Incredibly, nearly two whole months into 2009 and last night was the first gig of the year that I have attended. I’m slacking! Anyway, last night was a trip to the Fuzz Club 10th birthday celebrations, for 65daysofstatic‘s first headlining gig in their home town of Sheffield in some time.
So, for the last part of my run-down of my 2008 musical highlights, here are my top ten gigs of the year. When compiling the list, I realised I haven’t actually been to anywhere near as many gigs as I thought I had been this year. Still, only two (Ladytron and Ministry, since you ask) […]
Despite a slightly late and frustrating train journey – where two teenagers sharing an mp3 player were singing only loudly, and badly, to the chagrin of much of the carriage – I somehow got to the venue just in time to be in place as ESA came onstage, and the pounding beats of Your Blood […]
What has been a busy month or two for gigs continued last night with me heading back to Sheffield Academy 2 for the Ladytron gig. Also on downstairs in the main venue was Jarvis Cocker, so it transpired, and in some poor organisation all punters were being pointed towards one main queue, and then another […]
Like what appeared to be all of the UK metal community, I headed up to Leeds yesterday for the long-awaited Damnation Festival, the biggest incarnation yet of the one-day metal festival that has had something of a nomadic existence over the past few years. The queue to get into the venue was huge at 1630 […]
Support act Demians, who I’d heard glowing things about from others previously, were an interesting proposition. At least a partly-French band, they are what could probably be called one of the modern faces of Prog Rock. Lengthy songs with an epic scope, that didn’t always work entirely but left me with a positive impression, particularly […]
As the rain lashed down (it was worse in Manchester than in Sheffield), I have to admit that I was beginning to question my sanity in going all the way across to Manchester on a dark, cold October night, particularly as due to the crap times of the return trains – 2218 and 0018?, Oh, […]
After something of a quiet summer for gigs, the autumn run of lots of them worth attending is finally beginning to kick in. My attendance at this one, though, was delayed by wanting to catch the end of the football first, so I arrived only just before the end of the Deviant UK set. I’ve […]
For once, we got our timing spot on – literally as we walked through the door into the venue, first support Jason Webley was just starting up. Not a lot to watch, or so we thought – initially it was just Jason and his accordion (and later his acoustic guitar). As the first few songs […]
This was my first gig at Corporation in some time, and with it being up against what turned out to be a surprisingly easy win for the England national Football Team, it perhaps wasn’t as busy as might have been expected. Still, after two cancellations in the past year, it was nice to finally get […]
Last night I attended the first gig of what is looking to be a busy autumn period for gigs. It was also my first gig at the new-ish Carling Academy, albeit in the smaller Academy 2. And before I get onto the gig, a few observations on the venue. It’s been open for less than […]
This weekend was so fucking good – like, to the level of best Infest ever – that I when I started to write this I was wondering where to start.
I first heard of Arnocorps a while back…I thought that this was a joke band that could never be funny. It turns out that I’ve been missing the fun. I had no real interest in the support bands, however – punk is not my scene whatsoever and so The Hyenas and The Dagobah 4 were […]
As a result of an early deviation for food first, I missed both Action Directe and Uberbyte – of which both sets I’ve heard many good things about. My excuse for missing them? I hadn’t eaten all day, really, and I seriously needed that meal!
I’ve done a good job in recent years in catching up with a number of bands that I missed in my younger years, that became huge influences on the music that I listen to and the music that I play when DJing. And happily enough, all of them have lived up to their reputation – […]
First band on were Skinjob, an act that have been around for a while but somehow I have managed to miss every single time they have played locally to me. So, I was looking forward to this. And immediately I was disappointed by the dreadful sound: somehow the sound was a muddy mess, with the […]
The venue was a very odd one. The Grosvenor House Hotel on Charter Square, a hotel that has clearly seen better days, and indeed will soon be gone forever when the block in which it resides is demolished for the new Sevenstone retail quarter. The oh-so-slightly tatty interior was like a relic from the seventies, […]
It is now over three years since a friend first suggested I go see this band live, and it has been interesting to see their development over this time. They were an impressive live band three years hence, and they are still one now. In just thirty-five minutes they played an intricately constructed set that […]
…with a lot of attention paid to catching up with a number of old friends there, I paid little or no attention to the support acts at all (which is reasonably rare for me). So I’ll skip them and move onto the main event.
Note: An edited version of this review appeared in Alternative Magazine Issue 09
