This bit in the middle is what I'm here for
I had a good week last week...
Wednesday 26th November, saw me meeting up with Laura (and later, Law) in London to later attend the last show in Guillemots' "Fishbone for a Drink Tour". It had been my intention to view something of London and take tourist snaps. This didn't happen. Various time constraints meant that the only part of "tourist London" I saw was Oxford Street. Which is basically a long row of shops that reminded me of Manchester. So, apologies daquien but I have no photos of London! I do have many photos of the excellent Guillemots gig though.
Despite the best endeavours of the London tube system, Laura, Law and I made it to the Barbican in time for the support section of the Guillemots' show. As described in a previous entry, this involved the band improvising to some short films. The Barbican gig was seated so I finally got to watch the short films in something similar to cinema conditions and not with my neck cricked upwards... which was nice!
Then on with the main show! Fyfe was as chatty and engaging as ever and the whole band seemed to enjoy themselves. The setlist was as follows:
It was a brilliant set in which even those songs I'd heard previously on this tour (or other tours) became a new experience owing to the fact that the Barbican has a grand piano. Fyfe Dangerfield has apparently been playing the piano since age three. It tells. From the first notes of Little Bear, it was obvious that piano was his first love.
I was especially pleased with the inclusion of Sea Out and What We Have because I'd not heard either of these live before. They did not disappoint. Also, staple songs were heard in refreshing new ways thanks to Fyfe playing piano rather than guitar on Get Over It and MC Lord Magrao accompanying with an accordian on Made-up Lovesong #43:
I was also really happy that Fyfe did his solo version of Standing on the Last Star again. I've been lucky to hear that twice now. I like the album version but I love his solo version; so heartbreakingly beautiful:
My personal highlight of the night though was the brilliant rendition of Kriss Kross in which Fyfe, Arista and Magrao all play the piano simultaneously and in time. Well, after an initial false start..:
They soon got it together:
The show ended in the usual way with Trains to Brazil and Sao Paulo (Take me Home was not played
inbetween - I'm not sure it would have fit, to be honest). Trains was upbeat as usual and many people got up from their seats and danced along. Sao Paulo started with Grieg "playing" a wind machine that they "found in the hall" (!?), then performed its usual transformation from beautiful ballad to dramatic breakdown of adrenalin-inducing noise. During which an old man (that Fyfe had pulled out of the audience before the song started) got to bang Fyfe's usual dustbin lid on stage, freeing Fyfe to run up the corridors between audience blocks banging a coffee tin! I didn't manage to get any photos of the addirional percussion and my photo of Greig with the wind machine is very blurry... but I did get a few good shots, including several of Arista on her double bass:
The main reason I didn't catch any of the final breakdown of Sao Paulo was that the entire audience stood up and clapped along. Which was great because it had been so very odd to be sat during the more energised songs. The audience remained stood, standing ovation style, and clapped and cheered until Fyfe reappeared on the stage to perform an encore of the hauntingly sublime Blue Would Still Be Blue on a portable keyboard:
After the show, one of the lovely roadies retrieved a setlist each for Laura and myself. Then we had opportunity to chat with the band, telling them what an amazing show they had put on and being thanked by Fyfe for attending.
All in all, it was an exceptional night.
To view all my gig photos from Guillemots Barbican Hall performance, please click here
The following night, I went to see The Shortwave Set at the Dry Bar in Manchester with the two Pauls. My beloved man and our friend paulgregory. We started with food and drinks in the Balcony Bar at Piccadily station where we all met up. When we reached the Dry Bar we joined a couple of guys at a large settee/table arrangement. We soon realised that Paul G has a fashion twin!:
My Paul also discovered how bright a flash my new camera has:
Which explains why I turn the flash off when taking gig photos! Of course doing so does relies on their being good gig lighting in order to capture some decent photos. Sadly, the Dry Bar does not have the best stage set-up or lighting rig, so my photos are mainly grainy:
To view all my grainy snaps, please click here
Although my photos are substandard, The Shortwave Set were not. They came on stage to the mesmorising sounds of Harmonia and played a great set including my personal favourites Is It Any Wonder? (the best track from their first album), Replica and House of Lies and finishing on a rocked out rendition of Sun Machine. During the set, lead guitarist/vocalist Andrew did much of the chatting although there was also banter between him and Ulrika. At one point, they played a new song and warned us that they hadn't prefected playing it yet. It sounded good but they did go wrong at one point, to which Andrew joked at the end that "in years to come, you can saw you won't only at our gig but our practise session too". As they walked off the stage, they were approached by several fans who encouraged them back onto stage for an encore. They played a couple of their older tracks including Better Than Bad which was a treat. You gotta love fangirls. Well, I do - I blatantly am one.
The only negatives to this night was the three support acts who ranged from dire to just not very good. That and the fact that The Shortwave Set did not come on stahe until quite late (approx 10pm, I think) meaning that Paul and I missed our last train and had to get a cab back home. On the positive side, it was a rare treat to enjoy a gig with my Paul and he did enjoy the main event and enthused about their music in the cab back home. It was also good to catch up with Mr Gregory. Another great night.
