a Phil Collins cobbler from Disney's Tarzan; the bitterness in her intro only half-mock.
By the time those beautiful flowers bloomed last night, however, we'd had to negotiate some dense weeds. It's always a challenge to listen live to a favourite artiste's new songs. Especially when the Festival Hall sound is so muggy you can't hear the essential Aimee lyrics. Even moreso when she apologises for the songs in advance.
And rightly so. As pre-shrunk popped and ready-washed rocked as the keyboard player's denim waistcoat - the player who looked like 1970s Piccadilly Radio DJ Dave Ward, not the other one who looked a bit like Talk Radio's Sam Matterface.
There were hints of the Seventies elsewhere, too: Supertramp-style electric piano, a Mellotron, bit-too-long guitar solos, the drummer in a big old flat cap; even the bass player, co-songwriter and Charmer album producer Paul Bryan looked like George Harrison circa 1973. Nothing wrong with any of that.
Yet with all that ivory firepower the men with five keyboards between them walked off the stage with the other two to leave Aimee to do a solo acoustic version of Save Me, returning only near the end of her other classic, Wise Up. Rude.
Also rude for Aimee to studiously tune-up her guitar while the paying punters were applauding her last number. And ruder, still, to keep effing and blinding her way through in-jokes in the rare moments she looked up from the playlist stuck on the floor near her feet.
In truth, it just never got going. Certainly not enough to rouse a subdued January crowd on a wet Monday night. Aimee has a wonderful, low voice but her live performance is just too low key. She never takes centre stage. She's never in the spotlight. She never moves, a bobbing right leg and one end-of-axe-solo half-jump aside. She never engages with her audience, blaming her in-ear monitors for her refusal to respond to any comments from the crowd.
Here's an idea - take them out. Stop swearing. And keep the band on when you play your best songs.
In reverse order, my favourite books of the year - not all published this year but all them enjoyed in 2012.
10. Lionel Asbo, by Martin Amis
Amis's gothic Only Fools and Horses makes the list out of loyalty. This is a heavy-handed satire on our Land of Hope and Chaviness, a country Amis clearly despises: the high-rise hell-holes, snarling dogs, racist relations, cheating friends, ugly cities, miserable weather, rich man's football and all-consuming smartphones.
Highlighted Kindle Quote: "The champagne arrived in its steel bucket... 'Got a bigger glass? You know, like a beer mug.' Lionel grimly monitored the waiter's movements. '...Yeah, that'll do. Fill her up, boy.'"
9. Capital, by John Lanchester
An Instagram photo of modern, miasmic London. Anyone who lives here will recognise the characters who gravitate around a single street in the newly fashionable east end: the bored banker about to get the boot, the wide-eyed African teenager signed by Chelsea, the Banksy street artist visiting his dying grandma, the Asian family running the corner shop, the exploited Zimbabwean traffic warden, the Polish builder dreaming of going home, the east European child minder who feels the pain of losing a fully-loaded Oyster card. A half-hearted plot about major and minor terrorism almost gels them all but the thing that really does that is the greatest city in the world.
HKQ: "Humans make their own history, but not under circumstances of their choosing."
8. Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
I finally got round to reading this after the sequel won a second Booker. Wish I'd read it earlier. Brilliantly brings to vibrant life King Henry's VIII's entourage from 500 years ago as seen by Thomas Cromwell, the poor boy outsider from Putney (every great novel needs an outsider) who becomes the formidable court insider . We all vaguely remember the cardinals, dukes, royal wives and mistresses from school history lessons; Mantel puts fictional flesh on the mouldy old bones and makes you ponder with fresh eyes - not just on them, but on ourselves and our own lives.
HKQ: "You don't get on by being original. You don't get on by being strong. You get on by being a subtle crook."
7. Telegraph Avenue, by Michael Gabon
Rich nostalgia in a dense, present-day narrative about two guys whose San Francisco record shop is at risk from a bigger rival moving into their neighbourhood: vinyl records, blaxploitation movies, jazz music, Tarantino films, kung fu, a blimp, Six Million Dollar Man action figures, classic American cars and eight-track cartridges. Filled with the imaginary voices of Samuel L Jackson, Marsellus Wallace and Hong Kong Phooey. A blokeish novel about the forever-shifting relationships of fathers, sons, wives, brothers and friends.
