the heat is on

every day we buy la vanguardia, we check yahoo weather and the national weather service. it's all the same; scorchio today, tomorrow and the day after. jellyfish are landing in droves on the long beaches south of the city. and it's humid as hell.

but heck, it could be a whole lot worse. there has been so much good music to see lately. after ute lemper at the palau de la musica, there was ziggy marley outdoors at poble espanyol and last night the very odd and wonderful nina hagen at the barcelona music theatre.

yesterday's punk icon is now 51 and fronting a 13 piece swing orchestra. a rather amazing mixture of styles - part marlene dietrich, part barbie doll, part lene lovich (now that does date me) and part dita von teese, Ms Hagen belted her way through a motley collection of swing classics in english and german wearing a range of outrageous outfits including a stars and stripes superwoman cape.

mad as a march hare, as they say in germany, she is a class act, although we had too much of her band without her and could have also done without Spain's answer to the only gay in the village (el único gay en la aldea?) sitting behind us in his Daffyd style singlet and shorts. Having spent most of the time gassing in a loud voice to his fag hag friends, he leapt up in mid song to present ms hagen with a bunch of flowers. even the gay friendly nina would have been rather apalled to see that they were plastic tulips.