Finally, I can get down to writing this damn thing! I’ve been so busy finishing off Hot Leg that I haven’t been able to start it. It’s now Wednesday, 25th March, and the show was Saturday. Oh well. I’m doing it now; that’s all that counts.
Saturday was a beautiful day. Proper warm and sunny – I got up quite early (for me) and went straight for a shower. I was planning on having curly hair again so I needed to re-wash it. When I got dressed I made sure I was wearing posh underwear again. The exact same underwear I wore to Hot Leg, actually … it’s like a concert ritual. It has to match. At any other time I don’t give a crap.
I put on my dark pink socks with light pink dots, my black jeans and my Airbourne shirt. First time I’d worn a band shirt to a concert before. Stone Gods were going to be the first band I’d seen for the second time – the first time supporting Airbourne on the main stage. This time, I’d checked the tickets – they were going to be at Academy 2. We were going to try for the front again. Or somewhere near.
The morning was like any other. We are breakfast and did other morningy type stuff before going off to town. I wore my Vans, but no jacket, because it was just that sunny. We had a lot to do so we took the car down and parked near the dentist. The next day would be Mother’s Day and we needed flowers for Mum’s grave.
There was a climbing wall outside the town hall for the Everest fund. Dad quite fancied a go on it, but apparently his jeans were too tight to climb properly. When we were walking up the street having just bought hay and wood shavings for the guinea pigs, two people I knew from college actually came up to us with leaflets for it.
Something really cool happened when we were buying flowers. Dad had gone into the stall to pay for them while Amy and I waited just at the entrance. I saw this woman in a Rolling Stones t-shirt and I was looking at her to assess her for poserness. You can’t be too careful these days. I mean, New Look sell them! Teenage girls wear them because they like the look of the funny tongue! This woman, however, seemed to pass my test. She was wearing it properly. And, just when I decided this, she actually came up to us and asked if we knew whether or not Airbourne had tour dates planned for the near future! It’s always my hope, that when I wear a band shirt someone will show interest in it, but it rarely comes true. As a result I was overjoyed – we talked about Airbourne and other music for several minutes. Dad returned and joined in. The woman said she’d never laughed so much at a concert before, and Dad agreed that Joel O’Keeffe was indeed a good showman. She, like me, had a sister who had similar music tastes to her and they used to go to concerts together. We told her a bit about what else we were into and mentioned that we were going to see AC/DC next month. Unfortunately she, like so many other people, had missed out on tickets.
After a good chat about awesome music, we said bye to her and moved on, eventually returning to the car. Dad told us that Charlotte was in Brompton with Courtney watching the girls’ football team, as Courtney quite fancied joining. We drove up to see them. At first it was hard to find them, until we figured out that the girls were playing behind the school. We went around and found our way to the side of the pitch where Charlotte and Courtney were watching. It was perfect football weather, for playing and watching. Amy had a friend who was subbed in at the second half.
We chatted and watched. I hadn’t seen Charlotte in a fortnight and Courtney in longer, so we had a few mildly interesting things to talk about – Charlotte had been to see Slumdog Millionaire with her Nana and she asked me what I’d thought. We agreed it had been a really good film.
Just into the second half, Dad had to go to meet his friends Nick and Dawn in town to show them some bikes. I decided to go home – I was thirsty as hell and growing increasingly worried about the state of our lunch. We’d bought Fatso’s sandwiches. Fresh sandwiches in a black Land Rover in the sun … eurgh. Off chicken tikka.
So Dad dropped me off at home while he went back into town. The first thing I did was put the sandwiches in the fridge to cool down. I was really hungry but I wanted to wait for Dad and Amy before I ate. I did have a snack, though, and downed quite a lot of water. I was so thirsty.
Because it was such a lovely, sunny day, I put the run under the trampoline where all the long grass is for the guinea pigs to eat. It was only just starting to get nice weather-wise, so they weren’t used to grass, and I had to ensure they didn’t eat too much and get diarrhoea. Lovely. It’s a funny idea when you say their names, though – Axl and Slash with diarrhoea. Hahaha!
I sat on the trampoline with my Vans and cleaned them. I do this obsessively – I love them so much that I can’t bear it when they’re muddy, so I try to make sure they aren’t. Of course, they’ll never be as perfect as they were when I bought them, but they’re close enough.
Dad and Amy came back after a bit – Amy informed me that Brompton had lost, but that they played well. Then we ate lunch! I was starving. It was the last day of the Six Nations rugby so we watched that. England v Scotland at Twickenham … Aunty Caroline was there. I was insanely jealous.
After lunch, the ‘getting ready for Stone Gods’ commenced! Due to my anticipation it was probably way too early, but oh well. I straightened my fringe, covered myself in Ralph Lauren Rocks!, put on my jacket (complete with about £70 in cash in the pockets), put on my Vans and did other wholesome, getting ready activities. Dad gave me £10 for lunch, then took it back and gave me £20 to include train tickets as well. I stuffed this in my jeans pocket. I was already carrying my phone, my camera and some spare batteries in there, resulting in very awkward shaped fronts of my legs.
Dad offered us a lift to the station, but we wanted to walk. Way more exciting! I made sure I had the tickets, and the sweets I’d bought from the sweet stall in town, before we set off. Whooo!
Amy and I got to the station first. I was really warm in my stupid denim jacket, but it was essential for money concealing purposes. We waited under the shelter due to the fact that there were some disgustingly repulsive chavs sitting on the bench. I swear they were making comments about our matching t-shirts. Wasn’t it obvious we were going to a concert? I even had the tickets in my hand. One of them spat on the floor. What a minger.
Ellan soon arrived. She, like me and Amy, was wearing jeans and a denim jacket. Double denim! How awesome we looked. We chatted and stuff while we waited for Steph. Ellan had a little bag, which she was going to have to hide later. You’re not supposed to bring them into the Academy.
The awful chavs went away at some point, so we decided to sit down as we were bored and tired from all the waiting for Steph we were doing. The floor was still spattered with chav spit, though, which we had to avoid. Because the bench was in the shade, the metal was cold on my bum. Brr.
After what felt like years but was only a few minutes, Steph finally arrived. Not only was she slightly late, she WASN’T WEARING double denim AND her ticket was different to ours! Tut! She had her Sublime shirt on and a black velvet jacket and she, like Ellan, had a bag. Which would need concealing later. Because she’d only decided she was coming a few days before the show, she’d printed her ticket off herself and it was on a piece of paper.
Now that she’d arrived, we went to buy the train tickets. The same guy served us who had given us the timetable the previous Thursday. The tickets were extortionate. Almost Dad’s whole £20 for an adult and a chuld single. My God. It had cost just under a tenner for me and Amy to get to Middlesbrough and back the Saturday before.
When Ellan had paid, she came out of the door laughing – the guy had called her ‘ma’am’. “Do I LOOK like a ‘ma’am’?” she demanded of us. No way. None of us are remotely ma’am-like, and almost definitely never will be.
We went through the subway to our platform where I couldn’t resist starting on my sweets. I offered them round, of course – I had cherries and fried eggs, along with marshmallows. (These were for Amy – she’d given up sweets and chocolate for Lent, but apparently marshmallows don’t count as sweets). Ellan and Amy had a marshmallow each, but Steph’s vegetarian and it was highly likely that everything contained gelatine. I told her my dream instead – I know it’s not the same! – where she, Amy and me all went to see Lynyrd Skynyrd.
We didn’t have long to wait for the train, only about ten minutes. It was a busy train though. We agreed we’d stick in pairs if we couldn’t all sit together, but luckily Steph and Ellan found a table for four. It was covered in a dismantled newspaper and two empty plastic bottles.
The journey was fun. Amy and I were riding backwards so we were all happy and hyper and stuff. Even more so, I mean. I broke into my sweets a bit more, too, eating quite a few of them. It was really warm on the train. They were getting all nice and squishy. In the end I got Ellan to take them away from me.
Amy and I were sure that Spurs were playing that day. With Ellan’s help we found the sports pages of the paper and we were indeed playing. We talked football a little bit. Steph was disinterested at this point.
One thing about the train journey in particular that I really like was the fact that we went around corners. On the journeys I usually take the tracks tend to be straight, so I got all tripped out. A daft little thing, I know, but amusing.
We stopped at Durham and the whole place was so neat and nice. Steph expressed her jealousy at not living in such a tidy place.
When we arrived in Newcastle, we had to go on a bridge over the Tyne, and I was a little bit freaked out – looking out of the window it felt sort of like we were flying. Being my usual paranoid self I started to wonder what would happen if the bridge collapsed. We were soon on the other side though.
The train station at Newcastle is quite a big one. We pulled into it and started getting ready to get off. I turned to get out of my seat and came face to face with a guy’s bum. Ew. I turned back quickly and waited until everyone else had got off before I did the same.
We followed the crowds out of the station and onto the street. Whooo! Newcastle. First things first: get our bearings. I think Ellan took the tickets off me and put them in her bag but she could’ve done this back home. I knew the Academy was quite nearby, and once I found that I’d know my way into town. Hoping to God I’d be able to find my way around, we set off. It was only a couple of minutes before we arrived on the street where the Academy is, and went off down there. We hadn’t gone far when I found a small music shop. Our first cool, little shop of the day! We went in. It was all weird music though. There was only one woman in there and I’d heard of hardly any of the bands on sale – they were all international artists of unusual genres. What I di find was an album by Big Joe Williams – AC/DC covered his song ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’.
I wanted to see another little music shop that Charlotte had showed me, because every time I’d seen it in the past it had been shut. It wasn’t far from the Academy, and it was sort of underground.
Going in the shop was somewhere between heaven and hell. Heaven because there were tons and tons of amazing and rare albums, hell because we couldn’t buy any. We had nowhere to keep them and none of us wanted to have stuff on us to protect during the gig. We had to make do with having a good look around, moaning and crying when we found any particularly awesome things that we really wanted. For me, these things included several Iron Maiden singles collections, ‘Live at Donington’, Bruce Dickinson’s album ‘Accident of Birth’ and the single ‘Tears of the Dragon’, the Scorpions album ‘Blackout’ which I can never find anywhere, and a collection of rare AC/DC songs with Bon. Even though there was only one song on there that I didn’t already have – ‘Rockin’ in the Parlour’ – it was still really cool. There was a photo of Bon on the front, smiling in a red shirt and holding a glass. On the back, there was a slightly more disturbing picture – ‘ACDC’ written across the band’s backs with Angus acting as the lightning bolt in the middle, wearing nothing but socks and his SG. Eurgh.
Just before we finally left, we were browsing the bargain bins in front of the counter, whinging to ourselves: “Why did we come in here?” “This is torture!” etc. There were two young guys behind the counter, and one of them started talking to us. He had longish hair, and he was wearing a rather weird t-shirt – a creature with a fly’s head, a woman’s body including breasts, but also with a penis. This penis was erect. The shirt featured the words ‘Sex Wound’.
We told him about the show, and how we couldn’t buy anything because we didn’t want to take it in with us. He presumed we were going to see Airbourne due to Amy’s and my t-shirts, so we explained that we were actually going to see the band who supported them, Stone Gods. He said his friend had told him about the gig. Then he asked if we’d heard of Sex Wound. I looked at his t-shirt and said “I have now”.
It turned out the two guys were in the band, and the one talking had designed the t-shirt. He asked us if we liked it – I had no idea what to say. Ellan liked it, though. She genuinely did and all – she said later that the only problem with it was that a girl wouldn’t be able to get away with wearing it. That was true. It was definitely a man’s shirt. I told him very truthfully that it was a ‘scare your granny’ type t-shirt, and he seemed satisfied.
It was sad to move on from that awesome little shop, but also somewhat of a relief. We noted their website, which was written on the side of the shop: it was beatdownrecords.co.uk. I will definitely be going back there. It was mint.
We headed out towards the town centre again, back past the Academy this time. There were already a collection of teenagers in dark clothes hanging around on the steps.
Mainly to assure myself I knew the way around Newcastle, I took them to that big, pretty building that has a cinema and a whole bunch of restaurants (though this could’ve been after we went to the other CD shop, I can’t remember properly). Reassuringly we got to the cinema place OK, and although there’s nothing to do there unless you want to see a film, have a meal, go to the toilet or gamble, we walked around, going up the escalators (where a girl ran past us screaming she was going to be sick, but laughing at the same time) and down in the lift, which was full of kids. Whenever it moved, I sang “Going doooowwwwn!”
We checked out the cinema listings but the one film I was interested in seeing – the one about Anvil – wasn’t there.
I proposed a walk down to the Tyne next. For two simple reasons: I knew where ti was and it was free.
This proved to be way more difficult than I’d first anticipated. To begin with I was in familiar territory, but soon enough I took a wrong turning and had absolutely no idea where I was. I didn’t let on, though – I was confident I’d find the river eventually. After all, how hard could it be? There were signs and stuff. I followed these, and used my sense of direction, until we finally arrived at the Tyne bridge … yay!
Hang on. We were meant to be under it …
Well, we were almost there. I found a subway and took everyone a bit further down, but still not as far as I would like to be. There weren’t many people around which sort of scared me. Plus, Ellan and Steph were lagging behind – neither of them like exercising that much.
Amy was a turd to me when I was panicking slightly. I asked her for the time, and she told me it was half six … like a sucker, I crapped myself, and we proceeded to argue about my sense of humour.