HKQ: "Fathering imposed an obligation that was more than your money, your body, or your time, a presence neither physical nor measurable by clocks: open-ended, eternal, and invisible, like the commitment of gravity to the stars."
6. A Possible Life, by Sebastian Faulks A montage of unconnected lives beautifully written in a downbeat style that underplays the cataclysmic ephiphanies that assault all the varied characters; a war-damaged English school teacher, a child of a Victorian workhouse, an adopted Italian child devastated by a discovery, a love-shattered musician, a God-fearing French household servant. It's true that most of them end up thwarted, defeated and beaten by the life events that engulf them. But amidst the gloom, betrayals and loneliness beats the heart of all our possible lives.
HKQ: "I don't think you ever understand your life - not till it's finished and probably not then either. The more I live the less I seem to understand."
5. Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
My favourite kind of novel: time-shifting, full of different styles and points of views, all of them challenging our views of the world. Not just one book but six mini-masterpieces in one linked together through centuries by birthmarks, diaries and the burning human desire for justice and freedom. My longer babble about it is here. Looking forward to seeing the Tom Hanks film.
HKQ: "I woke up in the darkness with a mouth like Superglue. The Mighty Gibbon's assessment of history - little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind - ticker-taped by for no apparent reason."
4. Life Of Pi, by Yann Martel
The striking posters for Ang Lee's film version reminded me that this was another modern classic I'd never got round to reading. It's magnificent. A beguiling fantasy about religions, allegories and an Indian boy on a lifeboat with a tiger, a zebra, a hyena, an orangutang and rat. It opens with that famous fictional author's note saying this is "a story that will make you believe in God".
Give it a try, Dawkins.
HKQ: "I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful."
3. The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach
A serious-minded, warm-hearted read centred around US college baseball written in a style like Jonathan Franzen's with hints of John Irving and a homage to Herman Melville. More Friday Night Lights than Moneyball. Longer ramblings on it here.
HKQ: "You told me once that a soul isn't something a person is born with but something that must be built, by effort and error, study and love. And you did that with more dedication than most."
2. A Visit From The Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan
I recommended this Great American Novel to a lot of people this year. It's a book that polarises opinion. Some thought it was a collection of short stories that didn't work as a novel; others just couldn't make any sense of it as it jumps around through time. I thought it was fabulous. The dazzling, interwoven range of forms and authentic voices gravitate around a teenage band called The Flaming Dildos. If Goon Squad was a song it would be the sublime Do You Realize? by The Flaming Lips. My longer review is here.
HKQ: "One key ingredient of so-called experience is the delusional faith that it is unique and special, that those included in it are privileged and those excluded from it are missing out."
1. The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared, by Jonas Jonasson
The best book of this or any other year. A whimsical, uplifting and very funny Swedish yarn whose summary is in the title. Explosives expert Allan Karlsson, the most philosophical centenarian in fiction, walks out of his old people's home and almost immediately finds himself on the run from a drugs gang. But it's the unfolding tale of his one hundred years that delights: his accidental, history-changing encounters with Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, President Truman and General Franco. A full life lived with two simple, admirable aims: do the right thing and enjoy a decent drink.
HKQ and Allan's inspiring summary of life: "Things are what they are, and whatever will be will be."
I miss Word magazine. It was just about the only place where I could find recommended new music that I actually liked, some of it included on the accompanying CD, read meaty pieces on interesting music makers - new and old, find out more about the best TV, the coolest films, the books worth reading and all the other cultural with a small-c Stuff happening that I didn't know about.
