[20/8/2014] Gerard Way & The Hormones - Wedgewood Rooms, UK (Secret R&L Warm-Up Gig)
I'm going to write this up as best I can because I am trying not to spam Twitter/Facebook TOO much >_>;;
The gig was announced via a single tweet, and later a Facebook post, on Monday, tickets went on sale Tuesday morning and the gig was on Wednesday. There were only 200 tickets going, which sold out in around a minute, so I was SUPER psyched to have managed to grab three of them just in time.
So first, the venue was absolutely tiny. The Wedgewood Rooms is somewhere smaller bands normally play, lots of locals, comic nights, stuff like that, and obviously, the odd warm-up show for more popular groups trying out new sets. It's kind of grimy and dark and EXACTLY what you want from a music venue :D My brother started queuing long before the doors opened, so he was in the first 50-or-so people, but it really didn't matter once we got inside, the view was pretty fantastic wherever you stood. Strictly no phones/cameras allowed, though, as this was the warm-up gig for Reading & Leeds this weekend and there was a lot of new material.
The warm-up band came out after about 20 minutes (which was great, I was expecting to wait for like an hour). They were a local pop-punk band called The Bottom Line, who I'd never heard of before but were very Simple Plan/All Time Low, so I enjoyed them a lot. They came on to Miley Cyrus - Party in the USA, which had everyone a little confused but mostly laughing and jumping around. After a couple of their own songs they covered Taylor Swift - We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, but a punk rock version which was a lot of fun XD
When the lights went down a second time, the venue filled with smoke, the stage lights came up and The Hormones (and James Dewees!!) came out and the crowd obviously went nuts. then when Gerard came out in his signature blue suit (to some pretty cool-sounding space-age track), everyone went mental. It was deafening, I never thought 400 people could make so much noise XD ♥ The whole set was full of more smoke and strobe lighting and there was a fair amount of the UFO sounds too. It's hard to put into words, just the kind of sounds you'd associate with aliens and spaceships and all kind of perfect given the album title Hesitant Alien. Sadly I don't have much in the way of lyrics to offer either - it's always difficult to make out new lyrics from live music anyway, but add the distortion effects he was using to that, and THEN consider how GWay gets when he's really into it, how unless you know the lyrics they can be totally indiscernible... and that's why I am none the wiser about 90% of the lyrics XD;;
Set List:
(I've linked stuff where I can for reference, but obviously none of the music is from the actual gig because no phones allowed)
The Bureau
They launched into this straight away, and it was everything you'd hope the start of a gig to be. Loud, fast, fun, just brilliant. Gee was obviously nervous to start with, I suppose because it's all brand new material and he didn't really have any idea how we were going to take it, but he soon started to relax when everyone was just rocking out and loving every second of it.
Action Cat
They didn't even pause for breath, The Bureau came to and end and The Hormones' guitarist (Ian Howles?) went straight into the opening chords of Action Cat. I may have had a minor freakout because I love this song. I'm just glad it was SO LOUD and nobody could hear my shout-singing over the noise of everything else XD After he finished the song with the usual repeating of "Do you miss me? 'Cause I missed you!" over and over, there was a moment of quiet during which someone shouted "We missed you Gerard!" and he grinned and said, all kind of warm and sweet and genuine, "I missed you guys too."
Zero Zero
"This song is called Zero Zero." Cue second freakout on my part (including grabbing my brother's arm and shaking like OH MY GOD ZERO ZERO) because I have a crappy demo of this song which I adore to pieces but to hear it performed live, all polished and going to be on the album was incredible. There was lots of back-and-forth screaming of "Call me zero zero zero! I am zero, you are zero!" going on and you could really see how much he was getting into it - y'know how he gets when he starts screwing his face up and really singing his heart out? It was like that. Brilliant song
Millions
There was the usual 'thank you for coming out, it's good to be here, hope you're having fun' stuff, then Millions. Millions is such a gorgeous song, oh man. I have an AWFUL fan recording of this from like, 2012 or something, idek, and you can barely make out any of the lyrics, but when he sang, "I think you're sore, I think I'm done, a million reasons, can I be your number one?" I seriously had tears in my eyes. After the intense energy of Zero Zero it was quite hard-hitting in the best way.
Juarez
After the dodgy fanrecording I'd heard of Juarez before (linked above), I was dubious about this one. But I am SO won over now, it really is just that the fanrecording is AWFUL. The track is brilliant, Gee's voice goes all low and smooth whenever he sings, "I can't swim, don't rub it in." I couldn't make out much of the rest of the lyrics but it was this mad mix that makes you want to dance but with slower, heavier parts at the beginning of each verse.
