Badly Drawn Boy - live at The Knitting Factory, November 6, 2000

The Wild, The Innocent & The Badly Drawn Boy

It’s difficult to say which was more surprising—that at his first-ever New York show, Brit crit darling Badly Drawn Boy exhibited such unbridled passion for the music of Bruce Springsteen, or that he backed up his respect for the Boss by turning in a tour de force performance of his own that lasted a Springsteenian three hours.

On a Monday night in November—in fact, the night before the scandalous presidential "election" that gave the U.S. its most incompetent leader of the post-war era—Mancunian singer-songwriter Damon Gough, better known as Badly Drawn Boy, hit the stage of TriBeCa’s cramped, claustrophobic, uncomfortable Knitting Factory at 10:15 p.m. It was a stage he did not leave for fully three hours, a rather astonishing length of time for a club show. It was also a rather astonishing length of time for a man who was clearly drunk out of his mind; was he wearing Depends undergarments, or can he really hold it in that long?

Following a short set of stand-up by Janeane Garofalo—a fan, apparently, who scammed her way into the sold-out gig by agreeing to do an opening set for Mr. Boy—Gough and his four-piece backing band proceeded to woo the sardine-packed throng by performing basically all of his Mercury Music Prize-winning debut full-length The Hour Of Bewilderbeast. An endearing, drunken shambles who somehow managed to hold it together in the way that only a tattered genius can, Boy’s live renditions of Bewilderbeast highlights like "Pissing In The Wind" and "Once Around The Block" as well as tunes from his EPs were earnest as all hell without ever approaching sappy. The Bruce fixation being much more than a pose, Badly not only sang half of "I’m On Fire" at one point, but also fooled around with portions of "Meeting Across The River," "Jungleland," and "Thunder Road," not to mention Journey’s "Don’t Stop Believing." The one full-on cover version of the night was a rousing, electrified "Walk Away Renee."

Like a hammy cross-breeding of Elliott Smith and The Divine Comedy, B.D.B. jumped into the audience and playfully flirted with the ladies, asking their names and handing out red roses. He also invited the diehards still remaining at show’s end to join him for his next New York concert, boldly claiming that it would take place at Madison Square Garden. "Or maybe I’ll play the Bottom Line," he said, smiling. "Bruce played there."

YEAH YEAH YEAH, 2001