On the Saturday of the same week, I headed to Sheffield to spend time with my good friend Samantha. That night we, once again, headed out to the indie nightclub The Casbah for drinking and dancing:
(We may have been a little drunk in this photo...)
In addition to the usual indie rock & rolling, Samantha managed to pull a keen yet shy young indie kid. Isn't he cute?:
(Samantha will thank me for posting these drunken photos... she will!)
I behaved myself and continued dancing. Samantha meanwhile saved her number to the young man's phone and told him that the ball is in his court. Only time will tell if cute indie kid has the balls to call Samantha or whether he wusses out...
We finished the evening on bread and onion houmous - yum!
We lazed around for most of Sunday before going to see The Fratellis at Sheffield Academy. I'm not too fussed about the Fratellis - I actually think they are a bit of a modern day Chas & Dave (but cooler, obviously). Samantha quite likes them though and festival performances that I saw televised suggested that they would be a good live band so I had agreed to join her a while back. However, due to our nonchalence with regards to seeing them and the fact that it was freezing cold in Sheffield, we decided not to queue for hours but to arrive for Doors Open instead. Hence, we were not against the barrier as we frequently are at gigs these days. We still managed to get fairly close to the front though and I was happy to realise that their rather fit, lovely-haired lead guitarist/singer positions himself not in the centre of the stage but to the left (when facing) directly ahead of where I started at the beginning of the show. So, I snapped several shots:
I especially like the last photo where it appears that his guitar is shifting between dimensions!
I also got some good shots of their fine choices of stage decor:
To view all my photos of The Fratellis gig, please click here. These photos were taken with my old camera as I dared not risk my new camera at what I presumed would be a rather more boistrous gig than your average Guillemots gig. I was correct. Along with the usual jumping and dancing, which is to be encouraged, there was also an unforunate number of idiots in the crowd who appeared to want to do nothing but push the crowd and start fights. Why? I don't know. All I know is that this element luckily tired early on and mostly left. The gig was nevertheless enjoyable. Simple, bouncy choruses lead to fun synchronised crowd jumping and arm waving. So, even though the music of The Fratellis, in my opinion, isn't a patch on many of the other bands I've seen this year, the gig was adrenaline-charge and fun!
We finished the evening with mushroom pizza, potato wedges and dip - yum!
All in all, a fab weekend!
So, I went to three gigs in a week. I spent time in three cities and I only got ~28hrs sleep in 7 days. Mostly though, I had a lot of fun and adventure (and some misadventure!). It was a great week. Life is good.
Wednesday 26th November, saw me meeting up with Laura (and later, Law) in London to later attend the last show in Guillemots' "Fishbone for a Drink Tour". It had been my intention to view something of London and take tourist snaps. This didn't happen. Various time constraints meant that the only part of "tourist London" I saw was Oxford Street. Which is basically a long row of shops that reminded me of Manchester. So, apologies daquien but I have no photos of London! I do have many photos of the excellent Guillemots gig though.
Despite the best endeavours of the London tube system, Laura, Law and I made it to the Barbican in time for the support section of the Guillemots' show. As described in a previous entry, this involved the band improvising to some short films. The Barbican gig was seated so I finally got to watch the short films in something similar to cinema conditions and not with my neck cricked upwards... which was nice!
Then on with the main show! Fyfe was as chatty and engaging as ever and the whole band seemed to enjoy themselves. The setlist was as follows:
It was a brilliant set in which even those songs I'd heard previously on this tour (or other tours) became a new experience owing to the fact that the Barbican has a grand piano. Fyfe Dangerfield has apparently been playing the piano since age three. It tells. From the first notes of Little Bear, it was obvious that piano was his first love.
I was especially pleased with the inclusion of Sea Out and What We Have because I'd not heard either of these live before. They did not disappoint. Also, staple songs were heard in refreshing new ways thanks to Fyfe playing piano rather than guitar on Get Over It and MC Lord Magrao accompanying with an accordian on Made-up Lovesong #43:
I was also really happy that Fyfe did his solo version of Standing on the Last Star again. I've been lucky to hear that twice now. I like the album version but I love his solo version; so heartbreakingly beautiful:
My personal highlight of the night though was the brilliant rendition of Kriss Kross in which Fyfe, Arista and Magrao all play the piano simultaneously and in time. Well, after an initial false start..:
They soon got it together:
The show ended in the usual way with Trains to Brazil and Sao Paulo (Take me Home was not played
inbetween - I'm not sure it would have fit, to be honest). Trains was upbeat as usual and many people got up from their seats and danced along. Sao Paulo started with Grieg "playing" a wind machine that they "found in the hall" (!?), then performed its usual transformation from beautiful ballad to dramatic breakdown of adrenalin-inducing noise. During which an old man (that Fyfe had pulled out of the audience before the song started) got to bang Fyfe's usual dustbin lid on stage, freeing Fyfe to run up the corridors between audience blocks banging a coffee tin! I didn't manage to get any photos of the addirional percussion and my photo of Greig with the wind machine is very blurry... but I did get a few good shots, including several of Arista on her double bass:
The main reason I didn't catch any of the final breakdown of Sao Paulo was that the entire audience stood up and clapped along. Which was great because it had been so very odd to be sat during the more energised songs. The audience remained stood, standing ovation style, and clapped and cheered until Fyfe reappeared on the stage to perform an encore of the hauntingly sublime Blue Would Still Be Blue on a portable keyboard:
After the show, one of the lovely roadies retrieved a setlist each for Laura and myself. Then we had opportunity to chat with the band, telling them what an amazing show they had put on and being thanked by Fyfe for attending.