We got there in the end! Whooo! Back to the people, right by the river. A straight road to the Millenium Bridge. When we got there, we sat on a bench for a bit of a rest after tons of slopey walking. I wasn’t tired but I had the feeling that Steph and Ellan were. I asked them if they wanted to come on the bridge – the whole reason we were there, after all – and they didn’t. So me and Amy went on it alone, jumping up and down to make it move and taking pictures of the view. I didn’t dare leave the other two on their own for too long, though, so we pretty soon set off back.
There are two big buildings on the other side of the river: the Baltic and a big, shiny one. Steph asked me what it was called, but I couldn’t remember so I texted Dad. He replied with ‘Baltic or sage i think x x x’. That’d be the Sage, then.
The way back was relatively more simple than the way there. I followed the route Charlotte had taken us on, lost it, but still returned to the main bit of town very quickly to my immense relief. I had another sit down, again more for the benefit of Ellan and Steph, particularly Ellan, than myself. This sit wasn’t nice – very cold stone wall.
We decided it was about time to eat again, so we started making our way towards Greggs. Steph had been complaining about needing the toilet for quite a while, and on the way there we passed a really weird, space-age toilet thing on the street designed for disabled people. It was coin operated. Steph was a bit freaked out by it so I went first (there was a 20p already in the coin thingy). It was well strange! A voice talked to me all the time I was in there. However, there was one problem: the only reason I’d wanted to go to the toilet wasn’t in there. When I emerged, I informed everyone of my highly interesting experience on the toilet, and we moved on for food. We’d find a normal, sane, free, non-talking regular toilet.
I had a sausage and bean melt and Fanta, and Amy had a pizza baguette and Dr Pepper. I also bought a packet of rainbow cakes – they contained no sweets or chocolate in case Amy wanted one.
We sat one some benches near the freaky-deaky toilet to eat. Whilst I had my mind on other things, a bald Geordie man came over to me and pretended to nick off with my pasty. Because I wasn’t watching properly I didn’t realise he was joking, and I jumped really badly and tried to hide it away. The man and all of his friends started laughing at me so I said “I’m starving!” loudly after him to try to excuse my action. All I did was make myself look even more of a turd.
I’m sure you’ve all experienced this next problem – your rubbish trying to fly away. Mine did this, and when I tried to rescue it I slammed my fingertips on the bench, breaking two of my nails extremely painfully – one of them was my strumming nail! This one broke in layers. Even now, almost a fortnight later, it’s not ideal for playing guitar with. (Today is April 23rd and it’s long again. Yay!)
Steph and I ate two of my cakes, and I carried the rest of my Fanta and the remaining two around with me, too full to finish them but convinced I’d eat them later. We headed back to the cinema complex where we were sure there’d be a toilet. There was, so we all went. It was really funny – you could hear both Steph and me doing ‘feminine things’ at almost the same time, and the pair of us started laughing. We also used this opportunity to sort out Ellan and Steph’s bags in front of the mirror. They looked OK hidden under their jackets.
While we were in there, I found an arcade game that involved riding a motorbike. I hadn’t been on one in years, so I said I’d have a go providing I had the change. It only cost £1 and I had a pound coin … I jumped on. It was fun. I never brake or change gear on games like this. In fact, all I do is accelerate and turn. I came fourth, which wasn’t bad. I’d played as a slutty-looking woman and ran into quite a lot of people. They tended to fall off and practically fly away whilst I remained unharmed. Ah, just like real life …
Time to make our way back towards the Academy. There was a little bit of a queue when we got there, but it was just over an hour until doors and I didn’t want to stand there for all that time, so I took everyone down to the square in front of the Life centre. There was a big sculpture containing an emo (well – he was sitting on it). He had two friends with him – one boy, one girl – who were sitting on the floor making out. Dirty, dirty emos.
Steph and Ellan hid their bags while I disposed of my leftover food responsibly. I put it next to a bin just in case a hungry hungry hobo fancied a snack. After all, it seemed a shame to waste two rainbow cakes and the best part of a bottle of Fanta.
I returned and took a photo of Steph putting her jacket on, simply because she looked a turd. She took a few more minutes and we went back to the Academy, for real this time. A couple more people had joined the queue but it was still relatively short. A few people ahead of us there was this bloke we know from college called Callum. Steph thinks he’s cool, because he has dreadlocks. He’s kind of annoying, though. I was surprised to see a familiar face. I guess I sometimes just forget that I’m not the only person who exists and does stuff outside of school.
The queue gradually got longer, but not by much. I think we were waiting there somewhere between half an hour and forty five minutes. I was dead excited – I’d never queued until doors before, just sort of turned up afterwards. It wasn’t as boring as I’d expected it to be, either. We talked about random stuff and played various awesome songs on Amy’s phone. At one point two ugly women with bleached blonde hair and disgusting outfits went past and Callum was shouting “Oh my God! What the F*CK is that?” and stuff for ages. I couldn’t stop laughing. We saw quite a few Airbourne shirts, which made sense, as that’s how quite a lot of people found out about Stone Gods.
We devised a plan of action to be carried out once we got inside – two of us would go to buy shirts, and two of us would run for the barrier, then we’d swap. Or something like that.
The doors opened a bit late. Initially we’d been told they were at seven, but I got an e-mail a few days before the show telling me it had been moved back half an hour. More like twenty five minutes! GOD! Once we did get to the doors, the security guys stopped Steph from going in for a minute, but she didn’t get too far behind. We got our tickets checked. The guy didn’t rip them, he just scanned the bar code. Then we ran. All the way up the stairs and to Academy 2, me screaming “Run to the hills!” all along the way. It was practically empty, and we managed to grab spots on the second row again, to the right this time. Well – it’s not really organised into rows, but you know what I mean. Around that general area. As you can see, our plan of action fell through. Callum and his friends were a bit to the left of us.
As the place was only filling up relatively slowly, I decided I’d try for a t-shirt. I instructed everyone to keep my place before dashing off. I found out why the place was so quiet, though – they were all hanging around the t-shirt stall. It wasn’t worth it. I’d take my chances after the show. I rushed back to claim my place, and the venue steadily grew busier.
This is one thing I’m a little bit confused about – the songs over the sound system. I’ve remembered all the ones I knew but not exactly when they were on. I’ll just write it this way and hope it’s right.
‘Shout at the Devil’ was on quite near the start, to which Amy and I nodded and sang along hardcorely. And I’m quite sure that was the only one I knew that was on before the bands.
The first band came on way sooner than I’d expected. I knew the support was supposed to be a band called Black Spiders – sure enough, their name was on the bass drum. They were all wearing a lot of black and they looked pretty moody. I think that this was because we didn’t appreciate them enough. I quite enjoyed their set, thinking I might buy their album afterwards. They sang a song (in the first draft they apparently sang a sock) which basically went ‘who the f*ck are you?’ and another one about how crap reality TV is. I totally agree! I hate reality TV!
I took a few photos but not many, as I was saving my memory for Stone Gods.
After the band went off, I told the other three my theory about why they had looked angry. Ellan admitted that she hadn’t been that into them. I was a bit surprised. I hadn’t stopped mildly headbanging (i.e. nodding) all the way through, and my neck was really aching. Ellan went off to the bar for a drink, and returned a bit later.
A few guys came on to mess with the stuff on-stage. Soundchecky type guys. Steph said something to me about really wanting that job, just coming on the stage and playing the guitars for a little bit for a band. Then, the ‘roadies’ started up a tune.
WHAT?
These weren’t Stone Gods! They were just a bunch of guys with long hair and moustaches! (Five of them, but the singer had a guitar so there were three of those). I noticed, however, that the drum kit still had Black Spiders on it. Could these guys be them?
Aha. The singer introduced the band as Black Spiders before yelling “F*ck you, Newcastle!” We had to yell back, complete with gestures – all together, then just us girls, then the guys. Steph told me later that she felt embarrassed whenever people swore, where Amy said she’d been genuinely annoyed at being sworn at because she’d (well, I’d) paid to see them. She’d been very sincere in her ‘f*ck you’s and one of the guitarists had noticed, and laughed at her.
The genuine Black Spiders were all right. I think I preferred the other band, though.
There was one thing about this lot that really stuck out – their drummer. He was INSANE. Think mad as Nicko McBrain and evil as Satan, combined with a beard. Honestly. We were all freaked out by him.
Again, Ellan went for a drink after the band went off. However, this time she didn’t come back. I found out throughout the show, via text, that she’d also gone to the bathroom to splash water on her dace, and settled at the back.
There were a few cool songs on between Black Spiders and the headliners. The first of these was ‘Ace of Spades’. You can tell which songs are known by everyone because you can hear them all singing. There was one song that I didn’t recognise for ages, despite the fact that loads of people were singing along. It was only when Amy sang “bam-a-lam!” in my face that I realised it was ‘Black Betty’, but not the original. I hadn’t recognised the style it had been covered in, which was much heavier. It was quite good, though, and a lot of fun. The third cool song was ‘Stand Up For Rock ‘N’ Roll’ by Airbourne – excellent choice. There were tons of Airbourne shirts, and it’s extremely likely that the majority of the crowd were Airbourne fans. Again, everyone was singing and really enjoying themselves.
One really, really, really annoying thing happened before the band came on, though. A dude fainted on us. That’s right, FAINTED. ON us. Literally – he had his head on Steph’s shoulder. Amy said he glared at her when he came round. She reckoned he’d been faking it, which seemed highly probable, as he’d had his eyes open and, when his friends had tried to grab him back he wouldn’t move for ages – evidently, he’d been trying to sneak his way forward, the dirty dog. Luckily he went back eventually, when his friends made him get a drink. It sort of ruined my night a bit, though. I was all panicky and shaky for quite a while afterwards. Plus, because we’d all shifted around, I had a slightly less good view.
Pretty soon, though, the lights went down, and the ‘Indiana Jones’ theme music came on. Stone Gods time! They came on from the side we were at, resulting in loads of cheering, much louder than anything so far, and launched into their biggest single ‘Don’t Drink the Water’. Richie Edwards had shaved off his beard! He resembled a boiled egg.
For me, this opener seemed strange. I’d been expecting ‘Burn the Witch’ like last time, but shows are never exactly the same, and I wasn’t bothered. Especially as I got to do the dancey bit! It had looked so awesome at Airbourne that I’d been looking forward to it as much as the concert itself, just about. Amy remarked later that it wasn’t as fun as she’d expected – what had she expected? It was only jumping up and down to music! Even so, I knew what she meant. Again, even so, I loved it.
The next song was ‘You Brought a Knife to a Gunfight’, one of my favourites. It was almost exactly like at Airbourne – I loved doing the hand gestures accompanied by the shouty “F*CK YOU”s.
After this, Richie talked to us. I think it was here that he told us about the first tour date – ours. He said that when they’d been told that the first date was going to be Newcastle they’d been really pleased. I’m still not sure if he was just saying it – he swore he wasn’t, and Dad said on the way back that he’s noticed there is something about Newcastle. But still. Pretty much all singers say stuff like that.
Anyway, he went on to say that they’d never done the next song before, making me feel kind of special. And to my surprise, the song was ‘Making it Hard’, my personal favourite if I had to choose one. You could sort of tell they’d never played it, because to me it sounded slightly flat, but it was mint anyway. I love the song – it’s so nice and feel-good, yet filthy and double-entendre-y at the same time.
Again, Richie talked after this song. He switched his guitar for an acoustic, and said it meant one of three things. It could mean they were going to play ‘Lazy Bones’ (a few people cheered) ‘Oh Where ‘O My Beero’ (well he called it ‘Beero’ – quite a few people cheered for this one, including me, because I do like ‘Beero’ – but I’d figured out what the third option would be and I wanted that one so I cheered quite quietly) or ‘Magdalen Street’. This got the loudest cheer, I think because we all knew they were going to play it no matter what we cheered for. They did.
I’d vowed to myself that this show, I was going to concentrate more on enjoying myself than taking loads of pictures and videos. I’d decided to take a few decent pictures, make one whole-song video and leave it at that. ‘Magdalen Street’ was this song. I’d filmed from right at the end of the previous song to make sure I got it all in, which meant I also got the guitar swap. It was so cool – I adore the song, partially because it’s about me (haha – Charlotte the Harlot eat you heart out) but also because it’s a good song. I loved their performance of it, especially as it was my first time seeing it live. I’d been disappointed when they hadn’t done it at Airbourne.
To make use of the guitar, they played another acoustic song – ‘Lazy Bones’. This song’s quite slow and calm, which was all right. Nice. It wasn’t amazing but it was fine. I can’t actually remember much about it.
After this, Richie switched guitars to a white Gibson Explorer, saying it was time for some “f*cking heavy metal!” I expected ‘Defend or Die’ but they played ‘Knight of the Living Dead’, which I actually like better so I didn’t mind at all. I thought there might be a mosh pit or something when the song goes all fast, but there wasn’t, and I was glad – for me, mosh pits are pretty pointless, because they make it hard to concentrate on the music itself. I only go in them when I don’t know the song that’s being played. ‘Knight of the Living Dead’ is another one with fun f-words in it. Hooray for obscene gestures!
Right at the beginning of the next song, Richie got us all singing the chorus, so of course we all knew what it was right away:
“Hey – this is the start of something
Whoa – we’re on our way
This is the start of something
We don’t care what they say
We’ll do it our way.”
What a pretty song. It’s all right. Not one of my favourites but good live, it’s very singable.
The next one was ‘I’m With the Band’. I like that one a lot. There’s a line in it that goes ‘it’s been a while since my clothes were clean but I/I kinda like it that way’. The dirty egg changed this to ‘since my c*ck was clean’. What a sicko! An amusing sicko, though. And he came in the crowd! Not near us, unfortunately, but still it’s always cool when people do that. You know that if and when they get really famous, they will become far too important.