Sure, it featured too many bearded men on the covers and the small-font article at the back every month was usually unreadable, but it was unique in content, tone and loveability. It led me to The Go! Team, The Mountain Goats, Cashier No. 9 and a weekend in a teepee that smelled of horses at the Cornbury Festival listening to the witless Scouting For Girls. The men in charge, Mark Ellen and David Hepworth, were a link to the Smash Hits days of my early teens and the Whistle Test days of my later ones. I bumped into Mark at the BBC Folk Music Awards in London a couple of years ago and pestered him for a few minutes about how much I enjoyed his magazine. He was pleasant and polite, told me a racey anecdote about my former Sky colleague Adam Boulton and left me feeling better informed - just like the Word.
When I moaned about its abrupt demise to a trusted friend and cultural commentator he recommended a combination of Uncut, Classic Pop and Mojo. So I spent £4.80 on Uncut's new issue. It should be a good barometer because it includes its favourite 75 albums of the year.
The cover is promising: everyone likes Man Of The Year Springsteen and it comes with a free CD. But check out the editor Allan Jones's letter with his own Best Of The Year selection and the heart sinks: "Bob Dylan's Tempest, John Murry's The Graceless Age, Japandroids' Celebration Rock, Neil Young's Psychedelic Pill, Pond's Beard, Wives, Denim, Beachwood Sparks' The Tarnished Gold, Jack White's Blunderbuss, Allah-Las' Allah-Las, Anaïs Mitchell's Young Man In America, Alabama Shakes' Boys And Girls, Neil Young's Americana, Slow Down, Molasses' Walk Into The Sea, Sharon Van Etten's Tramp, Elephant Mica's Louder Than Thou, Tame Impala's Lonerism, Calexico's Algiers, Dr John's Locked Down, Dexys' One Day I'm Going To Soar, Simone Felice's Simone Felice and Dan Deacon's America." A quick trip to Spotify confirms that Bob Dylan's Tempest is fiddly-de-dee garbage. Two Neil Young albums - really? I'd prefer one by the former Manchester City striker with the same name. And Dexy?! Bloody hell. Of the magazine's official top 75 I can live with Cornershop, Lana Del Rey, Springsteen, Jack White and I thought Orbital's Wonky was brilliant. The track Never is one of my most-played in 2012. It was on a Word CD.
So not bad, but if the traditional magazine format is letting me down, where else can I go? Spotify's new releases list occasionally throws up some interesting gems. The Paradise Edition of Del Rey's Born To Die, for example, features a decent cover of Blue Velvet. But I have no interest whatsoever in Rod Stewart's Merry Christmas, Baby or Pink Friday by Nicki Minaj. The desktop version has an app to find similar music to the stuff you like, but it doesn't work on the iPad or Sonos so it's not much use to me. BBC 6 Music is pretty useful if you can sit through the DJ drivel about tweet-me-the-name-of-the-song-that-most-reminds-me-of-your-college-years drivel. Don't bother, we don't care. This morning, for example, they played a track called Joy from Tracey Thorn's new album, Tinsel and Lights.
It's nearly always too early for Christmas songs but another visit to Spotify delivers a fabulous album of covers, including the marvellous In the Cold, Cold Night by The White Stripes. I've always liked Tracey and Everything But The Girl, even though Ben is a Man United fan. I once saw them at the conference centre in Harrogate that's traditionally used for the Lib Dems' annual fiasco. And the album with the kid peeing in the street on the cover reminds me of my college years.
This Is My Jam website is also pretty cool. Recommend one track at a time to your Twitter followers, complete with a link to audio or video, and follow other Jammers to find out what they're listening to. My brother's good at unearthing rocking indie boys with loud guitars - I can turn his recommendations into a playlist and chug it out on Spotify. Connect that baby to the wireless Sonos system and bingo - fill the room with the theme tune from Boardwalk Empire that you never knew was by the Brian Jonestown Massacre.
Books are trickier. The Economist has unexpectedly tipped some good novels - Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon was so superb I put in on Facebook.
Highly recommend this: set today but full of vinyl jazz records, blaxploitation movies, Tarantino films, kung fu, a blimp, Six Million Dollar Man action figures (including Oscar Goldman), classic American cars, eight-track cartridges, San Francisco, imaginary voices of Samuel L Jackson, Marsellus Wallace, Tarantino, Hong Kong Phooey. A book about fathers, sons and friends.
