Friend of mine has an extra ticket for Viagra Boys in Dublin tomorrow night, on the off chance that anyone would be interested in taking it off his hands.

Heh.

The wrong Taytos, no doubt.

At the Ritz for Hot Milk and As December Falls.

Support is someone called Jools, who might be good without the male singer. He is very much A Frontman, with the only problem being he can't sing.

Off to see Mogwai at the academy in dirty Leeds tomorrow.  They've really been digging into the older stuff on this tour so I pulled the trigger on some tickets.

I expect to be deaf for most of next week.  Awesome.

Pseudoscot wrote:

Off to see Mogwai at the academy in dirty Leeds tomorrow.  They've really been digging into the older stuff on this tour so I pulled the trigger on some tickets.

I expect to be deaf for most of next week.  Awesome.

I'm going to see them tomorrow night with my son - bought us both a pair of Loop earplugs in preparation. They'd better play My Father My King or I'll be writing a strongly worded letter. They've been finishing with that or Like Herod.

Diluted Dante wrote:

Grem, I bought a pair of Loops. After a short while I didn't know they were there, to the point that I had to keep checking that they actually were. Sound was great, nothing muffled at all.

My son had been using them for when he plays drums and he says they're amazing.

Currently being subjected to a white boy rap act who are wearing costumes.

"My name is Dreadnaught".

No it isn't.

They live in fear of negative reviews.

Lot's of gigs this week....

Cola on Tuesday night @ Future Yard - another great set from the Canadian boys, still on course to be the best bastard offspring of Interpol & The Strokes.

Osees on Thursday night @ The Invisible Wind Factory - dual drummers conquer all!

Gilla Band @ Future Yard last night. Eight Fivers is the true spiritual successor to 'Where's Me Jumper?!'

And I'm currently Bristol bound to see Wombo tonight at the Dot to Dot festival. Looking forward to experiencing floating gigs onboard the Thelka!

I saw Blur at Newcastle City Hall last night. (Reg, you might want to look away)

I think I’ve mentioned before that Blur are one of those bands that I’ve nearly seen many times, but life always got in the way. I got meningitis one time, I fell through a roof another, and so on. I was starting to think it was never meant to be - and was sort of bracing myself for a disaster of one sort or another this time too. I hadn’t even dared get tickets for the upcoming Wembley gig, but Mrs Robot managed to snag some tickets for the “warm up gig” in Newcastle when they were announced.

As I’m still firmly under a “no mosh pits” rule due to the jaw, she nabbed a couple of seats on the balcony, which again would not normally have been my choice, but the seats were right over the stage, and right at the front, meaning it almost felt like we were onstage ourselves. (It also meant that we were able to see Albarn sneak out into the back of the audience and watch the support act, somehow completely unnoticed by the people he was stood behind.)

Anyway, enough waffle, how were they?  In short, bloody incredible. You got the impression that sufficient time had passed for them to have new found love for their old stuff. (The set covered every album released except for The Magic Whip, but it was Modern Life is Rubbish and Parklife that were most heavily represented, with 6 and 7 songs from each respectively, as well as a beautiful piano driven version of the b-side to Chemical World.)

That said, they opened with a completely new song, St Charles Square - which was suitably punchy, with Albarn strutting about the stage, feeding off the audience reaction, whilst the rest of the band provided a wall of noise for him to offer in return. It’s kind of a brave move to start with a song no-one knows, but they certainly got away with it. Things properly kicked off when they moved straight into “There’s No Other Way” - now stripped of its shoe gaze elements, and rendered into something both spikier and more poppy (Before giving way to a fully punk inflected Popscene.)  

From there on in, it was just electric, with the energy maintained despite the insane heat.  (The band looked exhausted but happy by the end.). Even the interval before the encore was filled entirely with the audience singing. 

Probably the most succinct review I can offer is that my wife wasn’t all that bothered going in, she regarded Blur as “my” band (in the same way that I’ve accompanied her to countless James gigs over the years) - by the end she was absolutely giddy, and they are firmly “hers’ now too.

(That said, we had a fun conversation with a couple of 20 years olds afterwards who were complaining that they “hate old people” because the audience wasn’t sufficiently rowdy for them.  They thought the gig was amazing, but resented the relative lack of pogoing - and the fact they were thrown out twice for “doing it properly”.)

So, yeah, it was a bloody good night. I’m still not sure I want to see them in Wembley - I don’t doubt based on last night’s performance that they’ll be amazing - but they feel like a band you need to see up close…

I'm lucky in my sister took me when I was 9 to the Parklife tour and several bits of that are etched in my brain of seeing them in a "moment", otherwise I'd need a ban request for you.

Saw them again in Reading 2003, but I just need to know (be still my heart)

Did you get Beetlebum, objectively the best song of all time?

regmcfly wrote:

Did you get Beetlebum, objectively the best song of all time?

See, the reason Tin didn’t mention that either way is because it’s not much of a song. A nothing, really. Forgettable.

Can I just say that Wombo were brilliant.