Gig Review: Black Gold, 17 September 2009.
[last.fm | setlist]
Black Gold supporting Neko Case @ Barbican Centre, London.
So yesterday was the trek to London to see Black Gold play the last date of their supporting gig with Neko Case. And boy, was it an adventure.
Firstly the usual; Bex got up and showered blah blah blah battled with devil contacts (more on that later) & hopped a train to Birmingham. Met @ i_am_tre blah blah we hopped a train to London etc etc. Then of course the fail happens. As it tends to do with us.
We we're meeting Sofie (@ to_isengard) off the Eurostar, because she's cool and came all the way from Belgium for the day to see the guys, but of course Jimmy adjusted for the hour time difference so we were there 2 hours early instead of the planned half and hour/45 minutes. So we lurked round and whatnot and I took some touristy photos with Jimmy's camera (I'll post them when she wakes back up) and we totally nearly missed the train coming in for realsies because we were maybe being geeks
Omg @ i_am_tre's impression of a dementor is the best. Sucking noises and floaty arms inclusive. about 23 hours ago from txt
and singing along to music and such. We saw the queue of chauffeurs with signs for people and we wanted to make one that said @to_isengard on it but we didn't have enough time to.
Cue a Sofie and off we wandered merrily to the tube. We got to the venue easily enough, 3rd stop on the Victoria tube line, but oh hey we're lost as soon as we get off the tube. Thanks to vaguely useful BigIssue guy for the directions we were off in kind of the right way-ish. (sorry I don't carry cash these days dude).
I say kind of because it should've been easy enough to find but we wandered in and out of doors in the place til we found something resembling the right part of the building.
Found the barbican. Lost inside. Hungry. Fail. about 21 hours ago from txt
Then we wanted food and couldn't find out way to Tescos (If you follow my twitter then you'll have noticed my lamenting at the lack of actualfax chippies and okay I'm totally interspacing this with tweets now) but we got there eventually. And even managed to find our way back into the right bit of the Barbican! Score one for us.
We sit eat pringles and generally mess about for a bit. & I play Al's band for Sofie. If you've read my previous blog post about last week's two gigs you'll already be aware of my adoration for a certain scottsman (and his little singing voice) but this week I was bored and in flicking through some old editions of Rock Sound that I have floating round what did I find but a review of Al's band's latest album out last May. This brought about some Internet research on our Mr. Paxton and I'd subsequently found his band's website; his side project's myspace; a couple of interviews and even one of the short animations he's done the sound/music for. Seriously dude is a dark horse. I immediately bought a bunch of the CDs with literally the last of my money (I've been borrowing from Jimmy the past 2 days because she's lovely and knows I'll give it right back when I get paid next Friday) and I downloaded some that I will eventually buy legally it's just I really can't afford to right now. See what you do to me Al? I buy CD's over food :/ Anywho I hope I've firmly cementented my "Al's biggest fan" status. (Talking of, I think said CD's are sat in the office of my block waiting for me)
Anyway back to the story (you'll notice I tend to go off on tangents a lot, I'm not good at keeping it short) who wanders over and asks if we've got a pen he can borrow but Mr Kerry Wayne (2nd surname I can't remember) current touring bassist of our guys! He's lovely and said see you at the show, clearly we're a bit obvious to them as to who we are now.
What happens next? SOUND CHECK! We couldn't hear well from where we were so naturally we went and stood right up next to the door. And what's that we hear? Canyon, oh hell yeah it sounded amazing even through a thick set of doors.
canyon sounds stupidly fucking good. about 19 hours ago from txt
And what was next? What You Did! And wait, it can't be? It's Breakdown! Cue flail becuase they'd not played either of these two previously. I maybe decided beer was necessary to calm my nervs that they'd cut Idols out of the set to make room for the others. But No! There's Idols as well. *Bex breathes a sigh of happy relief*
Then Kerry wanders past again, srsly that dude does a lot of wandering, and I scurry up to him and just tell him we though sound check sounded aweasome. He said thanks and went off back stage.
