Johnathan Rice – Live at the Scala

by Isla MC

“Just because I went to Catholic school doesn’t mean I can’t write a song about fucking.”

I enjoyed this so much more than I thought I would. From what we saw at V festival I was expecting a totally acoustic set and, as much as I love a bit of acoustic, I wasn’t really in the mood for it this time. But, lo and behold, out comes Johnathan Rice (or Johnny Potato as he is affectionately known here at Loose Lips) with a full rockin’ band! They kicked ass! The songs are good. Proper catchy pop rock songs mixed with lovely (but pretty bloody dark at times! Lots of stuff about “We’re all gonna die” and whatnot) acoustic numbers. And the boy’s got a great voice, as demonstrated in the bits he did without the band.

Johnny has an odd stage persona though. He comes across as slightly awkward, yet strangely confident and endearing, when addressing his audience. He told this great long tale of an incident in LA – literally, he went on for about ten minutes – but never flagged and was very funny and charming. I liked it. I’d see him again, definitely. At one point some girl yelled out “You’re hot!” (He asked if she was American. She was. Of course. “Only Americans think I’m hot.”). That got me thinking about how annoying it must be when you’re a musician to have people damaging the integrity of your music with stupid half-wit comments like that. But then, as Joanna pointed out, it’s better than people yelling “You suck!”. (She also pointed out that he looks a lot like Michael Pitt)