razorlight
okay, the $64-question: is the razorlight album really as good as johnny borrell says it is? and the $64000-question: curly-mopped-johnny, or straight-mopped-johnny? (straight, goddamn!)
anyway.
first band were called the ferris wheel junkies and yes they were as bad as their name suggests. they were, for want of a better phrase, scouse pub-rock, but they kept everyone entertained by having a song with the lyric 'talk to the hand cause the face ain't listening', being generally scouse and forgetting the lyrics to the closing song. they looked like they were all teachers in the week (uh, not that i'm stereotyping teachers or anything, kthx) but still, mildly entertaining. and the bass player gave us some water because it was ridiculously hot in there (why do they do this at gigs? why do they think we'll enjoy it more if we're dying of heatstroke?)
next, neil's children who were actually one hell of a lot better than their name suggests. sounding like a strange, bastardised version of all the good parts of the vines, eighties matchbox b-line disaster, the sex pistols, yourcodenameis:milo et al, they appeared wearing customised, safety-pinned shirts and ties, robert smith hair and smeared eyeliner, and proceeded to stun us all with half an hour of insane and quite beautiful music. boasting swaggering basslines, a plethora of fx pedals (some of which they could get rid of, to be honest), bruising drums, schizoid guitars, and a drummer who should be a model, they ended their set by completely trashing the stage. and loz got married to their singer. she gave him a (key)ring and everything.
after this display, razorlight were always going to have their work cut out to live up to both their own hype and not being upstaged by their own support band. however, disregarding both a set list and the audience is not the way to do it. we're all aware of johnny's ego, but the songs simply don't live up to the hype. the singles are great and there's some great basslines, drumbeats and guitar-y bits in there, and so on, but really, it's not going to be better than dylan's first album or whatever it is he said it would be.
also, a small band - which, whatever borrell wants to think, is all razorlight are - can't afford to alienate their audience, which is what johnny managed to do by completely ignoring them for most of it (although i did get a 'hey soaf' after writing a message to him from me, loz and louise in a moment of unprovoked and heavy fangirlishness) and only bothering to touch the audience in the last song, in the sort of token hand-brushing gesture often utilised by rock-snobs like brian molko. walking offstage after about 11 songs and leaving everyone waiting for nearly 10 minutes for an encore which didn't materialise didn't help matters.
plus, to all the moronic twenty-something drunk arsebadgers who think it's clever to go to a gig on a saturday night, get plastered and spend the entire night trying to flatten people on the front row with your drunken and shit dancing/'moshing': FUCK OFF. kthxbye.
bass dude from ferris wheel junkies. he gave us water.
guitarists/singers. muchos eyecandy
loz's new hubbie. he's not that fat in real life o.O
bass player and microphone stand...
the drummer = SEXXX. i want his babies.
sweatsoaked!johnny. rawr.
anyone else think he looks like justin hawkins here...?
bass dude. he had purdy hair.
and again.
fairly horrible photo of johnny.
another fairly horrible photo. not a photogenic band, this lot.
thassyourlot.
and oh oh oh i got a craig nicholls stylee maroon velvet blazer. i'm seriously in love with it. and i still haven't done any of my work. i'm past caring now.
still angsty over mcr too. sniff. they're back off to america now to tour over there, and then they're on the warped tour. blah. with any luck they'll tour over here again in september for the album launch, and i don't care if i have to sell my body for it, i will get tickets to every date they play.
edit: will fix tags and so on tomorrow, ignore them for now. just, imagine italics and stuff, yeah? fixed.