Gigs and Music Events

Went to NIN in manchester last night. Really good. Crowd was way more placid than last time I saw them something like 10 years ago

Brixton tonight I think, if you're going you're in for a treat

I'm on the bus on the way to Brixton now. Last time I saw them was in 2009 at the O2 when Gary Newman came out and sang Cars. Excitement levels high!

Mate went to Cornwall to see them at the Eden Project at the weekend and said great things. Seems a bit far to go when he lives in Greenwich and they’ve got London gigs, but he’s a bit of a fanboi.

On my way to the second night of music to celebrate 40 years of Touch records. Looking forward to some C M von Hauswolff, Bruce Gilbert, Fennesz etc

Jack White at the Hammersmith Apollo - Superb show and songs from all the various bands he's been part of (I think).

Getting very excited for BST Hyde Park on Friday. Pearl Jam were my favourite band as a angsty wrong generation teen of the 00s and haven't seen them for 10 years now. Pixies are then the exact same for my mate so me and her are going to have a very cathartic time I think (though a covid case within the Pixies camp reported last week has been worrying us but looks like they're playing Manchester tonight so fingers crossed it's all good).

Had a great time yesterday. Pixies only had an hour slot but they did the hits very well so everyone was pleased.

Pearl Jam were excellent too. Played pretty much everything I wanted to hear and finally got the see them play Jeremy so I’m content.

Only annoyance was how big the premium ‘Golden Circle’ section at the front was, we were as far forward as could be against the general admission barrier and were at least 50m away I reckon. Kind of destroyed the crowd vibe when we’re all going at it with a bit of energy and you look forward to see people who are standing in a load of space at the back of the premium area, especially when they’d turn around an wave at us. Also didn’t help that any time any of us got exited and started to actually jump around and start a pit the G4S security goons would rock up and start flashing torches in our faces and shouting at us the calm down. Almost as if putting a big barrier that far back from the stage at a Pearl Jam gig was a bad idea, of course people are going to go a bit mad whenever they play anything from Ten.

Oh also John McEnroe turned up to play Rockin In the Free World at the end which isn’t something I’d have expected heading into the day.

Mates were there and got the impression Vedder was too drunk to perform properly - did you get that impression?

He did forget the lyrics to a few songs and had some quite rambly political commentary moments between songs but not more so than other performances I’ve seen from him I don’t think. He was very emotional throughout though. Did see him drinking wine from the bottle midway through so definitely could have been quite drunk.

I'm starting to feel mild outrage at rock stars being too pissed to play. Should probably report myself to the middle aged thread...

Was there with my wife too. I’m not much of a fan of PJ, but she is so we went along. Weather was great, and we got in easily enough. Lots of water points, which was handy. First moan was that we couldn’t find stage times anywhere and we arrived to find that we’d already missed The Murder Capital, arse. The rest of the acts were pretty mediocre, not really up to scratch at such a big event, but with the exception of October Drift on the smallest stage, who were superb. I was really disappointed with Pixies, tbh. The first 40 minutes were pedestrian and it wasn’t until the last 20 minutes that they woke and actually made some fucking noise, which is why people used to like them.

PJ - much better than I was expecting, as I only know about 4 songs of theirs. Eddie still has a great voice, but he was clearly pissed, which was a bit shit seeing as he had 30,000 people who’d paid to watch him. We watched it all from a fair way back as my wife isn’t great with crowds, but the sound was pretty good and the screens did a job.

They even had secure bike parking. It wasn’t as bad a day as I thought it might be, but I still thought that October Drift were the best band of the day.

Murder Capital are an odd one - good first album, gigged hard to support it, then nothing. Even now, years later, they're still playing that album.

They're fucking irritating live anyway - saw them a few times and bassist and singer are such 'look-at-me' wankers it really spoils the music.

Ha , I worked for the Pretenders and he'd always turn up to do a few songs with Chrissie ... then get really pissed and leave his guitar behind .... !

The set times annoyed me too, they released them on the morning on the app which I used but at the site had minimal stands with the stage times.

We were disappointed that La Luz ended up with Covid so couldn’t get over from Seattle.

Sounds like I might have been a bit to into it to notice Eddie being pretty far gone. Unfortunately think it’s how he’s operated for a while as didn’t feel much different to when I saw them years ago.

For Pixies, as I say was with my mate who absolutely loved them so every song they were singing along and vibing with. Think we might have been in a very lively part of the crowd who had energy for everything which also helped.

This is something that pisses me off though. Luckily I’ve never had it first hand (possibly did yesterday and didn’t notice), but when I read about massive acts having issues I do think it must be annoying.

Just that rock and roll shtick that people go for though possibly.

To be fair, I’ve not seen them live. They had to pull out of Truck a couple of years back, but
I was looking forward to seeing them at last. Had no idea they could be arseholes

Ty Segall at the Troxy in just over a month -

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Front 242 were very good fun last night, doing their anniversary show. Really admirable commitment to no musical development over 40 years - Ramones-esque. Also, the most unintentionally camp performance I've ever seen. - they resemble a bunch of cabbies who've come out late in life and just necked their first pill at G.A.Y.

Really thought they could sell out somewhere bigger than Islington O2.

Heading to Fat Freddys Drop on Friday!

Looking forward to the Orb at Fox and Firkin this evening, a UFOrb anniversary show which is my favourite album. Seen them a few times in different settings from clubs/venues in Newcastle and London to the Southbank Centre but think this might feel like the closest chance I'll get to my dream of seeing them in an early days setting.

I'm also very tempted to head to this at that new place Beams. 808 State, The Orb and Cybotron could make for a really fun day out.

https://thebeamslondon.com/whats-on/hacienda-spirit-of-88/

Just got tickets to Volbeat and Skindred at Wembley Ovo Arena. Can't wait to get my Newport Helicopter on....

Managed to get a ticket to see Public Service Broadcasting at Peckham Audio next week. Only 200 odd capacity so should be intimate. Doubling up the dad dancing with Hot Chip in Brixton next month which I am much excited about.

Oh wow that PSB will be good. I saw them at a 350 capacity place in Montreal back in 2017 when I was on a holiday there and was so glad I did. Was with a couple of mates who'd been at the Brixton gig that was released as the album so was an interesting switch up for them to be seeing them at such a small space. They were parked up at the merch stand chatting to people after it finished as well.