Arctic Monkeys, The Astoria
Not much to say really, they were awesome. During the first couple of songs, including soon to be number 1 single, I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor, the entire downstairs of The Astoria turns into a mosh pit. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it since the first time The Libertines played the Astoria as part of the NME Brat tour.

The Arctics actually seem to be awestruck by playing such a large venue in London. Alex makes several references to not having ventured to London this time last year and how many of us there seem to be. It doesn’t seem to bother them – they play with the same level of confidence and with the same swagger they had a couple of months ago at King Tuts. Of course this time next year it’ll be 3 nights at Brixton or Ally Pally.

One thing I will mention is gig-karma. You know how it goes, you get someone who stands in front of you; they piss you off buy talking through the support band; they keep pushing you back etc etc etc; Well we had a guy like this standing in front of us. He got our backs up by standing directly in front of Annie, 6’2 in front of 5’9, when there was plenty of space in the venue and then turning to us and telling us “If you want play with the players, you’ve got to be a player”. I’ll send a prize to anyone who can tell me what that means. Anyway, to get to the point he said something to a rather sweaty drunk guy as he made his way back from the front of the gig. This guy reacted, words were said and our player took a couple of punches. Proof that gig-karma works.

Actually, it was one of those gigs where everyone has a short temper. It was crowded and hot (people in big coats despite the mild Indian summer conditions outside) and people were hyped up. I caught an angry exchange between songs between a guy standing behind the sound desk and one of the sound engineers. Now you don’t often see that.

Support was from a band called Millburn, who are cut from the same cloth as the Arctics.
- posted by Nigella @ 7:15 PM