When he got back on-stage, he started butt kissing – the butt in question being his own. He basically said that the next song would be the last, unless we cheered loud enough when they went off. We didn’t need to be told, but we could hardly tell him that. And so into ‘Defend or Die’, again with the Explorer. Much headbanging was participated in by all, but no mosh pits again … I used to not like this song. That changed though. I do now. It was brilliant live.
Once that was done, they went off, knowing full bloody well they’d be straight back on again, the smarmy gits. Not that I minded – I wanted more. I wanted ‘Beero’, for crying out loud! So, along with everyone else, I yelled “Stone Gods! Stone Gods!” etc. and, lo and behold, they returned! And leapt right into ‘Burn the Witch’, the song I’d thought they’d open with. So I enjoyed it all the more after anticipating it for the whole show. There’s something about it live that makes it incredibly awesome – you know, one of those songs that you always imagine being played live even when you’re just listening to it on the album? It has a lot of soloing and stuff at the end. Lots more headbanging! And fast bits that might have induced a mosh pit or two, but, again, didn’t. I’m actually listening now and reliving it. It was mint.
They tried something a bit different next. Richie said the next song was a tribute to someone from around here – my mind immediately went “Jonna!” Alas, it wasn’t Brian Johnson. It wasn’t anyone good. It was Cheryl bloody Tweedy – Richie refused to call her Cheryl Cole. It seemed weird, as rockers generally hate reality TV, as demonstrated by Hate Gallery (as I found out later the first support band were called). Stone Gods played a rocked-up version of Girls Aloud’s shitey song ‘Something Kinda Ooh’ which, needless to say, was better than the original. I filmed a bit of it. It was funny, despite my hatred of Cheryl, Girls Aloud, all girl bands, reality TV and that stupid song.
Then there was one last song. Yep! ‘Oh Where ‘O My Beero’! I was well happy. It’s a brilliant song. All singalongy, And it’s about beer and stuff. A real drinking song. I really enjoyed the final song of the night, even though it’s always a bit sad.
We cheered them as they left the stage. They’d done a great gig. I thought they’d played the album in its entirety – I realised later, though, that they’d missed two songs. There’s one called ‘Wasting Time’ and another called ‘Where You Coming From’ that I don’t think they did. If I didn’t notice, though, I can’t have missed them that much.
‘More Than a Feeling’ came on over the sound system, one of my favourite songs of all time. Because I’d been exposed to so much loud noise, it sounded all fuzzy and kind of sharp, so I was probably singing along all wrong.
Now to get out/find Ellan. She texted me: ‘at end meet at tshirts’. That made sense. We started to slowly shuffle our way out. We followed a lad with a Maiden shirt. It was one of those (unofficial, I think – tut tut!) ones with the band on the back – I therefore spent the whole time sort of cooing over Bruce.
The t-shirt stall was busy. Very busy. And we still had to buy stuff. As I was passing the table, someone said “Airbourne!” loudly to me. I looked up and saw the drummer from Black Spiders. Yes – the evil one! The band were there with their single and mailing list. I got chatting to them and they were actually really nice. One of them asked me if I’d seen them supporting Airbourne and the drummer told him that was only in Europe. Haha. I decided I’d buy their album. It was just beside them, with another guy. I bought it off him and asked one of the Black Spiders if they’d sign it.
It wasn’t their album. Crap! It was the other support band’s! Hate Gallery’s! And I’d just asked Black Spiders to sign it! I tried to explain my mistake but I don’t know if it got through. I was so embarrassed ... I think they thought that I’d thought they were Hate Gallery when in reality I’d just thought that Hate Gallery’s album was theirs. I signed their mailing list, though, so I could see when their actual album came out.
Hate Gallery were signing, but it was really busy and I couldn’t be bothered to wait. We moved towards the shirts where we could see Ellan waiting at the top of the stairs.
Steph and I gave Amy money to buy shirts with. They were cool shirts too – the Stone Gods logo in gold over a picture of playing cards and stuff with the dates on the back. I was glad they still had our sizes.
We met Ellan and headed off downstairs and outside, where we met Dad. We walked from the Academy to the car somewhat subdued. We passed the bin where I’d left my hobo food – it was still there. Hungry and very, very thirsty, Steph and I were very tempted to snatch it back, but neither of us are quite that low. We left it. And sort of regretted it once we were in the car. Amy luckily found an abandoned bottle of unopened water in one of the compartmenty type things in there, and we all shared it – we felt very after-giggy. Ellan filled us in about where she’d been, including her nice Dan view. Amy and I tried to find consolation (we were sad the show was over, of course) in the fact that our next gig was in a month’s time. Apart from that, though, we were so shattered we barely talked.
It was the usual routine – getting all snuggly and warm before getting a taste of the cold when we dropped Steph and Ellan off, then having to practically submerge ourselves in cold air when we arrived home. I had a drink and went to bed pretty much straight away, after laying out my t-shirt for later wear.
Overall, it was a good show. I couldn’t fault it. But it was the other things that ruined it, so the night itself could’ve been better, I think.
My diary entry for that day read something like this:
’21 Saturday STONE GODS
I’m currently listening to the ‘Harry Potter’ soundtrack to stop the ringing in my ears. Today was rather awesome! We went into town where we got talking to a woman about Airbourne and other bands. Then we went to see Charlotte and Courtney, who were watching Brompton girls play. THEN, after a couple of hours of other stuff, Amy, Ellan, Steph and me were on the train to NEWCASTLE! We had a few hours there before retiring to the Academy for Stone Gods. It was a great show, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t feel completely satisfied. Maybe because some loser FAINTED on us.’
I know that it’s wrong to compare Stone Gods to Hot Leg. It’s unfair. But I’m sorry, I can’t help it. I prefer Stone Gods’ music – however, to be honest, I enjoyed Hot Leg’s show much more.
Notes
-The next day I got diarrhoea. The guinea pigs were fine. (TMI, maybe? You should know me by now!)
-I saw the tour ad later in an old issue of Kerrang! and, ues, Hate Gallery WERE listed as support. I'm just unobservant.
-I finished the first draft of this on Wednesady, 15th April - as usual, it took me too long.
-I don't think I mentioned that Richie didn't suit his talking voice. It's really high pitched and posh.
-Due to the nature of text on here, anything that was originally in italics is written like 'this' or THIS depending on its context. It really annoys me, though!
-Those lyrics are Stone Gods', not mine. Obviously.
Sunday, 26 April 2009
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Hot Leg, Newcastle
It is now two minutes to three on Monday, 9th March (end of final draft - five minutes past two on Wednesday, 25th March) and I get the feeling this gig log is going to be hard. So I’ll just get straight on with the damn thing before I go off to work early and do the time I lost last Friday.
OK, so I woke up to Chickens and felt my usual nervous butterflies. However, I am getting used to them now, so I got up in pretty good time and got ready. I’d planned my clothes, of course, to save time later – I wore coloured/grey stripy socks, matching black (slightly slutty, but I’d liked the bra) underwear, my Criminal Damage jeans with the stars, my Trooper shirt and eventually my AC/DC denim jacket. I hadn’t planned on that, but it was too warm for a bigger one and too cold for none at all. I had £50.02 in cash in one of the little button-up pockets so that I didn’t forget to bring money that night.
Amy and I listened to Stone Gods for a bit, as Hot Leg had been in my alarm clock. Until, of course, we decided that that was silly, and I brought Red Light Fever downstairs. We listened to it about two and a half times before she, and I, set off to school. Nana told us to have a nice night – Cocktails had been on Scuzz the night before and we’d told her we were going to see the band who were playing it. She told me I had to ‘scream and shout’. Good advice indeed!
I put on my boxing boots and set off. It was a fresh, sunny day – proper spring weather – when I started walking to school, making sure I had a bit of a listen to hot Leg on the way. But it was weird. I met Beth and Grace as usual, then we walked on to Laura’s and nothing felt different. I did talk a bit about the show to remind them I was going, though that was about it.
The excitement built a bit when Steph arrived at Laura’s. This would be the first show I went to with friends, and not just family (although, of course, Amy was going too).
I ticked off my last day of the Hot Leg countdown in my academic diary in form. Grace told me how many days it was until John Barrowman – she’s extremely excited.
First lesson was French. We talked a bit about football and French footballers before we very briefly started on music. Mrs Kiernan set us some vocab, and when I got out my diary to write it in Laura saw what was written there.
“Oh, is Hot Leg tonight?” she asked me. Or something like that, anyway. Of course, I responded in the affirmative.
Next came Media, the lesson I share with Steph. We got a bit of a chance to talk gig excitement, but most of the lesson was taken up with watching the last part of the last episode of Life on Mars. Even though the ending sort of breaks the golden rule of English: ‘Never end by saying “I woke up and it was all a dream”’, I still thought it was pretty clever. I want to watch more of it now. I especially like the cool 70s soundtrack!
At break, we went to meet everyone else. I’d seen Ellan briefly earlier, but only to wave stupidly at. Her, Steph and I had a bit of a hyper discussion. We sorted the details of what would be happening later, i.e. Dad would pick them up at around six-ish. I told them to bring as little stuff as possible, and a jacket they could easily wrap around their waists. Of course, we’d be standing – my first time! I’d been to Richmond Live where I stood, but outside. But it was going to be Ellan and Steph’s first Academy gig altogether – and their first real gig that they were both actually counting (Ellan had seen Busted, and Steph Christina Aguilera. I think they were both pretty embarrassed…)
During break, Tom asked me if I’d help him with the underskirt of the wedding dress he was making. Steph and I had a free next, so we both went to meet him at the Textiles room. On the way there I passed Matt, who asked me if I could make it to his gig. Even though I still wasn’t sure, I felt so rock ‘n’ roll! (Note – his gig was last Saturday (14th March) and I didn’t go. I had nobody to go with!)
Helping Tom involved holding a huge circle of netting for about half an hour while he pinned it. I would never have the patience. He is amazing. However, Steph and I did get rather bored. I took a few pictures of Tom and his work, then we listened to some tunes on my phone. The latter died down quickly, though, because Tom and I hardly have the same taste.
The dummy he was working on was insanely skinny. This led to a big thing about proper measurements, and we all ended up measuring ourselves. Tom and Steph have the same sized waist. Mine is the widest. Wow.
Eventually, we left him to get on with his dress alone, and we went to Becky’s where she was watching Torchwood with Beth and Chloë. Bleurgh – Torchwood. I’d brought my mp3 player and my speakers in case I got chance to force Hot Leg upon everyone, but no such luck. Torchwood continued on into lunchtime. Grace and Becky even tried to name all of the episodes without looking. Losers.
I always have two frees on Fridays due to a clash in my timetable. I spent the second free on a computer upstairs in the Resource Centre. I listened to quite a lot of Samson while I did some Ethics work (comparing Jeremy Bentham with John Stuart Mill) and English work (a speech opposing reality TV).
I actually had English last. It wasn’t a coursework lesson, though. In fact, it was just a daft, and extremely easy, one. Sarah and I had to make a poster about demonstrative pronouns. These are pronouns such as ‘this’ or ‘those’ which determine something already known by the speaker and listener(s). Erm. Yeah. I did tell Sarah about the gig, briefly. And she told me to have a good time as we left.
So that was college. Off to do an hour and a half of work!
I arrived just after half three (so, in the signing-in book, half three) and got straight on with my jobs (I usually eat, go to the toilet, do whatever, to kill time). It’s incredible what a bit of pressure can do. I managed to finish everything, except for a couple of sets of desks, that I would usually do in two hours and a half. I left before Ralph even arrived. So it surprised me when he drove up behind me on Helmsley Way to ask what I had and hadn’t done! He sounded as surprised as I had been when I said I’d managed to do almost everything.
Finally, home time. The excitement was really starting to build up. I ran to my room and stuck my phone on charge to give it a bit of extra juice, then changed into my black and purple Raven vest top.
Amy and I ate tea together; chicken, chips and beans. Quick, easy food that I really enjoyed as I hadn’t had it for absolutely ages. However, I couldn’t finish it. Damn nervous butterflies! I’m so stupid. I always get them, even though there’s nothing to be nervous about. I’m not the one performing!
Dad was all dressed up smart because while we were at the show he and Charlotte were going to find somewhere nice to eat. I did a last quick freshen up – this involved wetting my hair and blow drying it as big and curly as it would go, brushing my teeth, applying deodorant and covering myself in Anna Sui’s Dolly Girl Bonjour L’Amour perfume. I love perfume. It smells good.
At about five to six I put on my Iron Maiden Vans and we set off, tickets in hand. Well – as soon as I got in the car, I put them in one of the side pockets. I brought my water bottle again, but I had an extra one as Dad had brought another one each for me and Amy. I got drinking straight away – I didn’t want to risk being dehydrated! The last thing I wanted to do was get in there and pass out.
First, we picked Charlotte up. Dad went in the house to get her while Amy and I waited, slightly impatiently. She wasn’t long, though, and we drove the two long minutes to Ellan’s house, where she was watching for us out of her window. She had her hair down and she was wearing her leather jacket, and I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen her so excited. I noticed she was wearing perfume, something I wouldn’t have expected of her, but decided not to mention it in case I was wrong.
We set off back to our side of town so we could grab Steph and get going. On the way there, Charlotte and Ellan said hi and got a bit better acquainted, as they’d never met before.
Because I couldn’t stop smelling perfume, I eventually asked Ellan what it was when we were almost at Steph’s. I think she said it was Fantasy by Britney Spears. I’m no Britney fan, but her perfumes are gorgeous.