Deborah's book club is also worth keeping an eye on. The Hundred Year Old Man Who Jumped Out Of The Window And Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson is magnificent; a contemporary, comic Odyssey through the 20th century's seminal moments with its history makers, framed by an unlikely story about a Swedish centenarian on the run with an elephant from a drugs gang and the the police. It's the Scandinavian antidote to those nasty Girl With The Dragon Tattoo books. Word was always good at getting under the skin of the best TV shows. A community came together to read about The Wire, Mad Men and other cinematic American imports. Their series-link was always a bit hit and miss but then so is mine: Downton Abbey, Homeland, the hugely underrated Friday Night Lights on Sky Atlantic, Match of the Day, Seinfeld in HD on Atlantic (20 years old and still funny - even to 14-year-old Joe), The Daily Show on the Comedy Channel, Lewis, Quest Means Business, Jeff Randall on Sky News. Admittedly, some of those have more unviewed episodes than others. It is possible, then, to keep across all the best stuff if you keep surfing, listening and watching but it doesn't half take up a lot of time. What we need is a one-stop shop that features it all and drops through the letter box every month. And I don't think it's called Uncut. Anyone recommend anything else?
It's not a perfect day. I'd rather spend it with you. Not such a perfect day.
But hang on, it's a pretty good route around Manhattan if you ever find yourself there for a weekend in late October.
Start: The Hudson Hotel, West 58th Street
Cool hotel. Very dark lobby, white furniture, HD TVs, long wait for the lifts. £299 per night plus taxes.
The view from the Time Warner canteen
1. West Side of Central Park
John Lennon is everywhere in New York. That image of him wearing a New York tee-shirt peers out from every souvenir shop around Times Square.
It takes about ten minutes to walk from the Columbus Circle entrance, through the amber and gold trees, dodging the joggers, the cyclists and multi-dog walkers, to the towers of the Dakota Building where he lived and died. It always reminds me of Tom Brook, the BBC reporter who was first on the scene when Chapman shot Lennon. We spoke regularly when Tom provided regular movie news for Liquid News. Never had a bad word for anybody. His moustache as pristine then as it was on December 8, 1980. I walked straight past Strawberry Fields, past the man selling Beatles badges, and then realised I'd gone too far and double backed. I was just pipped to the entrance to the little graffited memorial garden by a coach load of tourists on their own magical mystery tour. I left them to it and headed out of the park.
A Blurry Mary
The night before I'd been to see Mary Chapin Carpenter at the Lincoln Centre. She's a recent discovery to me and I can't get anyone else interested. I found her current album, Ashes And Roses, on Spotify's new releases and it stuck. The opening track, Transcendental Reunion, sets the tone: a singer-songwriter song about arriving at an airport on your own amid the happy welcomes and tearful hugs and just hoping your suitcase has made it with you. (I almost got Kevin Bishop interested when he was on Olympic duty at Heathrow for BBC news.) The concert was fabulous. And there was one of those weird coincidences: the oddly agitated, silently arguing gay guys who checked into the next door room of The Hudson just before me were there. There they were, fuming their way to the lobby bar while I sat nursing a couple of beers.
There is a tenuous Lennon connection. I was due to see Mary CC in London the previous Monday but had to return the tickets to the South Bank Centre because of this work trip. I found out that I was in New York at the same time as her final tour show and booked a ticket. Last week she played a gig in Liverpool with Shawn Colvin. Colvin tweeted a picture of Penny Lane saying how being in Liverpool always made her cry. Mary re-tweeted it saying, "I know!". I re-tweeted that saying, "Yes. Awful place." Hilarious. I'm from Manchester; it's in my DNA to dislike Liverpool. At Liquid, I persuaded a reluctant Tim Muffet to do an ill-advised mickey-take on Liverpool being made the European City of Culture - full of archive bin strikes and Derek Hatton. A local commercial radio station started an anti-BBC campaign. We ended up having to do a live one-hour apology show from the docks with Ian McCulloch holding court. Boris Johnson was caught out in the same way years later. Josh those jokey Scousers at your peril.