*Drinks corona, passes time*
Jimmy: AL!!! *waves* (She'd happened to look over the balcony to where Kerry had gone and it's out Mr Paxton in a lovely blue plaid shirt (possibly my favourite) and we quickly wave and yell down about how amazing sound check was and got a double thumbs up off him. *Glee face*
Quick chat with nice doorman and he said official times had BG's set at 45 mins but it'd more likely run to an hour. Cue more glee faces. BTW all of the Barbican Staff were very lovely and really easy to talk to/ask about anything.
I hare it to the loo (you don't want to know how much of the last two days has been centered round toilet breaks for me) then we can go in!
We have fucking amazing seats. about 18 hours ago from txt
And we really did, again you'll have to wait for the pics but 4th Row circle was such a great view.
We made friends with the people behind us cause as it was a seated gig again we didn't want to just stand up and piss them off. Not that we did end up standing because we felt more than a little out of place but there were a lot more people clapping and whoooing them after songs \o/ I think word had gotten round the Neko Case community that BG are really good (dude behind said "I head someone say they were amazing" so we told him they really are)
And they had a proper light show going on and everything. The acoustics in that place we're fucking amazing. And I don't really like much classical music but I would so go to like a musical there or more bandband shows.
Anyways. Setlist as far as I can remember:
IDK set seemed longer, but whatever.
And yes I did cry through Canyon again. Although I still think Plans would've been better before Canyon then Shine but that's just me and I have no actual clue about that sort of thing.
Al, oh Al, you could actualfax hear bb sing sing. Generally we've heard him under Than's very strong voice but last night you could actually hear (and see I was watching) the bits where it's just Al doing the backing vocals. Although Than's mike was a bit quiet or something cause we couldn't hear him as much as normal.
Than: I'd like to introduce our band tonight. The UK citizen Al Paxton *Bex kills her throat screaming*
Kerry Wayne-Something from mumble mumble *claps*
Eric Ronick on keyboard of Washington and Brooklyn *super claps etc*
Eric: And Than Luu playing drums and many more instruments that he couldn't show us tonight, holding it down in the back. *claps and whoos etc*
And bbs are done! Literally on the last note of Comedown the three of us jumped up and flail-clapped-whoo'd and generally had a massive spazz at out boys. (A friend (Lola if you know her) later said that she knew where we were because of the huge scream for Al and that there was only 4 people giving them a standing ovation, her being one of them.) I will say there was some dude pretty into it right at the front too. I hope the guys saw us tbh.
I ran off to go mess with my fail contact. I decided that I'd probably put a right contact in my left eye so it was a litttle foggy/blurry all day. Because it's a lower prescription. But that sorted and we had more talky times. And a loo break after the interval was over and the queue had gone down.
Kerry wandered through again and we had a quick intro session cause I never met him last week and Sofie obv hadn't. Then he ran off again.
Next was chatter with the lovely merch girl Kelly. And I got an awesome BG shirt, that actually FITS! it's similar to the one we got with the Rush pre-order but it's actual sparkely gold and the jukebox thingy is in the bottom right cornere. & it's girls cut so it fits me nice. Super thanks to tour manager Chris who said to do us a deal (I'm getting the feeling that we're a little notorious as the UK fans who lurk the whole country) but either way thanks dude.
Then Kelly said that "your guys" were palnning on going on stage for Neko's encore so we wandered back in there and suffered through 5 of her songs watching the door for point shoes & skinny jeans. I say suffered but they are very good for their genre, I just don't perticularly like country(folkrock w/e) music. One false alarm and a little boredom later there's an Eric and an Al and a Than lurking round one mic stand.
I don't even know what they were singing (or ahhing) tbh because they were just being adorable and totally a little smashed tipsy already. Including Eric hugging Al then Than joining in and lots of cute little clappy things and finger clicks. It was awesome.
