Three years ago we were all locked down, confined to our homes while our leaders played soggy biscuit… Let’s not go in that direction today. I quite liked it to be honest; not having to run the rat race was nice and I enjoyed watching spring take over the countryside. All that time didn’t drive me mad, I think I made it count and anyway readers are never bored. But one of the downsides of the locked down world was the complete stop on live music, obviously many people weren’t able to work but selfishly I love going to gigs and over the last couple of years I’ve fallen out of the habit. Happily this has been put right over the last couple of weeks.
In mid March the usual suspects headed to London to see
Fucked Up play a venue in Kings Cross called Lafayette. Thanks mainly to altered perception our short
cut turned into a long cut and we got in a little late but saw most of a really
good show. The highlight was the final
song, an awesome extended, psychedelic version of ‘Dose your Dreams’, that went
on and on but still I didn’t want it to end.
This was as good as live music gets!
How to describe Fucked Up?
Hardcore punk? A wall of noise? But once you’ve got through the barriers and
found your way in there is skill and intelligence and a really special band.
Two weeks later I returned to the smoke with the Princess and my daughter, after a sit down Chinese we spent a couple of chilled hours wandering around Camden market before making our way down the road to the Roundhouse where we be seeing my favourite current band, Eels.
The gig was great, a totally different set to the last tour,
loads of new songs which unlike many people I always love to hear but also with
some leftfield oldies that blew me away.
An obscure album track from long ago sounds magical when you’re hearing
it played live for the first time. There
are always a couple of quirky cover versions thrown in too. To be honest compared to other performances
I’ve seen the band were a bit rusty but as it was just their second gig in four
years I suppose that can be excused and anyway if live music was perfect it
wouldn’t be so much fun. The encores
filled in any gaps, ‘Earth to Dora’ and ‘Wonderful Glorious’ and we three left
grinning and buzzing.
So much so we all travelled to Norwich a couple of weeks later and did it again. This time the band was tight, the sound fantastic and the gig was excellent. I was surprised by a couple of changes to the set including another oldie I would never have seen coming. Highlight for me was Eels oldest song, ‘Novocaine for the Soul’ and when that first gorgeous guitar chord wrapped me up in a wave of wonderful sound…
Eels and Fucked up are bands that are unlikely to find their
way into mainstream consciousness but they both make great music released on
traditional formats as well as streaming.
You can find them in HMV if you look hard enough. When the world isn’t shut down these are two (amongst
many) bands that tour the world playing small to medium sized venues that are
mostly full. I sometimes feel I’m the
only person in the world who gets emotional at these times but when I look
around the audience in these places I see people of all walks that are just as
euphoric as I am.