2. Times Square
Head straight on down the 7th Avenue skyscraper canyon past Carnegie Hall (old joke sticks in head: how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice) and soon enough the neon lights and LED video screens welcome you to big brash Times Square. Never at its best in the daylight. Thronged with street performers and people queuing for theatre tickets at the discount booth.
Deborah and I went to see Patrick Stewart in The Tempest off Broadway 17 years ago, his English voice pristine among the American cast. He's from D's home town of Mirfield so we feel an affinity with Captain Jean Luc Picard of the Federation Starship Enterprise. We've also seen him a couple of times in London - in a one-man Christmas Carol (brilliant, but I'd done an early shift at GLR and nodded off before the end) and in a Cold War-style Macbeth in 2007 (he can act even when making a ham sandwich).
The Hershey's shop is the quirkiest building just off the Square; decorated with giant retro-wrappers and light bulbs, deliberately Willie Wonkerish. Their chocolate always tastes a bit odd - a bit off - to me but I stocked up anyway on some goodies to take home.
3. Empire State Building
Stroll across 42nd Street (even the street names have been turned into musicals) for a look round the artisan booths of Bryant Park. One specialises in nothing but different varieties of kettle corn. Go straight on through then right onto Madison Avenue. Now that's an evocative name. Reminds me of two things:
1. Kirsty MacColl's track from Electric Landlady. Johnny Marr on guitar. Kirsty was due to appear on Liquid a few days after she was killed in that motor boat accident. I was in the BBC bar when Steven Rogers came down to tell me. Quite shocking. I'd always liked her multi-layered vocal stuff right from There's A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis and especially her version of Ray Davies's Days.
2. Mad Men. Fabulous show. Who wouldn't want to be Don Draper? No 60s atmosphere now, though. No sign of any ad agencies, curvy Joans or silver-haired Roger Sterlings. Just more skyscrapers. But then at 34th Street look right - and there's the daddy of them all. It may not be the biggest any more but the Empire State Building is still the coolest. So tall it gets misty halfway up. No time to go up now, though. Press on to Third and East 26th.
4. Mad Hatter Saloon Bar
The Manchester City outpost in New York is in a studenty bit of of the East side called Murray Hill. This is the bar where City fans gather on match days in Manhattan. City shirts, plaques and flags fill the gaps on the wall between the big screen TVs showing the Fox Soccer Channel. It's the bar where the man the Daily Mail called the "gaffe-prone" former City chief executive Garry Cook made an infamous trip in 2010. I heard about his visit and sent along a freelance NY cameraman for Sky Sports News. Cook, looking red-eyed and jet-lagged, told the packed bar that City would beat Man United in the League Cup semi-final and go on to win the trophy. Mass cheers. Then mass embarrassment a few days later when Rooney scored another last minute winner and City were out. I met Cook a couple of times and liked his confident can-do style. The last time I saw him he was disastrously inducting Uwe Rosler into the Manchester United hall of fame at a supporters' club bash at the Etihad Stadium. I wish I'd never booked that camera.
Today a dozen or so fans watched City stutter to a 1-0 win over Swansea. Cheers all round at the final whistle and then a bonus: the infectious City anthem Boys in Blue, written by Godley and Creme from 10cc and recorded by the 1972 squad. I left with a couple of $20 souvenir tee-shirts, humming the match-day classic all the way to Madison Square Park.
5. The Flatiron Building
Love that building.
6. Union Square
The weekend before Halloween and there were pumpkins everywhere at the Union Square farmers market. Always reminds me of Charlie Brown cartoons and autumn half-terms in Norfolk; one of those bits of Americana that travelled to England and arrived on the trick or treat doorstep with added menace. The boss in Atlanta had invited us to dinner at his house the previous Wednesday: like every other house in the avenue it was spectacularly decorated with spooks, skeletons and spray-on cobwebs. Looked great. Only royal jubilees seem to prompt that spirit in the UK.
