Australian singer, environmental activist and longhaired hippie Xavier Rudd couldn’t have chosen a better venue in London to play his show than KOKO in Camden. The venue is the musical centre of London’s most relaxed, feel-good neighbourhood – or in other words: London’s hippie headquarters. Made In Shoreditch attended the night and at the end we found ourselves thinking about peace, love and how to save the environment. Mission accomplished for Rudd.
Go to a random clothes market and there will always be a stand with a bit too colourful, baggy clothes, that’ll make you think: ‘who is going to buy this?’. Well, Monday night June 25th we saw their largest London consumers shelter together in one building. And for a reason, because the king of chilled out feel-good songs and eating vegetarian food played a show in the former theatre KOKO.
Although Rudd has the best intentions and his public consists of probably the nicest people from the city, as a less spiritual person you can’t help but fear it will all be a little over-the-top. So was it? Yes, it was completely over-the-top. There were countless moments when Rudd would close his eyes while singing, every song had at least two sudden stops (which became kind of annoying) and during one of the final applauses it really seemed like he was praying for us.
But was all of this a big problem? Not really, to be honest. From the moment Rudd entered the stage until he would throw this drumsticks into the audience to leave the stage, there was a unique vibe of positivity in KOKO. Ok, the world might not just be about peace, love and happiness, but at least Xavier Rudd did remind us of the fact that it’s also not about anger, egoism and McDonalds.
A show from the man is also musically an experience, you must have had at least once in your lifetime. Rudd is a multi-instrumentalist and plays at almost every song on a different instrument. Most of his songs he plays on guitar-ish instruments, but it becomes really exciting when the singer takes place behind the drums and starts to make a psychedelic mixture of rhythmic sounds, with Bob Marley-ish vocals and a didgeridoo. Another peak in the show was of course ‘Let Me Be’, that he performed together with his friend and tour companion Yeshe. It made you feel like the world was one big Woodstock.
Unfortunately it isn’t, because after Rudd would sing a last a capella song about taking care of our future generations and saving the planet, the moment was there: back into the subway. Into a world of ignorance and rush, oh dear. But even a lot of stops away from Camden, your Made In Shoreditch journalist couldn’t help but find himself whistling ‘Let Me Be’, whilst thinking about how wonderful the Australian nature must be.