The bored-looking security looks like Ray after a rather extreme haircut....
Drugstore Perfume
There was another brief pause before Juarez, where Gee thanked us all again for coming out and said how much he appreciated us all going out on a limb for him, because there was so much stuff we probably hadn't heard before. At this point Nick leans over and says, "Is it just me or does he sound like a chipmunk?" XDD I cracked right up and told him Gerard always talks like that. Anyway, they brought the lighting right down for this, just a steady, deep red, and the song was much calmer than anything else so far, stripped right back to the skeleton, almost. It was lovely to hear him sing like that after everything before, it was rather stunning. Very reminiscent of Cancer, but more the overall feel of the song, not the soul-destroying lyrics. It was pretty beautiful.
Get the Gang Together
I haven't been able to find anything about this, no fanrecordings, nothing, so I'm guessing this was the first time he'd played it publicly. It was so much fun, lots of audience interaction, he kept getting us to wave and clap and do jazz hands. Lots of strobe lighting for this too, it was so bright and bouncy and everyone, including Gee, had a lot of fun with it.
No Shows
Ugh, I LOVE this song. Absolutely love it. I don't even have the words for how much I love it, and I love it even more live. He really got into it, especially all the "We don't need no shows!" parts, really dragging out the 'need's and 'no's, and towards the end where the fuzz kicks in after the last verse alongside the guitar riff at like, 3:15, he started singing 'na na na, na na, na na' in tune with it which just reminded me of Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na) ♥
Snakedriver (Cover of The Jesus and Mary Chain)
Before they got started a girl my brother was chatting to in the queue managed to get her rainbow feather boa up onto the stage. Of course, Gee went straight for it - he tries to pretend he left his sass with My Chem, but he's clearly delusional - and grabbed it up then was like, "Man, these things are so hard to sing in. Do any of you follow me on Twitter?" - referring to his tweets where someone asked if he'd still be wearing feather boas now and he said no, they're so hot, so hard to sing in, how it felt like being choked - and then, straight at the girl who had given it to him said, "I'll wear it for you.", and proceeded to wear it for like, over half the song. But back to the song - I'd never heard this before, but it was definitely an interesting way to end the main set, with a cover of a relatively mellow song, at least compared to everything else he'd been throwing himself into.
After the song, they all disappeared off stage to some more of those hard-to-explain UFO sounds, like a flying saucer taking off into space, very TARDIS-like and wheezing and perfectly apt. Pretty rapidly the shouting for more started up - there was some crazy dude right behind us with a real screamo voice, and soon some kids near the front got the whole place chanting "Gerard! Gerard!" over and over until they eventually came back out to finish up :D
Encore:
When they came back out, someone had thrown a little bowler hat onto the stage and some of the kids down the front were trying to bring it to his attention. I couldn't hear anything they were shouting at this point, because my ears were screwed, but I could hear him perfectly fine...
"What? What? Down? Is my fly down?"
*checks... no...*
"OH, the hat? You want it back? ....Ohhh, you want me to put it on? ....I don't know, I have a pretty big head... My head is massive."
*laughs self-deprecatingly*
"But then you all knew that... Okay, I'll try, but I'm telling you, I don't think it'll fit."
*bends down, grabs hat*
"Seriously, my head is enormous..."
*puts hat on*
*looks ridiculous*
"See! My head is huge!! Okay, whose hat is this? I think you should have it back, it looks much better on you."
He half-threw the hat back to her and I guess she held out her hand for a high five or fist bump or something, because first his face screwed up all confused, like, 'I-don't-understand-what-you-want', but then he leaned right out over everyone to reach her - cue security panicking because he looked about two seconds away from falling off the stage and getting mobbed or something. It was a little bit funny XD
Brother
So, anyway, hat returned, they got back to the regular set, and he talks a little bit more about how awesome everyone has been; "Thank you for letting me still do this, it means the world to me. I love you." Then they gear up and he says, "This is a song I wrote about Mikey Way." And I may or may not have sort of kind of freaked the fuck out >_> I missed the next bit, but the song, oh, the song was fantastic. Again, it was difficult to make out the lyrics, but it sounded incredibly heartfelt and slightly troubled, which I suppose is just about right for Mikey. It was all very... bright city lights and not caring what people say and loving life and running off into the sunset, but with this troubling undertone of 'what are you going to do, are you okay', that kind of feeling to it. It was pretty intense.