I had to run into Steph’s house to get her. She was still in the bathroom – according to her mum, she’d been debating what to wear all night. So I yelled down the hall: “It’s not a beauty pageant!” She emerged in the end, and we went back to the car. She, like me, had a very noticeable camera-shaped bulge in one of her pockets, but I told her not to worry about it.
Back in the car, Amy had found a tin of beans that Dad had forgotten to bring inside for tea a couple of days ago. These beans provided a running joke for the whole journey.
We were well and truly on our way! Whoop! No denying the excitement now. As soon as we hit the main road, Amy made Charlotte put Red Light Fever on. We didn’t turn it up to eleven, though, because we were all talking so much. About really random, daft stuff – strange things that had happened at the Hugh Cornwell show Dad and Charlotte had seen the night before, like Dad standing up at the end when hardly anyone else would. Charlotte also told us about her niece’s ‘Hacca Macca’ (High School Musical) obsession. A lot of the time, Steph and Ellan couldn’t stop laughing, which was a nice way to break the ice.
Because Red Light Fever is quite a short album, we played it through once and a bit. I think we arrived in Newcastle at about twenty past seven. It was obviously dark, and we could see the lights of the city.
Dad was a bit wary of parking in the college car park – there was someone in there, and he looked quite official. We decided against it in the end, just in case we weren’t meant to park there. Instead, Charlotte showed Dad the side road where she parked for Kylie, and we went down there.
It was quite chilly outside. I temporarily forgot that my sister was in the back, and had to go and let her out. Once I had done this, we set off walking. It really was cold, adding to my amounting nerves. Why do I always get nervous? It gets kind of annoying!
We talked Hot Leg all the way there – of course. It was only around a ten minute walk, but it felt way longer. I was so cold and excited that I just wanted to arrive.
And arrive we did! To a quiet, empty road. I’d been expecting quite a long queue, or at least a few people waiting around outside, but there were only security dudes. The reason for this will become obvious in a minute, but back then, I couldn’t figure it out.
After a few words of warning, Dad and Charlotte let us go. We went to the dude outside, who directed us to the dude in the foyer, who took our tickets (he actually ripped off the rippy bits this time!) and directed us upstairs. I guess I didn’t really realise what he meant just then – I was more psyched that we’d successfully sneaked Amy into a gig – but as we went up the stairs, it all started to add up. The lack of people, the going up – we weren’t going to the Academy. We were going to Academy 2.
When I did realise, my excitement just about doubled. I’d never been in there before, but I knew it was considerably smaller, meaning a much more intimate show. What an awesome added bonus.
The t-shirt stall was just outside the final staircase up to the stage. Because we’d arrived about half an hour after doors, The Crave were already on, and we could hear them really clearly. I desperately wanted to go in. However, Amy and Steph both went to the toilet, so we had to wait. Ellan and I examined the shirts, deciding which ones we were going to get. I wanted one with the tour dates on it, but the only one of these had long sleeves. Plus, I noticed a misprint – instead of ‘March 4th’ it said ‘March 4nd’. Which was quiet cool, but that’s the kind of thing that would really start to annoy me after a while.
When Amy and Steph emerged, we all bought t-shirts so we could be sure we’d get the ones we wanted, and we’d avoid any rush after the show. I wanted a black one with the Hot Leg logo in orange, but they were sold out in my size, so I got a similar one with the logo as a white outline. Amy and Steph both got the yellow shirt with an orange logo, and Ellan got the grey one with the band carved into Mount Rushmore.
Finally, time to go in! One last flight of stairs and that was it. We were met by the venue and it was awesome. It was basically a club, with the stage at the other end. There was a bar on one side and a small balcony with a few stools on the other. I did a bit of research later and found out the capacity of the place is four hundred. Sure beats the two thousand we’d expected. No matter where we were, the sound and view were both really good … except for tall people! Honestly, why are rockers so tall? I thought I was until I went there. The majority of people towered above me.
The Crave were in full flow. Steph, I think, took a liking to them immediately – two of them had dreadlocks. However, I didn’t want to settle for a view from the back, so we began the quest to move forward, sneaking into whatever gaps we could. It wasn’t easy with four of us, especially through all the tall people, but eventually, thanks to Steph’s brainwave of following a rather large woman with beer, we arrived as far forward as we were ever going to get – the second row. We’d never get on the barrier, but we’d still done pretty well. And just in time to catch the end of the last song! Steph, the smallest of us, remarked that at least she saw them a bit.
When The Crave left the stage, we took a look at our surroundings. Steph was wedged between the people on the barrier and a little staircase, with Ellan next to her, and Amy and I were right at the foot of the stairs. Awkward positioning, awesome view. Totally worth it. I took my jacket off and tied it round my waist, then stuffed my new shirt up my top, out the way. You’d think it would be really hot in there with all those people, but the air conditioning was immense.
The music playing was annoying. It didn’t sound rocky in any way, shape or form, and I didn’t know any of it so I couldn’t sing along happily. It did make me want Hot Leg to come on even more, though.
A few dudes came on to do various sound checky bits and pieces, provoking rowdy chants of “Hot Leg! Hot Leg!” from us every now and then. This went on for a few songs.
Then, this one song came on that was considerably louder than the rest. I still didn’t know it but, like the Rolling Stones guy in Twickenham, I could feel it in my ribs. Surely, they had to be on soon.
Indeed they did. At the end of the song, the lights went down, and we all started yelling. That was it! I’d been counting down the days since mid-January and it was finally here.
The band came on. From the right-hand side as we were looking at them; all of them had their quirks, but Justin Hawkins! Wow. I could hardly believe that we were seeing him so close up. He was wearing black and green zebra striped trousers and a black jacket over a blue vest. His Hot Leg hair is well better than his old hair – shorter and bleached blonde. It suits his face more. He still looks ugly, but not as ugly. He was wearing tons of dark eye make-up, too. And black nail varnish.
They launched straight into Ashamed. I had expected them to open with Chickens, because it’s the first one on the album, but I didn’t mind because I love both songs equally. I got out my camera and took loads of pictures and a video. This was my first show with a working, non-phone camera so I went slightly insane.
The song was good, despite the lack of Beverlei Brown who features on the album. That’s probably a good thing, though – her voice kinds of drives me crazy. And Justin is perfectly capable of hitting immensely high notes by himself. It was amazing. He clearly has no balls. Maybe.
I think Justin said something here, but nothing major, otherwise I would’ve remembered it. The next song was introduced (and, apparently, played for us): I’ve Met Jesus. I guess they were playing it near the start to get it out the way, as it’s one of the ones that everyone knows really well, and would sort the posers from the real fans!
During this song, someone threw a beer on-stage. At the end, Justin addressed him: “Whoever threw that beer, you’ve ruined his best shirt now!” (The stuff went all over the drum kit and the drummer). He then proceeded to call the guy the ‘c word’. I managed to video this, and it’s up on YouTube. Just search something like ‘Hot Leg I’ve Met Jesus live Newcastle’ and it’ll come up.
Right, this is where it gets difficult, because try as I might I can neither remember nor find the set list. So instead, the next load of stuff will just be whatever I’m thinking about, probably in no particular order. Set-wise, all I can remember is that they played the album, plus other songs from the next album, apparently. See, I told you it was going to be hard!
They played a few songs that we knew all together first. Actually, I think it was the best part of Red Light Fever, almost all of it, before they started with new album stuff. It went something like Prima Donna, Whichever Way You Wanna Give It, Gay in the 80s, Trojan Guitar, Chickens, You Can’t Hurt Me Any More, ballady type songs including Kissing in the Wind, some other songs, Cocktails, and the encore, which was made entirely of new album stuff. I thought that was a shame – I mean, it was interesting to hear what might be coming from the band, but you couldn’t really get involved like you could with the others.
Justin dedicated a few of the songs to various people, too. One guy at the other side of the crowd yelled “I love you!” loud enough for pretty much everyone to hear and Justin said “I love you too – who are you?” To which the guy gave his name, and he repeated “I love you too, tell you what, this one’s for you,” and they played another new song.
There were two women right behind us who got a song dedicated in this way as well. They were stood on the stairs – one of the official women had moved them off earlier but they’d sneaked their way back on again. They were so annoying … clearly more Justin Hawkins’ groupies than Hot Leg fans, always shrieking and yelling annoying things. At one point Justin talked about the end of the ‘erection section’ (a little bit of the concert dedicated to ballads) and they were shouting “eROCKtion!” He said “What?” And they did it again, to which he replied, “Oh, erocktion¸ I see what you’ve done, you’ve taken the vowel and changed it …” I managed to get this on video, too, and because they were behind me Justin’s looking right in my direction, “You’re two big Leg fans over there, tell you what, this one’s for you!” The women whooped irritatingly as the band started up their song.
The final dedicated song was to a seven-year-old boy whose birthday it was. Justin got us all singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him, and said what he’d most like for his birthday was to see us all jumping up and down to the next song. We obliged happily. In my case it wasn’t easy, because whenever I jumped up I smacked my knee into the banister, but it was still fun. We could feel the floor moving beneath our feet.
One of the new songs had a bit of audience participation in it. The words? Woah … huh! Justin sang them to us, and we sang them back. Only it turned out we were supposed to sing with him, not after him. We only caught on after he explained it to us, and even then loads of people continued to do it wrong. On purpose, I think, after a while. It went on for absolutely ages. It was funny, though.
Costumeness next! During the main set, Justin took his jacket off, leaving him in the blue vest. It’s loads like one Amy has, actually. For the encore, he got changed into a white football strip, exposing most of his tattoos. The shorts were extremely short! He kept putting his leg up on the monitors or the barrier, to much stroking. I didn’t get to touch him, unfortunately. There were opportunities aplenty, but I was often inches away due to the stupid barrier people. He stripped his shirt off, too, revealing an arm tattoo continuing onto his chest, and one on his stomach that carried on below his shorts. I kind of wanted to see what it was, but I didn’t want to see what else was under there …
I took tons of pictures and quite a few videos. Our view enabled awesome pictures, especially when the band members came right up to us. Justin did this a couple of times on my videos, which was lucky. Even though I have some really incredible photos, they still don’t do justice to the position we had. Almost everything about it was amazing, better than any show I’d ever been to.
I think that’s everything about the show that I can remember right now. Which sucks, but I can’t do anything about that. All I can say is it was a brilliant concert. The only thing I could fault about the show itself was the fact that they played tons of new stuff. It’s not as good when you can’t get properly involved. Oh well. I thoroughly enjoyed myself anyway. The closeness, the fun-ness, the music … it was all fantastic. I think Justin actually talked to my sister and me when we made mosh hands at him. I love intimate gigs!
It’s always a bummer when the band go off for real after the encore and the lights come on. We had a shouty discussion over the ringing in our ears and the music – it seemed everyone else had loved it too, which was good. I know Steph really likes stuff like this, but you can hardly tell because she’s pretty quiet and doesn’t get hugely involved. It was nice to see she’d had a good time, as had Amy and Ellan.
And now to get four hundred people down one little staircase … always fun. We hung around at the back of the crowd for a bit, not overly keen on the prospect of being crushed. Then the people hanging around (including us) got yelled at to move, when we couldn’t, because the exit was basically a giant scrum. Eventually, though, we got through, and arrived back down at the t-shirt stall, where we decided to buy some more stuff. Ellan and Steph had both really liked The Crave, so they bought their album. I’d thought they were all right, but a bit soft for my taste, so I didn’t bother. I did buy Hot Leg’s I’ve Met Jesus single on vinyl, because it was signed and £2. Also, I love LPs and EPs. Steph, however, is in love with them. She bought the single and Red Light Fever on red vinyl.
Slowly, we moved along. The Crave were standing and signing their album. We tried to get Steph to go up to them but she wouldn’t, so I approached one of the dreadlock guys and said “Excuse me, my friends are losers and won’t come and see you themselves, will you please sign their albums?” Before I’d finished my sentence they went up – I don’t know if they were saving themselves, or me, from embarrassment. Probably me…
Steph and Ellan’s albums found their way around the band. Steph told me later that Ellan had said to her “You don’t look very excited,” and she’d replied “I’m inwardly excited,” and one of the guys had said “Cool.” She was really pleased.
One of the yellow official guys told Amy and me to get moving if we weren’t doing anything, so we told him we were waiting for our friends, and when they were finished, we went downstairs and outside. The last ones out! Dad and Charlotte were waiting for us at the other side of the road. We crossed over to them and launched into excited chatter about the concert. This continued all the way to the car – every single detail, all the highlights, everything. Charlotte said she’d seen a bloke with a drumstick come out, and she bet that we’d almost got it. Sure enough, we had been this close – I’d felt it against my hand, but another bloke behind me had caught it. Unlucky.
As soon as we hit the road I drank some more water, and realised just how tired I was. Talking became much more of an effort. Instead, I listened – Dad and Charlotte had eaten at an Italian restaurant and their service had been unusually fast. Later on down the road, Charlotte told us (in great detail) about the time when Jessie had done a two tone turd when she was looking after her. I think Ellan was mildly revolted – Steph was laughing her head off.
Just when I was getting warm and comfortable, we pulled off the main road and started our way back to Steph’s house. I gave everyone their tickets.
At Steph’s I had to get out to let her out. It was awful – I was so warm and tired that the cold air was a shock to my system. I couldn’t wait to get back in.
After we’d said goodbye to Steph it was on to Ellan’s house. We dropped her off, watched her into the house, then went to Charlotte’s. Dad took her inside while Amy and I waited in the car for a couple of minutes. I was dreading the cold air again.
