You don't look at her like you're looking at me
On them twitters and such, I continually enter competitions to win food. Thus far, I have managed to win pies (from Pieminister, no less) for my office but little else.
ChrisC, it turns out, does much the same thing with competitions to win gig tickets. And last week, one of them finally came up trumps.
Last year, the 100 Club (iconic venue, legendary stage of historical importance, and all-round sweatbox on Oxford Street) was floundering around in financial difficulties. I knew that. What I managed to miss was that the organisation which piled in with the readies to prop it up was, in fact, glorified sandshoe emporium Converse.
Since then, Converse have been running a series of gigs with attached ticket-lotteries. Mostly they have been big name bands, and demand has massively outstripped capacity. Blur in a 350-capacity venue? Yeah, quite a lot of people fancied that.
Last week, the gig was headlined by Veronica Falls. If you're thinking "who?" then that's rather my point. ChrisC won us some tickets.
Having got horribly rained on in the queue, and managed to avoid being interviewed by some frightfully hip Converse people with video cameras (they weren't hard to avoid, we just looked old and uncool and surly and they passed on by), we made our way in in time to get some drinks.
At which point Pintwatch got quite excited: an actual venue with actual bitter. On an actual handpump! It was Fullers London Pride and admittedly tasted a little weird (as if they'd washed the lines out with Fullers Honey Dew), but it wasn't at all bad. And it was existent! Hurrah. Venues of the city, take note.
The first support band were The Cheatahs. The chap behind us in the queue (who was interviewed, even thought he was probably our age, on account of looking much more cool and much less surly) said he was here mainly to see them and described them as "very fast".
So when they arrived on stage I found them oddly normally-paced, and after a song and a bit found myself expecting a call from the 90s to ask if they could have their sound back. Actually, I liked them. Noisy, fuzzy guitar, and vocals that... well, they sounded like Dinosaur Jr. Jr. You can try them out for yourself on soundcloud.
They were followed by Frankie & the Heartstrings (from Sunderland). I always find it interesting which bands mention where they're from. The Cheatahs are from London (according to Wikipedia), but they didn't bother to mention it. The members aren't all Londoners - at least one is American - so perhaps London is merely where they met and not important. The others, however, introduced themselves as "Frankie & the Heartstrings from Sunderland", and mentioned it a couple more times during their set. Maybe they actually are all from Sunderland (certainly all the ones I heard speaking appeared to be).
Anyway, five chaps on stage with a classic singer-drums-two-guitars-and-bass sort of lineup. They're cheery, feelgood music with chimey guitars and a definite hint of a 50s vibe about them. The singer is a no-instrument guy and he appears to have realised that the best way to look cool is not to care whether you look like an idiot, so is all over the stage grinning at different areas of the audience and throwing mad shapes. They are lads, they are enjoying themselves, and they are inclined to sing songs which have bits in them that go "Woah, woah, woah oh."
In fact, unless you're the sort of person who takes music terribly seriously and can't bear to bop along to some pop sounds now and again, anyone who can listen to Frankie & the Heartstrings live and not smile is probably dead.
You can stream the whole of their album Hunger if you're prepared to fight with myspace's new interface. Various reviews seem to compare them to Orange Juice, which I didn't really spot - although the album is produced by Edwyn Collins, trivia fans.
The headliners Veronica Falls were actually a tiny bit of a let-down when they got on stage. They seemed out of sorts, a little ragged and prone to problems with the sound. Even halfway through their set they were still frantically signalling to the soundman, please would he turn this up, this down, this other thing up again. They didn't seem very happy, or very together, on stage.
Which is a shame, because when they're good they're awesome. They have a singing drummer, a singing guitarist, an other singing guitarist and a bassist. The voices and the guitars all blend together, making it hard to pick out individual sounds. Having heard the album, I couldn't work out how they made a lot of those noises and, the first time I saw them, was intrigued to discover it was just voices and guitars (and probably effects pedals). Think My Bloody Valentine, with a more wistful quality and a bit less holocaust.
Oh, it looks like you can also stream all of their eponymous album from myspace, too.
I was interested to muse, on the way home, that I'd call all three of the acts guitar bands, but that they were all incredibly different. Watching Frankie & the Heartstrings (from Sunderland), I made a note to ask ChrisC what word I should use to describe the right-hand-side guitarist's guitar - it was distinctinvely rounded and red and screamed 60s rock'n'roll even to me (I know nothing about guitars). Shortly before they left the stage, I realised that the word I was after was actually written up the neck in large, red letters: Rickenbacker. It's difficult to believe that the sounds coming out of it could in anyway be related to the wall of shoegazey noise spilling out of the red semi-acoustic played by Veronica Falls' female vocalist.