Maya the Psychic
"This song is about my psychic. She's called Maya. It's called Maya the Psychic." That's deep, dude >_>
And of course, he ended it on a high. I would definitely go as far as to say this song was the most fun of the entire set, and that's even with how much I love Action Cat and No Shows. It was so upbeat and bouncy, pink and white and blue and green lighting, incredibly catchy and I don't think there was a person in there that was able to stay still for it.
And then it was all over O_O;; The house lights came up and for the longest moment, everyone just stood there, like, "Woah. So that just happened." It was almost like he'd had us all under this spell, mesmerised for the past hour, and suddenly it had broken and nobody knew what to do with themselves. It was a kind of incredible feeling. It faded as soon as everyone starting chattering and grinning and laughing, but it was definitely something special.
After the show he spent a good hour and a half outside the back doors signing stuff and talking to fans. Then he got in the taxi that had been idling in wait for him for AGES, got to the end of the venue drive, and stopped the taxi so he could get out and talk to more fans and sign more stuff for another 20 mins. If anyone ever tries to say this guy doesn't adore his fans, they're insane.
I was going back over the gig in the car on the way home, and I actually don't think he's done much to his voice in the studio at all. Like, for My Chem, they overlaid his voice so many times, you'd have three or four different recordings of the same line sung in different harmonies and with different inflections all laid over one another which gave the songs this feeling of being big, larger than the sum of their parts. But for this it's just one vocal track a lot of the time, very little in the way of backing vocals, and the recordings I have of Action Cat and No Shows sound damn near identical to how he sang them live. I'd actually say he sounded BETTER live, which I suppose is in keeping with the dirty, 'shitty' sound he said he wanted for the album. So I'm pretty convinced he's done very little mixing and leveling of his voice in the production studio - I think a lot of it has been recorded and just... done. Not messed with at all, not 'fixed' in any way to make it sound better, it just... is. Which I think is why these recordings sound so different to what I'm used to from him, but in a really, really good way.
Ugh, you guys It was so good. So good. I feel like one of the luckiest people in the universe right now, managing to be one of 400 in the world who got to see that show, got to listen to that music first and got to experience that energy. He was so pumped, taking everything we gave, ramping it up and throwing it straight back at us tenfold. It was incredible, and I still can't quite believe it happened, because getting to see Gerard Way in that tiny little venue was never in a million years something I could have imagined happening. Just incredible.
The gig was announced via a single tweet, and later a Facebook post, on Monday, tickets went on sale Tuesday morning and the gig was on Wednesday. There were only 200 tickets going, which sold out in around a minute, so I was SUPER psyched to have managed to grab three of them just in time.
So first, the venue was absolutely tiny. The Wedgewood Rooms is somewhere smaller bands normally play, lots of locals, comic nights, stuff like that, and obviously, the odd warm-up show for more popular groups trying out new sets. It's kind of grimy and dark and EXACTLY what you want from a music venue :D My brother started queuing long before the doors opened, so he was in the first 50-or-so people, but it really didn't matter once we got inside, the view was pretty fantastic wherever you stood. Strictly no phones/cameras allowed, though, as this was the warm-up gig for Reading & Leeds this weekend and there was a lot of new material.
The warm-up band came out after about 20 minutes (which was great, I was expecting to wait for like an hour). They were a local pop-punk band called The Bottom Line, who I'd never heard of before but were very Simple Plan/All Time Low, so I enjoyed them a lot. They came on to Miley Cyrus - Party in the USA, which had everyone a little confused but mostly laughing and jumping around. After a couple of their own songs they covered Taylor Swift - We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, but a punk rock version which was a lot of fun XD
When the lights went down a second time, the venue filled with smoke, the stage lights came up and The Hormones (and James Dewees!!) came out and the crowd obviously went nuts. then when Gerard came out in his signature blue suit (to some pretty cool-sounding space-age track), everyone went mental. It was deafening, I never thought 400 people could make so much noise XD ♥ The whole set was full of more smoke and strobe lighting and there was a fair amount of the UFO sounds too. It's hard to put into words, just the kind of sounds you'd associate with aliens and spaceships and all kind of perfect given the album title Hesitant Alien. Sadly I don't have much in the way of lyrics to offer either - it's always difficult to make out new lyrics from live music anyway, but add the distortion effects he was using to that, and THEN consider how GWay gets when he's really into it, how unless you know the lyrics they can be totally indiscernible... and that's why I am none the wiser about 90% of the lyrics XD;;
Set List:
(I've linked stuff where I can for reference, but obviously none of the music is from the actual gig because no phones allowed)
The Bureau
They launched into this straight away, and it was everything you'd hope the start of a gig to be. Loud, fast, fun, just brilliant. Gee was obviously nervous to start with, I suppose because it's all brand new material and he didn't really have any idea how we were going to take it, but he soon started to relax when everyone was just rocking out and loving every second of it.