Eventually, though, we had to face it. We pulled up home, I got all my stuff together and got out. It was freezing, my lips were dry and sore, my mouth was thirsty, my head was fuzzy, my ears were ringing and I was shattered. But these were all signs of a fantastic night.
I was so proud of my pictures that I put my memory card in the digital photo frame to have a look at for a bit; tired as I was, I didn’t want to let the day slip away. Not just yet. I had a drink, ate a biscuit, and sat up with Amy for a few minutes. We’d got in on the stroke of midnight so there was no more Friday Rock Show to listen to.
When I gave in to tiredness, we both went upstairs to bed, where my ears really started to ring. I laid my shirt out for the next morning, changed into my pyjamas, and got into bed. All I could hear was ringing. I don’t know how you spell the noise that makes.
Before I could actually go to sleep, though, I had to write in my diary:
‘Hot Leg were immense¸ I kind of hadn’t registered that on the ticket it said ‘Academy 2’ so I was expecting to see them at the main stage. We had better luck – Academy 2 is basically a club. I was this close to touching Justin Hawkins on several occasions! I would’ve been able to if it wasn’t for those complete losers on the barrier who barely moved throughout. Poos. It was a good show though, we managed to push our way to the second row which wasn’t bad at all. It was a pretty normal day, so I’ll continue with more Hot Leg-ness. We got Amy in no problem so I relaxed a bit then. Only complaints I have are 1. annoying crowd and 2. too much ‘next album’ stuff!’
Finally – sleep! I was very happy though.
I needed loads of sleep. I only got about eight hours, probably just under, where I’d been hoping for about ten because on the Saturday night I was going to the cinema to see Slumdog Millionaire, then sleeping at Beth’s, for her birthday party. Naturally I wore my Hot Leg shirt. I printed out some of my best pictures, put them in my album, and brought them with me. Steph, Ellan and I were in Hot Leg mode all night. It was awesome. And the legacy continued – I blew up my two favourite pictures of Justin in Boots on the Sunday, then printed off copies for all four of us. On the Tuesday, Ellan, Steph and I all wore our shirts to college.
Big things do come in small packages. Hot Leg’s show was more than proof.
Notes
- I don’t think I mentioned that Justin came in the crowd. Well, he did – and I discovered my camera had no space left on the memory card. I therefore ended up with two rubbish pictures on my phone.
- I rang Rich during I’ve Met Jesus. He was very jealous I got to go.
- As you might have guessed from the diary entry, the tickets did say Academy 2, so not noticing was my own fault.
- At Beth’s house, Steph told me that on the back of The Crave’s album, they thanked Bruce Dickinson.
OK, so I woke up to Chickens and felt my usual nervous butterflies. However, I am getting used to them now, so I got up in pretty good time and got ready. I’d planned my clothes, of course, to save time later – I wore coloured/grey stripy socks, matching black (slightly slutty, but I’d liked the bra) underwear, my Criminal Damage jeans with the stars, my Trooper shirt and eventually my AC/DC denim jacket. I hadn’t planned on that, but it was too warm for a bigger one and too cold for none at all. I had £50.02 in cash in one of the little button-up pockets so that I didn’t forget to bring money that night.
Amy and I listened to Stone Gods for a bit, as Hot Leg had been in my alarm clock. Until, of course, we decided that that was silly, and I brought Red Light Fever downstairs. We listened to it about two and a half times before she, and I, set off to school. Nana told us to have a nice night – Cocktails had been on Scuzz the night before and we’d told her we were going to see the band who were playing it. She told me I had to ‘scream and shout’. Good advice indeed!
I put on my boxing boots and set off. It was a fresh, sunny day – proper spring weather – when I started walking to school, making sure I had a bit of a listen to hot Leg on the way. But it was weird. I met Beth and Grace as usual, then we walked on to Laura’s and nothing felt different. I did talk a bit about the show to remind them I was going, though that was about it.
The excitement built a bit when Steph arrived at Laura’s. This would be the first show I went to with friends, and not just family (although, of course, Amy was going too).
I ticked off my last day of the Hot Leg countdown in my academic diary in form. Grace told me how many days it was until John Barrowman – she’s extremely excited.
First lesson was French. We talked a bit about football and French footballers before we very briefly started on music. Mrs Kiernan set us some vocab, and when I got out my diary to write it in Laura saw what was written there.
“Oh, is Hot Leg tonight?” she asked me. Or something like that, anyway. Of course, I responded in the affirmative.
Next came Media, the lesson I share with Steph. We got a bit of a chance to talk gig excitement, but most of the lesson was taken up with watching the last part of the last episode of Life on Mars. Even though the ending sort of breaks the golden rule of English: ‘Never end by saying “I woke up and it was all a dream”’, I still thought it was pretty clever. I want to watch more of it now. I especially like the cool 70s soundtrack!
At break, we went to meet everyone else. I’d seen Ellan briefly earlier, but only to wave stupidly at. Her, Steph and I had a bit of a hyper discussion. We sorted the details of what would be happening later, i.e. Dad would pick them up at around six-ish. I told them to bring as little stuff as possible, and a jacket they could easily wrap around their waists. Of course, we’d be standing – my first time! I’d been to Richmond Live where I stood, but outside. But it was going to be Ellan and Steph’s first Academy gig altogether – and their first real gig that they were both actually counting (Ellan had seen Busted, and Steph Christina Aguilera. I think they were both pretty embarrassed…)
During break, Tom asked me if I’d help him with the underskirt of the wedding dress he was making. Steph and I had a free next, so we both went to meet him at the Textiles room. On the way there I passed Matt, who asked me if I could make it to his gig. Even though I still wasn’t sure, I felt so rock ‘n’ roll! (Note – his gig was last Saturday (14th March) and I didn’t go. I had nobody to go with!)
Helping Tom involved holding a huge circle of netting for about half an hour while he pinned it. I would never have the patience. He is amazing. However, Steph and I did get rather bored. I took a few pictures of Tom and his work, then we listened to some tunes on my phone. The latter died down quickly, though, because Tom and I hardly have the same taste.
The dummy he was working on was insanely skinny. This led to a big thing about proper measurements, and we all ended up measuring ourselves. Tom and Steph have the same sized waist. Mine is the widest. Wow.
Eventually, we left him to get on with his dress alone, and we went to Becky’s where she was watching Torchwood with Beth and Chloë. Bleurgh – Torchwood. I’d brought my mp3 player and my speakers in case I got chance to force Hot Leg upon everyone, but no such luck. Torchwood continued on into lunchtime. Grace and Becky even tried to name all of the episodes without looking. Losers.
I always have two frees on Fridays due to a clash in my timetable. I spent the second free on a computer upstairs in the Resource Centre. I listened to quite a lot of Samson while I did some Ethics work (comparing Jeremy Bentham with John Stuart Mill) and English work (a speech opposing reality TV).
I actually had English last. It wasn’t a coursework lesson, though. In fact, it was just a daft, and extremely easy, one. Sarah and I had to make a poster about demonstrative pronouns. These are pronouns such as ‘this’ or ‘those’ which determine something already known by the speaker and listener(s). Erm. Yeah. I did tell Sarah about the gig, briefly. And she told me to have a good time as we left.
So that was college. Off to do an hour and a half of work!
I arrived just after half three (so, in the signing-in book, half three) and got straight on with my jobs (I usually eat, go to the toilet, do whatever, to kill time). It’s incredible what a bit of pressure can do. I managed to finish everything, except for a couple of sets of desks, that I would usually do in two hours and a half. I left before Ralph even arrived. So it surprised me when he drove up behind me on Helmsley Way to ask what I had and hadn’t done! He sounded as surprised as I had been when I said I’d managed to do almost everything.
Finally, home time. The excitement was really starting to build up. I ran to my room and stuck my phone on charge to give it a bit of extra juice, then changed into my black and purple Raven vest top.
Amy and I ate tea together; chicken, chips and beans. Quick, easy food that I really enjoyed as I hadn’t had it for absolutely ages. However, I couldn’t finish it. Damn nervous butterflies! I’m so stupid. I always get them, even though there’s nothing to be nervous about. I’m not the one performing!
Dad was all dressed up smart because while we were at the show he and Charlotte were going to find somewhere nice to eat. I did a last quick freshen up – this involved wetting my hair and blow drying it as big and curly as it would go, brushing my teeth, applying deodorant and covering myself in Anna Sui’s Dolly Girl Bonjour L’Amour perfume. I love perfume. It smells good.
At about five to six I put on my Iron Maiden Vans and we set off, tickets in hand. Well – as soon as I got in the car, I put them in one of the side pockets. I brought my water bottle again, but I had an extra one as Dad had brought another one each for me and Amy. I got drinking straight away – I didn’t want to risk being dehydrated! The last thing I wanted to do was get in there and pass out.
First, we picked Charlotte up. Dad went in the house to get her while Amy and I waited, slightly impatiently. She wasn’t long, though, and we drove the two long minutes to Ellan’s house, where she was watching for us out of her window. She had her hair down and she was wearing her leather jacket, and I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen her so excited. I noticed she was wearing perfume, something I wouldn’t have expected of her, but decided not to mention it in case I was wrong.
We set off back to our side of town so we could grab Steph and get going. On the way there, Charlotte and Ellan said hi and got a bit better acquainted, as they’d never met before.
Because I couldn’t stop smelling perfume, I eventually asked Ellan what it was when we were almost at Steph’s. I think she said it was Fantasy by Britney Spears. I’m no Britney fan, but her perfumes are gorgeous.
I had to run into Steph’s house to get her. She was still in the bathroom – according to her mum, she’d been debating what to wear all night. So I yelled down the hall: “It’s not a beauty pageant!” She emerged in the end, and we went back to the car. She, like me, had a very noticeable camera-shaped bulge in one of her pockets, but I told her not to worry about it.
Back in the car, Amy had found a tin of beans that Dad had forgotten to bring inside for tea a couple of days ago. These beans provided a running joke for the whole journey.
We were well and truly on our way! Whoop! No denying the excitement now. As soon as we hit the main road, Amy made Charlotte put Red Light Fever on. We didn’t turn it up to eleven, though, because we were all talking so much. About really random, daft stuff – strange things that had happened at the Hugh Cornwell show Dad and Charlotte had seen the night before, like Dad standing up at the end when hardly anyone else would. Charlotte also told us about her niece’s ‘Hacca Macca’ (High School Musical) obsession. A lot of the time, Steph and Ellan couldn’t stop laughing, which was a nice way to break the ice.
Because Red Light Fever is quite a short album, we played it through once and a bit. I think we arrived in Newcastle at about twenty past seven. It was obviously dark, and we could see the lights of the city.
Dad was a bit wary of parking in the college car park – there was someone in there, and he looked quite official. We decided against it in the end, just in case we weren’t meant to park there. Instead, Charlotte showed Dad the side road where she parked for Kylie, and we went down there.
It was quite chilly outside. I temporarily forgot that my sister was in the back, and had to go and let her out. Once I had done this, we set off walking. It really was cold, adding to my amounting nerves. Why do I always get nervous? It gets kind of annoying!
We talked Hot Leg all the way there – of course. It was only around a ten minute walk, but it felt way longer. I was so cold and excited that I just wanted to arrive.
And arrive we did! To a quiet, empty road. I’d been expecting quite a long queue, or at least a few people waiting around outside, but there were only security dudes. The reason for this will become obvious in a minute, but back then, I couldn’t figure it out.
After a few words of warning, Dad and Charlotte let us go. We went to the dude outside, who directed us to the dude in the foyer, who took our tickets (he actually ripped off the rippy bits this time!) and directed us upstairs. I guess I didn’t really realise what he meant just then – I was more psyched that we’d successfully sneaked Amy into a gig – but as we went up the stairs, it all started to add up. The lack of people, the going up – we weren’t going to the Academy. We were going to Academy 2.
When I did realise, my excitement just about doubled. I’d never been in there before, but I knew it was considerably smaller, meaning a much more intimate show. What an awesome added bonus.
The t-shirt stall was just outside the final staircase up to the stage. Because we’d arrived about half an hour after doors, The Crave were already on, and we could hear them really clearly. I desperately wanted to go in. However, Amy and Steph both went to the toilet, so we had to wait. Ellan and I examined the shirts, deciding which ones we were going to get. I wanted one with the tour dates on it, but the only one of these had long sleeves. Plus, I noticed a misprint – instead of ‘March 4th’ it said ‘March 4nd’. Which was quiet cool, but that’s the kind of thing that would really start to annoy me after a while.
When Amy and Steph emerged, we all bought t-shirts so we could be sure we’d get the ones we wanted, and we’d avoid any rush after the show. I wanted a black one with the Hot Leg logo in orange, but they were sold out in my size, so I got a similar one with the logo as a white outline. Amy and Steph both got the yellow shirt with an orange logo, and Ellan got the grey one with the band carved into Mount Rushmore.
Finally, time to go in! One last flight of stairs and that was it. We were met by the venue and it was awesome. It was basically a club, with the stage at the other end. There was a bar on one side and a small balcony with a few stools on the other. I did a bit of research later and found out the capacity of the place is four hundred. Sure beats the two thousand we’d expected. No matter where we were, the sound and view were both really good … except for tall people! Honestly, why are rockers so tall? I thought I was until I went there. The majority of people towered above me.
The Crave were in full flow. Steph, I think, took a liking to them immediately – two of them had dreadlocks. However, I didn’t want to settle for a view from the back, so we began the quest to move forward, sneaking into whatever gaps we could. It wasn’t easy with four of us, especially through all the tall people, but eventually, thanks to Steph’s brainwave of following a rather large woman with beer, we arrived as far forward as we were ever going to get – the second row. We’d never get on the barrier, but we’d still done pretty well. And just in time to catch the end of the last song! Steph, the smallest of us, remarked that at least she saw them a bit.