We hung round merch a lot, I got more beer & so I maybe put the drunkishness on a little but yaknow I was doing some recon... Very much contemplated cartwheeling across the room (props to whoever knows why I wanted to do so) and had a little jig every time twitter sent my phone a text (my text alert is the chorus of Idols) thank you all for fueling that ;)
Got to the point where Kelly was pretty much done packing up her merch and no sign of the guys, pretty sure Eric had taken a press girl backstage so we figured they were busy. So I totally wrote them a note. Basically consisting of "bummer we missed you, Eric I've got something to ask you next time you're here, Al I love Stapleton, Kerry it was nice meeting you finally & Than I hope to see your photos online soon. love forevs. kisses, Bex." And Kelly was nice enough to say she'd get it to the guys. Although they would all be nicely drunk by then so who knows if they'll ever even read it. (or lol Eric'll be unpacking tomorrow and be "wtf is this in my bag for")
We tube it back to St. Pancrass & get Sbux. Freeze because they don't seem to have a door to shut there. Sofie and Jimmy figure out that Costa is way warmer and also 24 hour so we lurk there most of the night. There were people just faceplanted on the tables asleep so expect photos cause we were bored.
4.30 and i think it's breakfast time. about 9 hours ago from txt
Marmite and Chese panini and a wander to the eurostar and we had to leave Sofie to get on her train. Expect that photo later too.
Me and Jimmy hop the tube back to Euston and freeze on that platform for a bit.
Jump the train & fall asleep for an hour in spits and spats (ticket lady had to wake us up to check ours)
And then into Birmingham and of course I totally forget that I've got an off peak ticket so it's not valid til after half 9. Fail. Luckily it was a really nice ticket man and he only charged me for the train until half 9 so that the rest of my ticket would be valid once we got past a certain station & time. So I've now officially got no money but I didn't get charged £200 for an invalid ticket.
Fell asleep again, got confused & I didn't even know if I was on the right train or not tbh.
But anyway I got back to Manc eventually and here I am not sleeping writing out epic funtimes.
Basically the title of this post is true. I would do all this again in a heartbeat because I love these guys and their music to no end. I've had favourite bands but these lovely fellows take it to the max. If you're in the UK their Album's out on the 5th of October, go buy it and support them and let's all hope they can get back over here soon. (And that I prepare a little better for it because I will be following them all overr, even if it means pretending I've got swine flu to get off work for the week.)
And that's the end of a very wonderful two days. I hope the guys get back here soon!
Black Gold supporting Neko Case @ Barbican Centre, London.
So yesterday was the trek to London to see Black Gold play the last date of their supporting gig with Neko Case. And boy, was it an adventure.
Firstly the usual; Bex got up and showered blah blah blah battled with devil contacts (more on that later) & hopped a train to Birmingham. Met @ i_am_tre blah blah we hopped a train to London etc etc. Then of course the fail happens. As it tends to do with us.
We we're meeting Sofie (@ to_isengard) off the Eurostar, because she's cool and came all the way from Belgium for the day to see the guys, but of course Jimmy adjusted for the hour time difference so we were there 2 hours early instead of the planned half and hour/45 minutes. So we lurked round and whatnot and I took some touristy photos with Jimmy's camera (I'll post them when she wakes back up) and we totally nearly missed the train coming in for realsies because we were maybe being geeks
Omg @ i_am_tre's impression of a dementor is the best. Sucking noises and floaty arms inclusive. about 23 hours ago from txt
and singing along to music and such. We saw the queue of chauffeurs with signs for people and we wanted to make one that said @to_isengard on it but we didn't have enough time to.
Cue a Sofie and off we wandered merrily to the tube. We got to the venue easily enough, 3rd stop on the Victoria tube line, but oh hey we're lost as soon as we get off the tube. Thanks to vaguely useful BigIssue guy for the directions we were off in kind of the right way-ish. (sorry I don't carry cash these days dude).
I say kind of because it should've been easy enough to find but we wandered in and out of doors in the place til we found something resembling the right part of the building.
Found the barbican. Lost inside. Hungry. Fail. about 21 hours ago from txt
Then we wanted food and couldn't find out way to Tescos (If you follow my twitter then you'll have noticed my lamenting at the lack of actualfax chippies and okay I'm totally interspacing this with tweets now) but we got there eventually. And even managed to find our way back into the right bit of the Barbican! Score one for us.