Action Cat
They didn't even pause for breath, The Bureau came to and end and The Hormones' guitarist (Ian Howles?) went straight into the opening chords of Action Cat. I may have had a minor freakout because I love this song. I'm just glad it was SO LOUD and nobody could hear my shout-singing over the noise of everything else XD After he finished the song with the usual repeating of "Do you miss me? 'Cause I missed you!" over and over, there was a moment of quiet during which someone shouted "We missed you Gerard!" and he grinned and said, all kind of warm and sweet and genuine, "I missed you guys too."
Zero Zero
"This song is called Zero Zero." Cue second freakout on my part (including grabbing my brother's arm and shaking like OH MY GOD ZERO ZERO) because I have a crappy demo of this song which I adore to pieces but to hear it performed live, all polished and going to be on the album was incredible. There was lots of back-and-forth screaming of "Call me zero zero zero! I am zero, you are zero!" going on and you could really see how much he was getting into it - y'know how he gets when he starts screwing his face up and really singing his heart out? It was like that. Brilliant song
Millions
There was the usual 'thank you for coming out, it's good to be here, hope you're having fun' stuff, then Millions. Millions is such a gorgeous song, oh man. I have an AWFUL fan recording of this from like, 2012 or something, idek, and you can barely make out any of the lyrics, but when he sang, "I think you're sore, I think I'm done, a million reasons, can I be your number one?" I seriously had tears in my eyes. After the intense energy of Zero Zero it was quite hard-hitting in the best way.
Juarez
After the dodgy fanrecording I'd heard of Juarez before (linked above), I was dubious about this one. But I am SO won over now, it really is just that the fanrecording is AWFUL. The track is brilliant, Gee's voice goes all low and smooth whenever he sings, "I can't swim, don't rub it in." I couldn't make out much of the rest of the lyrics but it was this mad mix that makes you want to dance but with slower, heavier parts at the beginning of each verse.
The bored-looking security looks like Ray after a rather extreme haircut....
Drugstore Perfume
There was another brief pause before Juarez, where Gee thanked us all again for coming out and said how much he appreciated us all going out on a limb for him, because there was so much stuff we probably hadn't heard before. At this point Nick leans over and says, "Is it just me or does he sound like a chipmunk?" XDD I cracked right up and told him Gerard always talks like that. Anyway, they brought the lighting right down for this, just a steady, deep red, and the song was much calmer than anything else so far, stripped right back to the skeleton, almost. It was lovely to hear him sing like that after everything before, it was rather stunning. Very reminiscent of Cancer, but more the overall feel of the song, not the soul-destroying lyrics. It was pretty beautiful.
Get the Gang Together
I haven't been able to find anything about this, no fanrecordings, nothing, so I'm guessing this was the first time he'd played it publicly. It was so much fun, lots of audience interaction, he kept getting us to wave and clap and do jazz hands. Lots of strobe lighting for this too, it was so bright and bouncy and everyone, including Gee, had a lot of fun with it.
No Shows
Ugh, I LOVE this song. Absolutely love it. I don't even have the words for how much I love it, and I love it even more live. He really got into it, especially all the "We don't need no shows!" parts, really dragging out the 'need's and 'no's, and towards the end where the fuzz kicks in after the last verse alongside the guitar riff at like, 3:15, he started singing 'na na na, na na, na na' in tune with it which just reminded me of Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na) ♥
Snakedriver (Cover of The Jesus and Mary Chain)
Before they got started a girl my brother was chatting to in the queue managed to get her rainbow feather boa up onto the stage. Of course, Gee went straight for it - he tries to pretend he left his sass with My Chem, but he's clearly delusional - and grabbed it up then was like, "Man, these things are so hard to sing in. Do any of you follow me on Twitter?" - referring to his tweets where someone asked if he'd still be wearing feather boas now and he said no, they're so hot, so hard to sing in, how it felt like being choked - and then, straight at the girl who had given it to him said, "I'll wear it for you.", and proceeded to wear it for like, over half the song. But back to the song - I'd never heard this before, but it was definitely an interesting way to end the main set, with a cover of a relatively mellow song, at least compared to everything else he'd been throwing himself into.