When The Crave left the stage, we took a look at our surroundings. Steph was wedged between the people on the barrier and a little staircase, with Ellan next to her, and Amy and I were right at the foot of the stairs. Awkward positioning, awesome view. Totally worth it. I took my jacket off and tied it round my waist, then stuffed my new shirt up my top, out the way. You’d think it would be really hot in there with all those people, but the air conditioning was immense.
The music playing was annoying. It didn’t sound rocky in any way, shape or form, and I didn’t know any of it so I couldn’t sing along happily. It did make me want Hot Leg to come on even more, though.
A few dudes came on to do various sound checky bits and pieces, provoking rowdy chants of “Hot Leg! Hot Leg!” from us every now and then. This went on for a few songs.
Then, this one song came on that was considerably louder than the rest. I still didn’t know it but, like the Rolling Stones guy in Twickenham, I could feel it in my ribs. Surely, they had to be on soon.
Indeed they did. At the end of the song, the lights went down, and we all started yelling. That was it! I’d been counting down the days since mid-January and it was finally here.
The band came on. From the right-hand side as we were looking at them; all of them had their quirks, but Justin Hawkins! Wow. I could hardly believe that we were seeing him so close up. He was wearing black and green zebra striped trousers and a black jacket over a blue vest. His Hot Leg hair is well better than his old hair – shorter and bleached blonde. It suits his face more. He still looks ugly, but not as ugly. He was wearing tons of dark eye make-up, too. And black nail varnish.
They launched straight into Ashamed. I had expected them to open with Chickens, because it’s the first one on the album, but I didn’t mind because I love both songs equally. I got out my camera and took loads of pictures and a video. This was my first show with a working, non-phone camera so I went slightly insane.
The song was good, despite the lack of Beverlei Brown who features on the album. That’s probably a good thing, though – her voice kinds of drives me crazy. And Justin is perfectly capable of hitting immensely high notes by himself. It was amazing. He clearly has no balls. Maybe.
I think Justin said something here, but nothing major, otherwise I would’ve remembered it. The next song was introduced (and, apparently, played for us): I’ve Met Jesus. I guess they were playing it near the start to get it out the way, as it’s one of the ones that everyone knows really well, and would sort the posers from the real fans!
During this song, someone threw a beer on-stage. At the end, Justin addressed him: “Whoever threw that beer, you’ve ruined his best shirt now!” (The stuff went all over the drum kit and the drummer). He then proceeded to call the guy the ‘c word’. I managed to video this, and it’s up on YouTube. Just search something like ‘Hot Leg I’ve Met Jesus live Newcastle’ and it’ll come up.
Right, this is where it gets difficult, because try as I might I can neither remember nor find the set list. So instead, the next load of stuff will just be whatever I’m thinking about, probably in no particular order. Set-wise, all I can remember is that they played the album, plus other songs from the next album, apparently. See, I told you it was going to be hard!
They played a few songs that we knew all together first. Actually, I think it was the best part of Red Light Fever, almost all of it, before they started with new album stuff. It went something like Prima Donna, Whichever Way You Wanna Give It, Gay in the 80s, Trojan Guitar, Chickens, You Can’t Hurt Me Any More, ballady type songs including Kissing in the Wind, some other songs, Cocktails, and the encore, which was made entirely of new album stuff. I thought that was a shame – I mean, it was interesting to hear what might be coming from the band, but you couldn’t really get involved like you could with the others.
Justin dedicated a few of the songs to various people, too. One guy at the other side of the crowd yelled “I love you!” loud enough for pretty much everyone to hear and Justin said “I love you too – who are you?” To which the guy gave his name, and he repeated “I love you too, tell you what, this one’s for you,” and they played another new song.
There were two women right behind us who got a song dedicated in this way as well. They were stood on the stairs – one of the official women had moved them off earlier but they’d sneaked their way back on again. They were so annoying … clearly more Justin Hawkins’ groupies than Hot Leg fans, always shrieking and yelling annoying things. At one point Justin talked about the end of the ‘erection section’ (a little bit of the concert dedicated to ballads) and they were shouting “eROCKtion!” He said “What?” And they did it again, to which he replied, “Oh, erocktion¸ I see what you’ve done, you’ve taken the vowel and changed it …” I managed to get this on video, too, and because they were behind me Justin’s looking right in my direction, “You’re two big Leg fans over there, tell you what, this one’s for you!” The women whooped irritatingly as the band started up their song.
The final dedicated song was to a seven-year-old boy whose birthday it was. Justin got us all singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him, and said what he’d most like for his birthday was to see us all jumping up and down to the next song. We obliged happily. In my case it wasn’t easy, because whenever I jumped up I smacked my knee into the banister, but it was still fun. We could feel the floor moving beneath our feet.
One of the new songs had a bit of audience participation in it. The words? Woah … huh! Justin sang them to us, and we sang them back. Only it turned out we were supposed to sing with him, not after him. We only caught on after he explained it to us, and even then loads of people continued to do it wrong. On purpose, I think, after a while. It went on for absolutely ages. It was funny, though.
Costumeness next! During the main set, Justin took his jacket off, leaving him in the blue vest. It’s loads like one Amy has, actually. For the encore, he got changed into a white football strip, exposing most of his tattoos. The shorts were extremely short! He kept putting his leg up on the monitors or the barrier, to much stroking. I didn’t get to touch him, unfortunately. There were opportunities aplenty, but I was often inches away due to the stupid barrier people. He stripped his shirt off, too, revealing an arm tattoo continuing onto his chest, and one on his stomach that carried on below his shorts. I kind of wanted to see what it was, but I didn’t want to see what else was under there …
I took tons of pictures and quite a few videos. Our view enabled awesome pictures, especially when the band members came right up to us. Justin did this a couple of times on my videos, which was lucky. Even though I have some really incredible photos, they still don’t do justice to the position we had. Almost everything about it was amazing, better than any show I’d ever been to.
I think that’s everything about the show that I can remember right now. Which sucks, but I can’t do anything about that. All I can say is it was a brilliant concert. The only thing I could fault about the show itself was the fact that they played tons of new stuff. It’s not as good when you can’t get properly involved. Oh well. I thoroughly enjoyed myself anyway. The closeness, the fun-ness, the music … it was all fantastic. I think Justin actually talked to my sister and me when we made mosh hands at him. I love intimate gigs!
It’s always a bummer when the band go off for real after the encore and the lights come on. We had a shouty discussion over the ringing in our ears and the music – it seemed everyone else had loved it too, which was good. I know Steph really likes stuff like this, but you can hardly tell because she’s pretty quiet and doesn’t get hugely involved. It was nice to see she’d had a good time, as had Amy and Ellan.
And now to get four hundred people down one little staircase … always fun. We hung around at the back of the crowd for a bit, not overly keen on the prospect of being crushed. Then the people hanging around (including us) got yelled at to move, when we couldn’t, because the exit was basically a giant scrum. Eventually, though, we got through, and arrived back down at the t-shirt stall, where we decided to buy some more stuff. Ellan and Steph had both really liked The Crave, so they bought their album. I’d thought they were all right, but a bit soft for my taste, so I didn’t bother. I did buy Hot Leg’s I’ve Met Jesus single on vinyl, because it was signed and £2. Also, I love LPs and EPs. Steph, however, is in love with them. She bought the single and Red Light Fever on red vinyl.
Slowly, we moved along. The Crave were standing and signing their album. We tried to get Steph to go up to them but she wouldn’t, so I approached one of the dreadlock guys and said “Excuse me, my friends are losers and won’t come and see you themselves, will you please sign their albums?” Before I’d finished my sentence they went up – I don’t know if they were saving themselves, or me, from embarrassment. Probably me…
Steph and Ellan’s albums found their way around the band. Steph told me later that Ellan had said to her “You don’t look very excited,” and she’d replied “I’m inwardly excited,” and one of the guys had said “Cool.” She was really pleased.
One of the yellow official guys told Amy and me to get moving if we weren’t doing anything, so we told him we were waiting for our friends, and when they were finished, we went downstairs and outside. The last ones out! Dad and Charlotte were waiting for us at the other side of the road. We crossed over to them and launched into excited chatter about the concert. This continued all the way to the car – every single detail, all the highlights, everything. Charlotte said she’d seen a bloke with a drumstick come out, and she bet that we’d almost got it. Sure enough, we had been this close – I’d felt it against my hand, but another bloke behind me had caught it. Unlucky.
As soon as we hit the road I drank some more water, and realised just how tired I was. Talking became much more of an effort. Instead, I listened – Dad and Charlotte had eaten at an Italian restaurant and their service had been unusually fast. Later on down the road, Charlotte told us (in great detail) about the time when Jessie had done a two tone turd when she was looking after her. I think Ellan was mildly revolted – Steph was laughing her head off.
Just when I was getting warm and comfortable, we pulled off the main road and started our way back to Steph’s house. I gave everyone their tickets.
At Steph’s I had to get out to let her out. It was awful – I was so warm and tired that the cold air was a shock to my system. I couldn’t wait to get back in.
After we’d said goodbye to Steph it was on to Ellan’s house. We dropped her off, watched her into the house, then went to Charlotte’s. Dad took her inside while Amy and I waited in the car for a couple of minutes. I was dreading the cold air again.
Eventually, though, we had to face it. We pulled up home, I got all my stuff together and got out. It was freezing, my lips were dry and sore, my mouth was thirsty, my head was fuzzy, my ears were ringing and I was shattered. But these were all signs of a fantastic night.
I was so proud of my pictures that I put my memory card in the digital photo frame to have a look at for a bit; tired as I was, I didn’t want to let the day slip away. Not just yet. I had a drink, ate a biscuit, and sat up with Amy for a few minutes. We’d got in on the stroke of midnight so there was no more Friday Rock Show to listen to.
When I gave in to tiredness, we both went upstairs to bed, where my ears really started to ring. I laid my shirt out for the next morning, changed into my pyjamas, and got into bed. All I could hear was ringing. I don’t know how you spell the noise that makes.
Before I could actually go to sleep, though, I had to write in my diary:
‘Hot Leg were immense¸ I kind of hadn’t registered that on the ticket it said ‘Academy 2’ so I was expecting to see them at the main stage. We had better luck – Academy 2 is basically a club. I was this close to touching Justin Hawkins on several occasions! I would’ve been able to if it wasn’t for those complete losers on the barrier who barely moved throughout. Poos. It was a good show though, we managed to push our way to the second row which wasn’t bad at all. It was a pretty normal day, so I’ll continue with more Hot Leg-ness. We got Amy in no problem so I relaxed a bit then. Only complaints I have are 1. annoying crowd and 2. too much ‘next album’ stuff!’
Finally – sleep! I was very happy though.
I needed loads of sleep. I only got about eight hours, probably just under, where I’d been hoping for about ten because on the Saturday night I was going to the cinema to see Slumdog Millionaire, then sleeping at Beth’s, for her birthday party. Naturally I wore my Hot Leg shirt. I printed out some of my best pictures, put them in my album, and brought them with me. Steph, Ellan and I were in Hot Leg mode all night. It was awesome. And the legacy continued – I blew up my two favourite pictures of Justin in Boots on the Sunday, then printed off copies for all four of us. On the Tuesday, Ellan, Steph and I all wore our shirts to college.
Big things do come in small packages. Hot Leg’s show was more than proof.
Notes
- I don’t think I mentioned that Justin came in the crowd. Well, he did – and I discovered my camera had no space left on the memory card. I therefore ended up with two rubbish pictures on my phone.
- I rang Rich during I’ve Met Jesus. He was very jealous I got to go.
- As you might have guessed from the diary entry, the tickets did say Academy 2, so not noticing was my own fault.
- At Beth’s house, Steph told me that on the back of The Crave’s album, they thanked Bruce Dickinson.
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
Best Live Band
UP THE FUCKING IRONS!
Just shows that we Maiden fans are an army when we put our minds to it. I bet 'fans' of the other bands presumed their favourite acts would win, and so didn't try to help them at all. Maiden well and truly derserved that award. I know most people (generally those who favour the crappy famous-for-five-minutes music scene) weren't exepcting it, but I know that we voted long and hard. I did, anyway! It was fantastic to see the boys get some recognition for once.
Shame Acca Dacca lost to Kings of Leon. TWICE. Oh well. KoL will be nowhere in another few years, where AC/DC will continue to rock hard.
Just shows that we Maiden fans are an army when we put our minds to it. I bet 'fans' of the other bands presumed their favourite acts would win, and so didn't try to help them at all. Maiden well and truly derserved that award. I know most people (generally those who favour the crappy famous-for-five-minutes music scene) weren't exepcting it, but I know that we voted long and hard. I did, anyway! It was fantastic to see the boys get some recognition for once.
Shame Acca Dacca lost to Kings of Leon. TWICE. Oh well. KoL will be nowhere in another few years, where AC/DC will continue to rock hard.
Friday, 13 February 2009
BRIT AWARDS
Well, I'm sure you all know that the mighty Maiden are up for 'Best Live Band'. Unfortunately voting has now closed in that category, but I voted for them. After all, who would rather go and see crap like Coldplay when you could get blown away by the air raid siren vocals of Mr Dickinson?
If you type in 'vote for the brits' to Google, Maiden are the first specified band that come up in the results. Doesn't that say something?
However, even though the Irons have been nominated, they are not featured on the Brits 09 album. And AC/DC are up for two awards ... are they on there, then? Oh, come on, surely? No.
