“So your job is to go to gigs and watch bands for free? That must be great!”
Well yes, mostly it can be fun. But not tonight.
Having to run through a list of possible names that PR bods may have stuck you under at the door is never fun, and finding that we aren’t actually listed as promised is downright insulting. But I’m not beaten so easily and I pay myself in. I kinda grudge paying twice as much as is reasonable for tonight’s lineup but I blame the Kerrang sponsors for that. However, insult is added to injury when I’m asked “Where’d your friend go?”, and spot the implication was that after not being guest-listed Mr. Potatojunkie had snuck in for free …
First band on tonight are Disco Ensemble, and I’ve said it before but boy are they emo. It’s outright by-the-numbers emo, and it really does pain me to admit that they are fucking good at it. The sound let them down a bit though and took just enough edge off the performance for some of the songs to be disappointingly lacklustre.
The Morning After Girls follow on stage and will have to be really impressive to overcome the bad impression made by inept PR at the door. They resoundingly fail to do so. The Beatles when they first started taking too much acid is not the best thing to try and update into modern emo-times; it can work if done in a kitsch-pop way, but I’m not certain at all where this band were meant to be going or where they were coming from. The polka-dot-dressed tambourine percussion keyboardist lass was kinda hot though, but I’m really not certain if that should be the highlight of any live gig.
65daysofstatic. Ahhh, now these guys have to overcome the bad feeling left by their management not returning my calls after offering an interview. I think I missed the start of their set due to not noticing when the intro tape stopped and they started playing stuff themselves. Oh, three minute pop-punk songs, where were you tonight? Interminably drawn-out instrumentals bore me to tears but the Barfly crowd are loving it. I reckon the Barfly crowd maybe need to get out to go see some good bands play gigs a bit more often rather than simply cheer for the folks Kerrang & the NME tell them to.
Overall this gig was scene bands playing to an overly scene crowd—I expect every emo ’zine in the country will be running a piece on the gig judging by the number of pseudo-professional cameras and notebooks I saw flashed around the place. Oh Kerrang, when did it all go wrong? When did you forget about rock and start sponsoring NME band tours?
Oh, and the beer tasted just like piss. Can I get my money back please … ?