After the song, they all disappeared off stage to some more of those hard-to-explain UFO sounds, like a flying saucer taking off into space, very TARDIS-like and wheezing and perfectly apt. Pretty rapidly the shouting for more started up - there was some crazy dude right behind us with a real screamo voice, and soon some kids near the front got the whole place chanting "Gerard! Gerard!" over and over until they eventually came back out to finish up :D
Encore:
When they came back out, someone had thrown a little bowler hat onto the stage and some of the kids down the front were trying to bring it to his attention. I couldn't hear anything they were shouting at this point, because my ears were screwed, but I could hear him perfectly fine...
"What? What? Down? Is my fly down?"
*checks... no...*
"OH, the hat? You want it back? ....Ohhh, you want me to put it on? ....I don't know, I have a pretty big head... My head is massive."
*laughs self-deprecatingly*
"But then you all knew that... Okay, I'll try, but I'm telling you, I don't think it'll fit."
*bends down, grabs hat*
"Seriously, my head is enormous..."
*puts hat on*
*looks ridiculous*
"See! My head is huge!! Okay, whose hat is this? I think you should have it back, it looks much better on you."
He half-threw the hat back to her and I guess she held out her hand for a high five or fist bump or something, because first his face screwed up all confused, like, 'I-don't-understand-what-you-want', but then he leaned right out over everyone to reach her - cue security panicking because he looked about two seconds away from falling off the stage and getting mobbed or something. It was a little bit funny XD
Brother
So, anyway, hat returned, they got back to the regular set, and he talks a little bit more about how awesome everyone has been; "Thank you for letting me still do this, it means the world to me. I love you." Then they gear up and he says, "This is a song I wrote about Mikey Way." And I may or may not have sort of kind of freaked the fuck out >_> I missed the next bit, but the song, oh, the song was fantastic. Again, it was difficult to make out the lyrics, but it sounded incredibly heartfelt and slightly troubled, which I suppose is just about right for Mikey. It was all very... bright city lights and not caring what people say and loving life and running off into the sunset, but with this troubling undertone of 'what are you going to do, are you okay', that kind of feeling to it. It was pretty intense.
Maya the Psychic
"This song is about my psychic. She's called Maya. It's called Maya the Psychic." That's deep, dude >_>
And of course, he ended it on a high. I would definitely go as far as to say this song was the most fun of the entire set, and that's even with how much I love Action Cat and No Shows. It was so upbeat and bouncy, pink and white and blue and green lighting, incredibly catchy and I don't think there was a person in there that was able to stay still for it.
And then it was all over O_O;; The house lights came up and for the longest moment, everyone just stood there, like, "Woah. So that just happened." It was almost like he'd had us all under this spell, mesmerised for the past hour, and suddenly it had broken and nobody knew what to do with themselves. It was a kind of incredible feeling. It faded as soon as everyone starting chattering and grinning and laughing, but it was definitely something special.
After the show he spent a good hour and a half outside the back doors signing stuff and talking to fans. Then he got in the taxi that had been idling in wait for him for AGES, got to the end of the venue drive, and stopped the taxi so he could get out and talk to more fans and sign more stuff for another 20 mins. If anyone ever tries to say this guy doesn't adore his fans, they're insane.
I was going back over the gig in the car on the way home, and I actually don't think he's done much to his voice in the studio at all. Like, for My Chem, they overlaid his voice so many times, you'd have three or four different recordings of the same line sung in different harmonies and with different inflections all laid over one another which gave the songs this feeling of being big, larger than the sum of their parts. But for this it's just one vocal track a lot of the time, very little in the way of backing vocals, and the recordings I have of Action Cat and No Shows sound damn near identical to how he sang them live. I'd actually say he sounded BETTER live, which I suppose is in keeping with the dirty, 'shitty' sound he said he wanted for the album. So I'm pretty convinced he's done very little mixing and leveling of his voice in the production studio - I think a lot of it has been recorded and just... done. Not messed with at all, not 'fixed' in any way to make it sound better, it just... is. Which I think is why these recordings sound so different to what I'm used to from him, but in a really, really good way.
Ugh, you guys It was so good. So good. I feel like one of the luckiest people in the universe right now, managing to be one of 400 in the world who got to see that show, got to listen to that music first and got to experience that energy. He was so pumped, taking everything we gave, ramping it up and throwing it straight back at us tenfold. It was incredible, and I still can't quite believe it happened, because getting to see Gerard Way in that tiny little venue was never in a million years something I could have imagined happening. Just incredible.