Clearly the music world is not good enough for these legendary giants of classic rock.
If you type in 'vote for the brits' to Google, Maiden are the first specified band that come up in the results. Doesn't that say something?
However, even though the Irons have been nominated, they are not featured on the Brits 09 album. And AC/DC are up for two awards ... are they on there, then? Oh, come on, surely? No.
Clearly the music world is not good enough for these legendary giants of classic rock.
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
Airbourne, Newcastle Carling Academy
Airbourne
It’s Tuesday, 18th November (second draft: Monday, 2nd February). I’ve snatched a few precious minutes before work because my teacher is ill again and I didn’t technically have last lesson. It would probably be much more constructive for me to have stayed in college to do Media work, but oh well. This is important, in my opinion.
Yesterday was a strange day. I woke up at 6:20 to the sound of Airbourne. Nothing really unusual about that. I had the normal feeling of not wanting to get up so I listened to the whole album before I did.
Then I got up. Feeling tired and slightly nauseous – a sensation I recognised strongly from July 5th. But I felt better as I got ready and set off for college.
My first show on a schoolnight. It was weird. When I was thinking about it, I was pretty excited – but, most of the time I was doing ordinary school stuff, so I wasn’t.
I attempted vocab learning for French in tutorial. First lesson was Media. Steph and I couldn’t get into the editing room, so we went to B13 to catch up with our tasks instead, including watching the preliminary exercise video. Of course, I soon got bored and messed around on the Internet instead, eventually arriving at the Carling Academy website where Airbourne topped their list of featured shows.
Next came French, where I did a bit of cheating on my vocab but I always think that helps in the long run. I got out my diary, where I had ‘Airbourne – RUNNIN’ WILD AND FREE!’ written. I had been counting down for thirty days. I showed Laura, who said ‘I bet you’re excited right now then, aren’t you?’ Of course I was!
It was a very cold morning. I was wearing my big black boots, black skinny jeans, Jack Daniels shirt and black blazer jacket. So I wasn’t particularly warm. Luckily, we went into the corridor we usually stand in when it’s cold.
I was free after break, and so was Steph, so we both went to the resource centre as we had work to do. We sat at our usual balcony desk and I re-drafted my twelve mar sexual ethics essay whilst listening to Airbourne in my CD player. It’s quite a short album, though, and I finished it within the hour. I got to listen to Stone Gods for a bit as well before it was lunchtime, and we went to Becky’s.
It was quite an ordinary lunchtime as well. All I rally remember is that we started re-watching Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in order to laugh at the bad acting and squeaky voices. It was hilarious.
After Lunch, I had Philosophy and Ethics. With one minor difference: my teacher wasn’t there. Which was a shame, as I’d been wondering whether he’d be interested in what I was getting up to, but you can’t have everything. I instead spent the lesson doing work on the Four Working Principles of Situation Ethics in the resource centre. I also coloured in the A4 sheet I printed off in green and orange TicTac style. It looked rather funky.
Then came English, Eleanor and I arrived first, and in hope that our teacher would think we weren’t there, we sat in the dark for a while. However, the rest of the class soon joined us, and our teacher came to teach.
It was an extremely boring lesson. Sarah and Wannabe Ste were both absent, so I basically spent the hour writing part of my Electric Eel story in my paper folder. Kyle telling Kayleigh he was gay was far more interesting than language and power.
English was my last lesson, so I set off for work once I was done with it. Work was really strange as well. Because I had to leave an hour earlier, at five past five, I did all my main jobs really fast. Somehow too fast. This resulted in me having about fifteen minutes left – not enough time to really do the big jobs, but too much to be filled by the little ones. Rachael asked me where I was going. I told her the Carling Academy in Newcastle (after I accidentally told her City Hall...) and she told me she’d seen the Plain White T’s there. She’d been up on the balcony, but because the venue’s only quite small she felt really close to the band. The PWTs are hardly my cup of tea, but this still made me feel even more excited: wherever we were, we’d be near the stage.
So, at five past five, I set off home.
By the time I got there, I felt really sleepy and I had a stomach ache, but I just suspected pre-gig nerves, because I was hungry still. As soon as I got in, I ate my tea, which was mince and vegetables. I felt strange at that point. It was dark, I had just got back from work and I was tired, yet soon I’d be driving (well – being a passenger) to Newcastle to see a concert.
After I’d finished eating, I had to get ready, and quickly. I changed my Jack Daniels shirt to my Punky Fish one – the same shirt I’d worn to Twickenham. I brushed my teeth and gave my face a quick wash before putting on my black eyeliner and some Ralph Lauren Cool to help to cover up any potential sweaty stink. I’d decided to wear my AC/DC patch covered denim jacket, so I’d hidden a twenty pound note inside one of the little button-up pockets earlier to ensure I didn’t forget any money for a t-shirt. I also gathered up a whole lot of stuff for the car – Silver Spoons and Broken Bones, Runnin’ Wild, my portable CD player, my little speakers and Barry Trotter and the Unnecessary Sequel. Our car CD player wasn’t working, so our driving enjoyment depended entirely on this.
We set off at around quarter to six. I set the speakers off with Amy’s mp3 player playing some Airbourne, but as she’d imported the songs weirdly I had to find the next one myself once one had finished, so I gave up and put Runnin’ Wild in the CD palyer instead.
Disaster! The batteries died! We faced a quiet journey.
Dad told us he’d brought lots of sweets and bottles of water .Indeed, the back of the car was full of them. I had my own water bottle so I generally drank from that until I got sick of old water and wanted some fresh new cold stuff.
The first sweets we ate were those really sour fizzy cola things, and they tasted rank because my mouth was still minty from toothpaste so I didn’t eat any more sweets on the way there.
We stopped at a garage on the main road. We stopped at a similar one on the way home from Maiden, so they remind me of concerts now.
One thing I remember a lot about the journey came when we were approaching Newcastle. It was obviously dark, and we could see the lights of the city. Town. Whatever. I said how cool they looked and Dad said something like ‘this’ll all be part of the experience, you’ll remember this later’. I said I didn’t want to think about later. I wanted to see the show first. We also talked about his shows, when he was about my age. He said they always tended to be around ‘this time of year’ as well, when the nights were getting darker. I think darkness makes anything more exciting, except maybe sunbathing.
In Newcastle, the Academy was on the other side of the river, so we got to go over a bridge. I love doing that because you can see a lot from where you are. It looked especially pretty in the dark.
We parked up in our college car park near the Metro Radio Arena, the car park we used to use for Disney on Ice performances. It was really chilly, and I was starting to feel nervous, an irritating habit I have about stuff like this. These combined make my jaw ache (don’t ask me why, it’s weird). I warmed up when we got walking, though. It was about a ten minute walk to the Academy; we saw a few rockers getting out of a car near us, but no more until we were on the next street from the venue. One guy commented on my AC/DC jacket, making me laugh.
It was an absolute beast when we got to the venue. We just suddenly saw it, and it’s one of those that literally has a lit up white board above the door, with black stripes and the name of the band on it in red. AIRBOURNE. And the queue was immense – it stretched right around the building and it was full of rockers in various awesome t-shirts. It’s times like this when I don’t feel ‘different’… haha.
It was probably about ten or quarter past seven by that point, just after doors time, so Dad didn’t want to join the queue yet. We waited on the other side of the street for a bit, and when we did join, we ended up round the back of the building. It was a fast-moving queue, though. When we were nearing the doors Dad thought he saw someone he recognised from home. (It turned out later that he actually worked in the Tesco near Dad’s work that he often goes to during lunch).
Our tickets were checked, but the security guys didn’t rip off the rippy bits, they just let us in. The inside was quite posh and red, with posh and red lighting. We went in and the first thing I heard was 22 Acacia Avenue playing over the sound system – a sure sign, if I needed one, that it was going to be a good night. We went up a couple of flights of stairs and waited while Amy went to the loo. I saw a couple of Twickenham event shirts in the bar area.
You weren’t given a seat on the balcony like I’d thought. We could just sit anywhere. We sat to the left (right from the stage), three rows back (the nearest we could get to the front). Once we were seated Dad went to the loo as well. It was ages – we were getting quite worried, but he returned after a while. As always, he’d got talking to someone, this time apparently a few young dudes about Airbourne. He said he’d found the t-shirt stall, too, so he gave Amy and I instructions on how to get there. We had to take our tickets pretty much everywhere we went so we could get back through the doors onto the balcony.
We couldn’t find the shirts anywhere, though. We searched for a while but eventually gave up and returned to Dad, asking him exactly where we were meant to be going. He obviously couldn’t show us or we’d lose our seats, so Dad took Amy and I waited for them.
Whilst they were gone, all the lights went down. A big ‘wooooaaaarrrr’-y noise filled the room. I was shitting myself – I hadn’t been ready, I’d completely forgotten that the first support band were due on, and I was still sat on my own.
Sound and Fury came on, relaxing me a bit once I knew what was going on.
As this was my first indoor gig, the power of the sound blew me away. It was good to get used to, though, considering there’d be two more bands.
Dad and Amy came back during the show. We watched it together for a bit, but I didn’t really like Sound and Fury much. It was hard to get into them because I didn’t know their songs, but it was mainly because the singer annoyed me, posing about at the front of the stage. One of the guitarists reminded me of Slash – he had a similar Les Paul and a lot of dark, curly hair.
I soon got bored, though, so Amy and I went to get my t-shirt. We had to go downstairs and get through some more doors. The guy who checked our tickets told us to go upstairs, thinking we were looking for our seats, but another one noticed and told him it was OK to let us in. I bought the Airbourne tour shirt.
We watched the rest of Sound and Fury. Dad and Amy both really enjoyed them, unlike me, and they went to get Amy’s shirt. Once they came back, none of us would move again until after the show.
Next came Stone Gods! I loved how their bass drum had the band name on it, I always think that’s so cool. There was a bit of intro music before they actually came on, then they opened with Burn the Witch, the first song on their album. It was getting me all excited – owning the album meant I knew their songs, and could get into them easily. The next song they played was You Brought a Knife to a Gun Fight, one of my favourites.
I’m annoyed with myself, though. I can’t remember all of the songs Stone Gods played, or the order in which they played them, or what happened when. I just remember a load of random bits and pieces, which I will detail now.
I only remember five other songs for certain: Start of Something, I’m With the Band, Defend or Die, Knight of the Living Dead and, of course, Don’t Drink the Water. If I’d got the album more than five days before the show I’d probably have known and remembered the set better.
However, I will work with what I have.
One of my best friends has a massive thing for Dan Hawkins, so I made sure I had a few pictures and videos of him especially for her. Personally I think he’s ugly, but a great guitarist who played well with his crowd and not at them. I often saw the standing people gathering to mosh around him when he got up on the monitors.
I thought the singer/guitarist, Richie Edwards, was really cool. He was a good frontman who worked us, the crowd, like he was headlining and not just support. I’m sure at one point he acknowledged me and my sister – everyone on the balcony apart from us was being pretty boring and quiet.
Richie asked us who owned the album. We yelled and waved. Apparently though, the album was being sold at the venue for a credit crunch beating price of seven pounds, and not enough of us had it already.
It was fun swearing, both verbally and with our fingers, during You Brought a Knife to a Gun Fight. But I think the song I enjoyed the most was actually Don’t Drink the Water. There was a little tutorial on how to sing along – there’s a few ‘oi’s at the end of lines that we had to yell. And on the funky dancey bit, Richie got the whole floor dancing. It looked absolutely mint.
They didn’t play the whole album, though, so it was soon over. It had been an amazing set, almost as though they were joint headliners with Airbourne because everyone had been really involved. My voice was almost completely gone, and my throat was sore, worrying me a bit. I wanted some voice left for Airbourne: however, I’m weird, so I also wanted to lose my voice for the next day. It gradually came back, though. wanted a drink but none of us had one and I couldn’t be bothered to move.
There were a few songs played over the sound system whilst the stage was being set for the headliners. The played Wasted Years – me and Amy were singing and headbanging like we were actually watching Iron Maiden play it live. It almost made up for the fact that I didn’t know the song as well at Twickenham.
After that, they played Overkill by Motörhead. It was amazing. The bass was so immensely loud that it sounded like thunder. Or like the venue was falling down. Luckily it wasn’t, but the illusion was pretty cool.
I can’t remember any more of the songs that played, only the three I mentioned. All I know is that after Overkill there weren’t many songs left.
The stage was all set like the video for Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast. Right before they were due to come on, we could see them from the angle we were at, just behind the amps. We watched them getting ready excitedly.
Then the lights went down.
Airbourne had a bit of intro music like Stone Gods. It was weird, because it sounded like them, but it was pre-recorded. Because I was ready, I managed to get a (crappy) video of the start on my phone. It’s on YouTube!
The lights came on to reveal the four of them, and we went mental. As on the album, they started with Stand Up For Rock ‘N’ Roll, a song made to open with. Just the intro gets you so worked up you want to run around like a crazy fool. Building up to when the song gets going, all I wanted to do was jump to my feet: but there was a yellow-vested security guard watching over us, and I knew that if we tried any such thing we’d be yelled at. So instead of standing up for rock ‘n’ roll, I stretched my arms up as far as I could and screamed along.
I rang my friend Rich during this song, as I’d promised by text earlier. He texted me saying it sounded good, and to enjoy the rest of the concert.
After the first song, we gave the guys an immense cheer. The volume was through the roof, even louder than the two supports. There was a ringing in my ears even during the noise, it was just that loud.
I know Joel yelled stuff at us at this point. But he often yelled stuff at us, he was a very friendly man. So I’m not sure exactly what he yelled when. I do know that he drank a lot, though – and chucked a lot of booze out as well.