We sit eat pringles and generally mess about for a bit. & I play Al's band for Sofie. If you've read my previous blog post about last week's two gigs you'll already be aware of my adoration for a certain scottsman (and his little singing voice) but this week I was bored and in flicking through some old editions of Rock Sound that I have floating round what did I find but a review of Al's band's latest album out last May. This brought about some Internet research on our Mr. Paxton and I'd subsequently found his band's website; his side project's myspace; a couple of interviews and even one of the short animations he's done the sound/music for. Seriously dude is a dark horse. I immediately bought a bunch of the CDs with literally the last of my money (I've been borrowing from Jimmy the past 2 days because she's lovely and knows I'll give it right back when I get paid next Friday) and I downloaded some that I will eventually buy legally it's just I really can't afford to right now. See what you do to me Al? I buy CD's over food :/ Anywho I hope I've firmly cementented my "Al's biggest fan" status. (Talking of, I think said CD's are sat in the office of my block waiting for me)
Anyway back to the story (you'll notice I tend to go off on tangents a lot, I'm not good at keeping it short) who wanders over and asks if we've got a pen he can borrow but Mr Kerry Wayne (2nd surname I can't remember) current touring bassist of our guys! He's lovely and said see you at the show, clearly we're a bit obvious to them as to who we are now.
What happens next? SOUND CHECK! We couldn't hear well from where we were so naturally we went and stood right up next to the door. And what's that we hear? Canyon, oh hell yeah it sounded amazing even through a thick set of doors.
canyon sounds stupidly fucking good. about 19 hours ago from txt
And what was next? What You Did! And wait, it can't be? It's Breakdown! Cue flail becuase they'd not played either of these two previously. I maybe decided beer was necessary to calm my nervs that they'd cut Idols out of the set to make room for the others. But No! There's Idols as well. *Bex breathes a sigh of happy relief*
Then Kerry wanders past again, srsly that dude does a lot of wandering, and I scurry up to him and just tell him we though sound check sounded aweasome. He said thanks and went off back stage.
*Drinks corona, passes time*
Jimmy: AL!!! *waves* (She'd happened to look over the balcony to where Kerry had gone and it's out Mr Paxton in a lovely blue plaid shirt (possibly my favourite) and we quickly wave and yell down about how amazing sound check was and got a double thumbs up off him. *Glee face*
Quick chat with nice doorman and he said official times had BG's set at 45 mins but it'd more likely run to an hour. Cue more glee faces. BTW all of the Barbican Staff were very lovely and really easy to talk to/ask about anything.
I hare it to the loo (you don't want to know how much of the last two days has been centered round toilet breaks for me) then we can go in!
We have fucking amazing seats. about 18 hours ago from txt
And we really did, again you'll have to wait for the pics but 4th Row circle was such a great view.
We made friends with the people behind us cause as it was a seated gig again we didn't want to just stand up and piss them off. Not that we did end up standing because we felt more than a little out of place but there were a lot more people clapping and whoooing them after songs \o/ I think word had gotten round the Neko Case community that BG are really good (dude behind said "I head someone say they were amazing" so we told him they really are)
And they had a proper light show going on and everything. The acoustics in that place we're fucking amazing. And I don't really like much classical music but I would so go to like a musical there or more bandband shows.
Anyways. Setlist as far as I can remember:
- Idols
- Detroit
- Breakdown
- What You Did
- Canyon
- Plans and Reveries
- Shine
- The Comedown
IDK set seemed longer, but whatever.
And yes I did cry through Canyon again. Although I still think Plans would've been better before Canyon then Shine but that's just me and I have no actual clue about that sort of thing.
Al, oh Al, you could actualfax hear bb sing sing. Generally we've heard him under Than's very strong voice but last night you could actually hear (and see I was watching) the bits where it's just Al doing the backing vocals. Although Than's mike was a bit quiet or something cause we couldn't hear him as much as normal.
Than: I'd like to introduce our band tonight. The UK citizen Al Paxton *Bex kills her throat screaming*
Kerry Wayne-Something from mumble mumble *claps*
Eric Ronick on keyboard of Washington and Brooklyn *super claps etc*
Eric: And Than Luu playing drums and many more instruments that he couldn't show us tonight, holding it down in the back. *claps and whoos etc*
And bbs are done! Literally on the last note of Comedown the three of us jumped up and flail-clapped-whoo'd and generally had a massive spazz at out boys. (A friend (Lola if you know her) later said that she knew where we were because of the huge scream for Al and that there was only 4 people giving them a standing ovation, her being one of them.) I will say there was some dude pretty into it right at the front too. I hope the guys saw us tbh.