All in all, it was an exceptional night.
To view all my gig photos from Guillemots Barbican Hall performance, please click here
The following night, I went to see The Shortwave Set at the Dry Bar in Manchester with the two Pauls. My beloved man and our friend paulgregory. We started with food and drinks in the Balcony Bar at Piccadily station where we all met up. When we reached the Dry Bar we joined a couple of guys at a large settee/table arrangement. We soon realised that Paul G has a fashion twin!:
My Paul also discovered how bright a flash my new camera has:
Which explains why I turn the flash off when taking gig photos! Of course doing so does relies on their being good gig lighting in order to capture some decent photos. Sadly, the Dry Bar does not have the best stage set-up or lighting rig, so my photos are mainly grainy:
To view all my grainy snaps, please click here
Although my photos are substandard, The Shortwave Set were not. They came on stage to the mesmorising sounds of Harmonia and played a great set including my personal favourites Is It Any Wonder? (the best track from their first album), Replica and House of Lies and finishing on a rocked out rendition of Sun Machine. During the set, lead guitarist/vocalist Andrew did much of the chatting although there was also banter between him and Ulrika. At one point, they played a new song and warned us that they hadn't prefected playing it yet. It sounded good but they did go wrong at one point, to which Andrew joked at the end that "in years to come, you can saw you won't only at our gig but our practise session too". As they walked off the stage, they were approached by several fans who encouraged them back onto stage for an encore. They played a couple of their older tracks including Better Than Bad which was a treat. You gotta love fangirls. Well, I do - I blatantly am one.
The only negatives to this night was the three support acts who ranged from dire to just not very good. That and the fact that The Shortwave Set did not come on stahe until quite late (approx 10pm, I think) meaning that Paul and I missed our last train and had to get a cab back home. On the positive side, it was a rare treat to enjoy a gig with my Paul and he did enjoy the main event and enthused about their music in the cab back home. It was also good to catch up with Mr Gregory. Another great night.
On the Saturday of the same week, I headed to Sheffield to spend time with my good friend Samantha. That night we, once again, headed out to the indie nightclub The Casbah for drinking and dancing:
(We may have been a little drunk in this photo...)
In addition to the usual indie rock & rolling, Samantha managed to pull a keen yet shy young indie kid. Isn't he cute?:
(Samantha will thank me for posting these drunken photos... she will!)
I behaved myself and continued dancing. Samantha meanwhile saved her number to the young man's phone and told him that the ball is in his court. Only time will tell if cute indie kid has the balls to call Samantha or whether he wusses out...
We finished the evening on bread and onion houmous - yum!
We lazed around for most of Sunday before going to see The Fratellis at Sheffield Academy. I'm not too fussed about the Fratellis - I actually think they are a bit of a modern day Chas & Dave (but cooler, obviously). Samantha quite likes them though and festival performances that I saw televised suggested that they would be a good live band so I had agreed to join her a while back. However, due to our nonchalence with regards to seeing them and the fact that it was freezing cold in Sheffield, we decided not to queue for hours but to arrive for Doors Open instead. Hence, we were not against the barrier as we frequently are at gigs these days. We still managed to get fairly close to the front though and I was happy to realise that their rather fit, lovely-haired lead guitarist/singer positions himself not in the centre of the stage but to the left (when facing) directly ahead of where I started at the beginning of the show. So, I snapped several shots:
I especially like the last photo where it appears that his guitar is shifting between dimensions!
I also got some good shots of their fine choices of stage decor:
To view all my photos of The Fratellis gig, please click here. These photos were taken with my old camera as I dared not risk my new camera at what I presumed would be a rather more boistrous gig than your average Guillemots gig. I was correct. Along with the usual jumping and dancing, which is to be encouraged, there was also an unforunate number of idiots in the crowd who appeared to want to do nothing but push the crowd and start fights. Why? I don't know. All I know is that this element luckily tired early on and mostly left. The gig was nevertheless enjoyable. Simple, bouncy choruses lead to fun synchronised crowd jumping and arm waving. So, even though the music of The Fratellis, in my opinion, isn't a patch on many of the other bands I've seen this year, the gig was adrenaline-charge and fun!
We finished the evening with mushroom pizza, potato wedges and dip - yum!
All in all, a fab weekend!
So, I went to three gigs in a week. I spent time in three cities and I only got ~28hrs sleep in 7 days. Mostly though, I had a lot of fun and adventure (and some misadventure!). It was a great week. Life is good.