Monday, February 09, 2004
Mission Statement
New blog and I suppose I should explain the reasons behind this. I’m a muso and I’m from London. I spend an inordinate amount of time and money buying records, downloading bootlegs (that’s the live recordings type of bootlegs Mr RIAA/BPI lawyer) and going to gigs. I also, occasionally play in band, but that is another story and another web site.
What do I have to show for this? A pile of gig tickets arranged into a nice piece of art on my wall; A shelf full of CDs and another couple of shelves of vinyl ; an 80GB hard drive that is almost full of MP3; and quite a few thoughts and opinions about music- most of which are complete dros, but I thought I might try to write these down as they may be of amusement to others.
I’ve been a reader of the music mags (NME, X-Ray, Select [anybody remember that one?]) since I was a teenager, but this is my first attempt to write stuff down, so it might be a bit crap.
First up. A gig review of sorts.
NME Awards Tour 2004 – 07/02/2004 Brixton Academy
An early start for the first and only one of the NME gigs I’m attending this year. I usually make it to two or three of the week long series of gigs but a cancellation (Ryan Adams and his busted wrist) and an underwhelming line up mean that tonight’s the night.
First on Franz Ferdinand, looking like the C&A equivalent of Kraftwerk and sounding like the freshest thing since Joy Division they have the strut and swagger of a band who know they are destined for better things. Three years ago when I saw The Strokes play an NME show supporting And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead… you could see the same confidence. Two singles into their career and two days before the album comes out and they have the front third of the Academy jam packed with people singing along to the songs. This band aer the new Duran Duran and that is a good thing.
The Academy seemed to have fixed the problems with the bass that the NME mentioned in a previous live review – tonight the kick drum, well, kicks. Maybe t’NME brought their own PA along for the occasion, although probably not.
Next up, The Von Bondies. I Love The Von Bondies. I’ve seen them a couple of times before, when they supported The White Stripes on a couple of tours in 2001/2002. How things change, and the first heckle of the night is “Jack White Kicked Your Arse” from someone in crowd behind us. Whatever happened that night in Detroit, it doesn’t seem to have dented Jason’s confidence. He still falls around the stage making his guitar crunch and singing like Jim Morrison. The songs from the new record, Pawn Shoppe Heart and I’m going to enjoy listening to it when it arrives from Canada/Hong Kong/wherever this weeks grey import is coming from. The band finish by calling Franz Ferdinand and Mattie Safer from The Rapture on to the stage to sing and dance along to It Came From Japan, the stand out track from their debut album.
So far so good. Next on – The Rapture. It only take the roadies 20 minutes to turn round between bands – if only it was this speedy at every gig. By this point The Academy is rammed. I try and queue at the bar for another pint, but it’s ten deep at all of the bars and I really can’t be bothered to queue for half an hour for a pint of pish.
The Rapture are a band that have completely passed me by until really recently. I downloaded a couple of tracks from Echoes before Christmas and was very impressed. Then the Album was placed at Number 2 in the NME Christmas chart and I found it for £7.99 in the Virgin sale.
Things start of a little shaky. The sound is pretty shoddy (The vocals and guitar seem to be turned up so far that they are clipping) and the whole thing of Gabriel Andruzzi dancing like Bez at the front of the stage is a little un settling. However, as the set goes on I start to get into it. I love they way they play synth versions of their songs (I’ve only heard the guitar version of Olio, but the synth heavy version is great). The people around me are grooving like daemons and by the end of the set I’m grooving with them too. The Band play a brilliant version of their new (re released?) single Love Is All and we all go wild.
Funeral For A Friend. Tonight’s headliners are metal. By the time the Welsh metlers come on we’ve moved back towards the back. This looks like it may have been a very wise choice as during the first couple of songs the front half of the Academy becomes a moshpit with a constant stream of bodies in transit towards the security at the front of the stage.
In a previous life (OK, in my teenage years) I was into metal (Iron Maiden, Metallica etc) but these days the most metal I go is the Iron in my multi vitamins. So around about the 5th song we make the tactical decision to leave early and beet the rush for the tube. This is the first time I’ve left a gig early. I’ve been to gigs that have been finished early (Floyd at Earls Court because the seats collapsed comes to mind at the moment) but I’ve never left early of my own will. And we’re not the only ones. It looks like a lot of my Indie/Alternative brethren are leaving early – happy to have grooved with FF, The VB and The Rapture.
It’s not that FFAF are rubbish, far from it. I originally booked the tickets for the promise of the first 3 bands and FFAF were an unknown extra.
One last note to FFAF. You need to sort out your logo/T-shirt designs. There are far too many logos and designs. I’m sure they mean something, but it just looks far to confusing to a casual punter browsing the T-Shirt stall.
In Summary:
Franz Ferdinand look and sond great - going to be huge
The Von Bondies still rock
The Rapture are suprisingly good
FFAF - very metal, if you lke that kind of thing