7. Greenwich Village and Soho
Artists selling their images of Manhattan on the low-rise streets, historic colonial-style houses, lots of trees, busy bars around Washington Square, a relaxed and bohemian atmosphere, a film crew near Christopher Street shooting a scene with an actor banging on the bonnet of a yellow cab - easy to see why everyone wants to live round here.
8. The High Line
A disused elevated railway that's been landscaped and converted into a very popular pedestrian walkway.
View from the High Line
Not much to see but a pleasant enough stroll with glimpses of the Hudson river on the left. Like being on a city-centre seaside pier.
9. Madison Square Garden
Venue of legends on the inside. But an ugly oval mintoe on the outside. I sat in a bar next to a Halloween cowgirl and a fairy godmother and watched the college football on TV for half an hour. It was twilight and Times Square had switched itself on when I left.
10. Times Square at Dusk.
That's more like it. Familiar from hundreds of movies and American newscasts. I'd been to meet the guys at the Nasdaq stock exchange the day before to talk about using the venue for more live inserts into Quest Means Business.
They presented me with this simulated screen grab of my projection on the screens of the building. The brutal, 60ft truth; the camera never lies.
A 15-minute walk up Broadway, via a sandwich stop at a deli, and I was back at The Hudson. A Harry Potter film was on TV when I woke up.
JULY 1983: I went to see New Order for the first time. It was at The Hacienda and I was a 17-year-old sixth form student. Power Corruption and Lies had just come out. I loved that album. Among the songs I squashed up and down to were Love Vigilantes, Temptation, Ceremony and The Perfect Kiss.
MAY 2012: I went to see New Order for the latest time of many. It was at the Brixton Academy and I was with my 14-year-old son. They played all those songs and more. They were minus Peter Hook but apart from that if I shut my varifocaled eyes to block out Barney's big belly it could have been that summer of 29 years ago all over again.
They began with Crystal. Classic New Order. Stephen's thrilling drums pounding away, then Barney's indie guitar chords, then his faltering vocals singing generally random phrases building to a rousing, romping chorus. All of it backed by those stomping bass lines played by the young bloke who isn't Hooky and those sublime synthesiser layers played by the wonderfully immobile Gillian.
Barney does his dad dancing. So do I.
By the time Regret had given way to Ceremony the £4.80 plastic punnet of lager had gone and we threaded from our respectful position near the back to the sweatier edge of the dancing middle-aged hordes. More statin pills than Ecstasy tabs this time.
"Did you ever think you'd come to see New Order wearing a tweed jacket?" asked Joe. No. Nor with a teenage son taller than me.
With that TV you just don't care, sings Barney in Krafty with a K. These days they're not two-foot tubes but 50-inch flatscreens. The song's never sounded better.
Now True Faith, cunningly disguised like many on the night by a brilliantly unrecognisable, multi-layered intro, and accompanied by those classic, Michelin-man dancers on the video screen behind Stephen. Then a couple of duffers - I never liked Perfect Kiss with it's "pretending not to see his gun I said let's go out and have some fun" daftness. And 586 was ok in 1983 but nearly killed the whole thing stone dead last night.
But then they come storming back: Age of Consent, with it's over-and-over again lament of I've Lost You; a triumphant Blue Monday, which they miserably refused to play live 30 years ago; a thundering Bizarre Love Triangle; and then the best moment of the night - Temptation. Up down turnaround, please don't let me hit the ground. I did the up and down, didn't turn around, didn't hit the ground. But by now my tweed jacket was starting to steam. One of the great songs of all time.
At 10.49 after 80 minutes they bailed out. We snaked our way to the back through the grown-up, grinning Eighties indie kids to wait for the encore. They ended by going even further back into the youthful memories of the faithful. Sensational versions of Joy Division's Transmission and, finally, Love Will Tear Us Apart. No Hooky, no Ian Curtis but still, still, still.
By 11pm the rush for the Victoria Line was on. Unlike 1983, most of the punters had to be at work in the morning.