I ran off to go mess with my fail contact. I decided that I'd probably put a right contact in my left eye so it was a litttle foggy/blurry all day. Because it's a lower prescription. But that sorted and we had more talky times. And a loo break after the interval was over and the queue had gone down.
Kerry wandered through again and we had a quick intro session cause I never met him last week and Sofie obv hadn't. Then he ran off again.
Next was chatter with the lovely merch girl Kelly. And I got an awesome BG shirt, that actually FITS! it's similar to the one we got with the Rush pre-order but it's actual sparkely gold and the jukebox thingy is in the bottom right cornere. & it's girls cut so it fits me nice. Super thanks to tour manager Chris who said to do us a deal (I'm getting the feeling that we're a little notorious as the UK fans who lurk the whole country) but either way thanks dude.
Then Kelly said that "your guys" were palnning on going on stage for Neko's encore so we wandered back in there and suffered through 5 of her songs watching the door for point shoes & skinny jeans. I say suffered but they are very good for their genre, I just don't perticularly like country(folkrock w/e) music. One false alarm and a little boredom later there's an Eric and an Al and a Than lurking round one mic stand.
I don't even know what they were singing (or ahhing) tbh because they were just being adorable and totally a little smashed tipsy already. Including Eric hugging Al then Than joining in and lots of cute little clappy things and finger clicks. It was awesome.
We hung round merch a lot, I got more beer & so I maybe put the drunkishness on a little but yaknow I was doing some recon... Very much contemplated cartwheeling across the room (props to whoever knows why I wanted to do so) and had a little jig every time twitter sent my phone a text (my text alert is the chorus of Idols) thank you all for fueling that ;)
Got to the point where Kelly was pretty much done packing up her merch and no sign of the guys, pretty sure Eric had taken a press girl backstage so we figured they were busy. So I totally wrote them a note. Basically consisting of "bummer we missed you, Eric I've got something to ask you next time you're here, Al I love Stapleton, Kerry it was nice meeting you finally & Than I hope to see your photos online soon. love forevs. kisses, Bex." And Kelly was nice enough to say she'd get it to the guys. Although they would all be nicely drunk by then so who knows if they'll ever even read it. (or lol Eric'll be unpacking tomorrow and be "wtf is this in my bag for")
We tube it back to St. Pancrass & get Sbux. Freeze because they don't seem to have a door to shut there. Sofie and Jimmy figure out that Costa is way warmer and also 24 hour so we lurk there most of the night. There were people just faceplanted on the tables asleep so expect photos cause we were bored.
4.30 and i think it's breakfast time. about 9 hours ago from txt
Marmite and Chese panini and a wander to the eurostar and we had to leave Sofie to get on her train. Expect that photo later too.
Me and Jimmy hop the tube back to Euston and freeze on that platform for a bit.
Jump the train & fall asleep for an hour in spits and spats (ticket lady had to wake us up to check ours)
And then into Birmingham and of course I totally forget that I've got an off peak ticket so it's not valid til after half 9. Fail. Luckily it was a really nice ticket man and he only charged me for the train until half 9 so that the rest of my ticket would be valid once we got past a certain station & time. So I've now officially got no money but I didn't get charged £200 for an invalid ticket.
Fell asleep again, got confused & I didn't even know if I was on the right train or not tbh.
But anyway I got back to Manc eventually and here I am not sleeping writing out epic funtimes.
Basically the title of this post is true. I would do all this again in a heartbeat because I love these guys and their music to no end. I've had favourite bands but these lovely fellows take it to the max. If you're in the UK their Album's out on the 5th of October, go buy it and support them and let's all hope they can get back over here soon. (And that I prepare a little better for it because I will be following them all overr, even if it means pretending I've got swine flu to get off work for the week.)
And that's the end of a very wonderful two days. I hope the guys get back here soon!