ChrisC, it turns out, does much the same thing with competitions to win gig tickets. And last week, one of them finally came up trumps.
Last year, the 100 Club (iconic venue, legendary stage of historical importance, and all-round sweatbox on Oxford Street) was floundering around in financial difficulties. I knew that. What I managed to miss was that the organisation which piled in with the readies to prop it up was, in fact, glorified sandshoe emporium Converse.
Since then, Converse have been running a series of gigs with attached ticket-lotteries. Mostly they have been big name bands, and demand has massively outstripped capacity. Blur in a 350-capacity venue? Yeah, quite a lot of people fancied that.
Last week, the gig was headlined by Veronica Falls. If you're thinking "who?" then that's rather my point. ChrisC won us some tickets.
Having got horribly rained on in the queue, and managed to avoid being interviewed by some frightfully hip Converse people with video cameras (they weren't hard to avoid, we just looked old and uncool and surly and they passed on by), we made our way in in time to get some drinks.
At which point Pintwatch got quite excited: an actual venue with actual bitter. On an actual handpump! It was Fullers London Pride and admittedly tasted a little weird (as if they'd washed the lines out with Fullers Honey Dew), but it wasn't at all bad. And it was existent! Hurrah. Venues of the city, take note.
The first support band were The Cheatahs. The chap behind us in the queue (who was interviewed, even thought he was probably our age, on account of looking much more cool and much less surly) said he was here mainly to see them and described them as "very fast".
So when they arrived on stage I found them oddly normally-paced, and after a song and a bit found myself expecting a call from the 90s to ask if they could have their sound back. Actually, I liked them. Noisy, fuzzy guitar, and vocals that... well, they sounded like Dinosaur Jr. Jr. You can try them out for yourself on soundcloud.
They were followed by Frankie & the Heartstrings (from Sunderland). I always find it interesting which bands mention where they're from. The Cheatahs are from London (according to Wikipedia), but they didn't bother to mention it. The members aren't all Londoners - at least one is American - so perhaps London is merely where they met and not important. The others, however, introduced themselves as "Frankie & the Heartstrings from Sunderland", and mentioned it a couple more times during their set. Maybe they actually are all from Sunderland (certainly all the ones I heard speaking appeared to be).
Anyway, five chaps on stage with a classic singer-drums-two-guitars-and-bass sort of lineup. They're cheery, feelgood music with chimey guitars and a definite hint of a 50s vibe about them. The singer is a no-instrument guy and he appears to have realised that the best way to look cool is not to care whether you look like an idiot, so is all over the stage grinning at different areas of the audience and throwing mad shapes. They are lads, they are enjoying themselves, and they are inclined to sing songs which have bits in them that go "Woah, woah, woah oh."
In fact, unless you're the sort of person who takes music terribly seriously and can't bear to bop along to some pop sounds now and again, anyone who can listen to Frankie & the Heartstrings live and not smile is probably dead.
You can stream the whole of their album Hunger if you're prepared to fight with myspace's new interface. Various reviews seem to compare them to Orange Juice, which I didn't really spot - although the album is produced by Edwyn Collins, trivia fans.
The headliners Veronica Falls were actually a tiny bit of a let-down when they got on stage. They seemed out of sorts, a little ragged and prone to problems with the sound. Even halfway through their set they were still frantically signalling to the soundman, please would he turn this up, this down, this other thing up again. They didn't seem very happy, or very together, on stage.
Which is a shame, because when they're good they're awesome. They have a singing drummer, a singing guitarist, an other singing guitarist and a bassist. The voices and the guitars all blend together, making it hard to pick out individual sounds. Having heard the album, I couldn't work out how they made a lot of those noises and, the first time I saw them, was intrigued to discover it was just voices and guitars (and probably effects pedals). Think My Bloody Valentine, with a more wistful quality and a bit less holocaust.
Oh, it looks like you can also stream all of their eponymous album from myspace, too.
I was interested to muse, on the way home, that I'd call all three of the acts guitar bands, but that they were all incredibly different. Watching Frankie & the Heartstrings (from Sunderland), I made a note to ask ChrisC what word I should use to describe the right-hand-side guitarist's guitar - it was distinctinvely rounded and red and screamed 60s rock'n'roll even to me (I know nothing about guitars). Shortly before they left the stage, I realised that the word I was after was actually written up the neck in large, red letters: Rickenbacker. It's difficult to believe that the sounds coming out of it could in anyway be related to the wall of shoegazey noise spilling out of the red semi-acoustic played by Veronica Falls' female vocalist.