The next song they played was Hellfire. Strange, as it’s the last one on the album, but fine in the show. I think it was after this that Joel cracked open his first can and said ‘Cheers, Newcastle!’ Every time he addressed us he literally screamed. It was so funny. We couldn’t understand him half the time.
Fat City came next. This was fun – I love how it’s called that because it makes me think of a city full of fat people.
After that was their third single from the album, Diamond in the Rough. Proper solid rock ‘n’ roll, good for shouting the extremely singable chorus. My voice was back especially for the set, and now I was glad.
The tempo slowed, but the solid rock remained for What’s Eatin’ you, a song I knew but not as well as the others. There’s always a song like that – one that, for some reason, just doesn’t stick in my head, no matter how much I listen to it.
Girls in Black was the song I’d dressed for, and it came next. I’m pretty sure Joel was shirtless by this point, but he probably had been for a while. Amy and me were almost dancing along to this, two girls in black. Of course, we couldn’t stand. All the fist pumping was making my arms ache, but oh well. You only get out what you put in.
They really slowed down Cheap Wine and Cheaper Women. It sounded strange – good, though. Another fantastic chorus to yell to. I particularly loved the line ‘she loved me tender, and she f*cked me sweet’, one that Joel changed, and sang, with relish. There was also the classic bit towards the end: ‘Women come and go…’ which he sort of spoke matter-of-factly. It was funny, it sounded like he was speaking from experience. Which, being a rock star, he probably was.
I don’t have a particular favourite Airbourne song, but if I did, it would have to be Heartbreaker. I think there’s something about the vocals – they sound a bit sad, but awesome at the same time. I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is about this song, though. Maybe it’s to do with the melody itself, it really gets to me.
Possibly their most famous song drew a massive roar from the crowd. The song the stage was set up for. Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast. I was thinking about the video during the live performance. I tend to get psyched knowing the band from the video and the band in front of me are exactly the same. They really recreated the video, too, Roadsy and Streety doing the dual-headswirling thing. Mind you, all three of them did that a lot. Joel even got up on one of the big blocky things … erm, yeah, he did that a few times and all. I remember during the first bit of the first chorus, at the line ‘I’ll sit and spin for a little while’, he twirled his finger. I don’t know why that’s important. It’s just something I remember. I rang my friend Beth during this song, too – she bought me the album for my birthday.
After that song, though, came the end of the show. We cheered for a bit, Joel said thank you, and they went off. Luckily, as us Airbourne fans are not stupid, we knew they still had to play two more songs, so we didn’t give up, chanting and screaming for more.
And they returned! One by one.
First Ryan, on the drums, tapping out the rhythm for Runnin’ Wild. Then Streety, slamming on the bass. This went on for a while, until the guitars joined in, eventually becoming the intro and receiving a wild reaction from us. If Airbourne have ever recorded ‘genuine fist-pumping, sweat-soaked rock ‘n’ roll’, this is it. Full of energy.
But that just left one song. Another energetic number, Blackjack, maybe to tire us out. It’s a fun song, though. And even though I was pretty much worn out in the arm area, I didn’t put them down.
And that really was the end. They went off, and the house lights came on, and we knew they wouldn’t be coming back again. I wasn’t too sad, though. It had been a hell of a night.
I know that was basically just a detailed setlist, making the show sound boring. It was anything but that. I know it’s now become a cliché to mention this band when talking about Airbourne, but it reminded me of an early AC/DC show. Joel came into the crowd a couple of times, like Angus used to. Only Joel pulled a pint and soloed at the same time as well. He was absolutely crazy! It’s the only word for it.
There was quite a lot of booze in the show, actually. Joel drank a lot, sent a lot spinning out into the crowd, and poured a lot on his head. I liked it when he did this – he then swirled his head around so his hair flew all over the place and sprayed beer everywhere. It looked really cool.
Near the end of the show, Joel talked about real rock ‘n’ roll, and how we all believed in it. He yelled for quite a while – I didn’t catch half of it, but I got the gist, and that was enough.
I rang home during the show as well. As no one was in, the messages Amy and I left are still on the phone. There’s Diamond in the Rough, Cheap Wine and Cheaper Women and Heartbreaker (twice – one message entirely solo and the other the chorus).
And that’s all I can think about now, so I’ll leave the show there. It was brilliant.
We walked back to the car. Newcastle was full of young adults out drinking, but waves of rockers soon dispersed and evened out the chavs. The air outside was warmer than we’d expected of a late November night (Dad and Amy had had a mini-argument about jackets earlier).
I sent this message to a few of my friends:
Walking back to the car, airbourne rocked my socks and bed! I’m of course joking, but that Joel is pretty awesome! Going to a few people xxx Laura was the only one who replied, but between then and now I accidentally deleted her message.
I can’t remember much about the journey home. My ears were ringing but my throat wasn’t at all sore or dry. Amy fell asleep in the car so I just talked to Dad.
So we got home. I had a drink, and went to bed. I was sort of glad we didn’t have a(nother) hellishly long, depressing journey home, but the car had been nice and warm. Plus, although I didn’t know it then, that was the last journey I ever made in our Vauxhall Vectra (Dad bought a Land Rover Discovery the next day).
I wrote in my two diaries:
AIRBOURNE! What a strange day. I got up, went to college and went to work as usual, but then I came home from work early and went to Newcastle to see Airbourne at Carling Academy – awesome venue and the band were brilliant, really enjoyed myself. Stone Gods good too.
And:
AIRYBOURNE … put on a genuinely awesome rock ‘n’ roll show, shame we couldn’t stand but I’m pretty sure Joel saw us anyway.
This last entry also contained a ‘0’. 0 days until Airbourne.
And that’s it. I wore my shirt the next day, along with a headache and sore eyes. It was totally worth it. Go and see Airbourne live if you love proper rock!
It’s Tuesday, 18th November (second draft: Monday, 2nd February). I’ve snatched a few precious minutes before work because my teacher is ill again and I didn’t technically have last lesson. It would probably be much more constructive for me to have stayed in college to do Media work, but oh well. This is important, in my opinion.
Yesterday was a strange day. I woke up at 6:20 to the sound of Airbourne. Nothing really unusual about that. I had the normal feeling of not wanting to get up so I listened to the whole album before I did.
Then I got up. Feeling tired and slightly nauseous – a sensation I recognised strongly from July 5th. But I felt better as I got ready and set off for college.
My first show on a schoolnight. It was weird. When I was thinking about it, I was pretty excited – but, most of the time I was doing ordinary school stuff, so I wasn’t.
I attempted vocab learning for French in tutorial. First lesson was Media. Steph and I couldn’t get into the editing room, so we went to B13 to catch up with our tasks instead, including watching the preliminary exercise video. Of course, I soon got bored and messed around on the Internet instead, eventually arriving at the Carling Academy website where Airbourne topped their list of featured shows.
Next came French, where I did a bit of cheating on my vocab but I always think that helps in the long run. I got out my diary, where I had ‘Airbourne – RUNNIN’ WILD AND FREE!’ written. I had been counting down for thirty days. I showed Laura, who said ‘I bet you’re excited right now then, aren’t you?’ Of course I was!
It was a very cold morning. I was wearing my big black boots, black skinny jeans, Jack Daniels shirt and black blazer jacket. So I wasn’t particularly warm. Luckily, we went into the corridor we usually stand in when it’s cold.
I was free after break, and so was Steph, so we both went to the resource centre as we had work to do. We sat at our usual balcony desk and I re-drafted my twelve mar sexual ethics essay whilst listening to Airbourne in my CD player. It’s quite a short album, though, and I finished it within the hour. I got to listen to Stone Gods for a bit as well before it was lunchtime, and we went to Becky’s.
It was quite an ordinary lunchtime as well. All I rally remember is that we started re-watching Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in order to laugh at the bad acting and squeaky voices. It was hilarious.
After Lunch, I had Philosophy and Ethics. With one minor difference: my teacher wasn’t there. Which was a shame, as I’d been wondering whether he’d be interested in what I was getting up to, but you can’t have everything. I instead spent the lesson doing work on the Four Working Principles of Situation Ethics in the resource centre. I also coloured in the A4 sheet I printed off in green and orange TicTac style. It looked rather funky.
Then came English, Eleanor and I arrived first, and in hope that our teacher would think we weren’t there, we sat in the dark for a while. However, the rest of the class soon joined us, and our teacher came to teach.
It was an extremely boring lesson. Sarah and Wannabe Ste were both absent, so I basically spent the hour writing part of my Electric Eel story in my paper folder. Kyle telling Kayleigh he was gay was far more interesting than language and power.
English was my last lesson, so I set off for work once I was done with it. Work was really strange as well. Because I had to leave an hour earlier, at five past five, I did all my main jobs really fast. Somehow too fast. This resulted in me having about fifteen minutes left – not enough time to really do the big jobs, but too much to be filled by the little ones. Rachael asked me where I was going. I told her the Carling Academy in Newcastle (after I accidentally told her City Hall...) and she told me she’d seen the Plain White T’s there. She’d been up on the balcony, but because the venue’s only quite small she felt really close to the band. The PWTs are hardly my cup of tea, but this still made me feel even more excited: wherever we were, we’d be near the stage.
So, at five past five, I set off home.
By the time I got there, I felt really sleepy and I had a stomach ache, but I just suspected pre-gig nerves, because I was hungry still. As soon as I got in, I ate my tea, which was mince and vegetables. I felt strange at that point. It was dark, I had just got back from work and I was tired, yet soon I’d be driving (well – being a passenger) to Newcastle to see a concert.
After I’d finished eating, I had to get ready, and quickly. I changed my Jack Daniels shirt to my Punky Fish one – the same shirt I’d worn to Twickenham. I brushed my teeth and gave my face a quick wash before putting on my black eyeliner and some Ralph Lauren Cool to help to cover up any potential sweaty stink. I’d decided to wear my AC/DC patch covered denim jacket, so I’d hidden a twenty pound note inside one of the little button-up pockets earlier to ensure I didn’t forget any money for a t-shirt. I also gathered up a whole lot of stuff for the car – Silver Spoons and Broken Bones, Runnin’ Wild, my portable CD player, my little speakers and Barry Trotter and the Unnecessary Sequel. Our car CD player wasn’t working, so our driving enjoyment depended entirely on this.
We set off at around quarter to six. I set the speakers off with Amy’s mp3 player playing some Airbourne, but as she’d imported the songs weirdly I had to find the next one myself once one had finished, so I gave up and put Runnin’ Wild in the CD palyer instead.
Disaster! The batteries died! We faced a quiet journey.
Dad told us he’d brought lots of sweets and bottles of water .Indeed, the back of the car was full of them. I had my own water bottle so I generally drank from that until I got sick of old water and wanted some fresh new cold stuff.
The first sweets we ate were those really sour fizzy cola things, and they tasted rank because my mouth was still minty from toothpaste so I didn’t eat any more sweets on the way there.
We stopped at a garage on the main road. We stopped at a similar one on the way home from Maiden, so they remind me of concerts now.
One thing I remember a lot about the journey came when we were approaching Newcastle. It was obviously dark, and we could see the lights of the city. Town. Whatever. I said how cool they looked and Dad said something like ‘this’ll all be part of the experience, you’ll remember this later’. I said I didn’t want to think about later. I wanted to see the show first. We also talked about his shows, when he was about my age. He said they always tended to be around ‘this time of year’ as well, when the nights were getting darker. I think darkness makes anything more exciting, except maybe sunbathing.
In Newcastle, the Academy was on the other side of the river, so we got to go over a bridge. I love doing that because you can see a lot from where you are. It looked especially pretty in the dark.
We parked up in our college car park near the Metro Radio Arena, the car park we used to use for Disney on Ice performances. It was really chilly, and I was starting to feel nervous, an irritating habit I have about stuff like this. These combined make my jaw ache (don’t ask me why, it’s weird). I warmed up when we got walking, though. It was about a ten minute walk to the Academy; we saw a few rockers getting out of a car near us, but no more until we were on the next street from the venue. One guy commented on my AC/DC jacket, making me laugh.
It was an absolute beast when we got to the venue. We just suddenly saw it, and it’s one of those that literally has a lit up white board above the door, with black stripes and the name of the band on it in red. AIRBOURNE. And the queue was immense – it stretched right around the building and it was full of rockers in various awesome t-shirts. It’s times like this when I don’t feel ‘different’… haha.
It was probably about ten or quarter past seven by that point, just after doors time, so Dad didn’t want to join the queue yet. We waited on the other side of the street for a bit, and when we did join, we ended up round the back of the building. It was a fast-moving queue, though. When we were nearing the doors Dad thought he saw someone he recognised from home. (It turned out later that he actually worked in the Tesco near Dad’s work that he often goes to during lunch).
Our tickets were checked, but the security guys didn’t rip off the rippy bits, they just let us in. The inside was quite posh and red, with posh and red lighting. We went in and the first thing I heard was 22 Acacia Avenue playing over the sound system – a sure sign, if I needed one, that it was going to be a good night. We went up a couple of flights of stairs and waited while Amy went to the loo. I saw a couple of Twickenham event shirts in the bar area.
You weren’t given a seat on the balcony like I’d thought. We could just sit anywhere. We sat to the left (right from the stage), three rows back (the nearest we could get to the front). Once we were seated Dad went to the loo as well. It was ages – we were getting quite worried, but he returned after a while. As always, he’d got talking to someone, this time apparently a few young dudes about Airbourne. He said he’d found the t-shirt stall, too, so he gave Amy and I instructions on how to get there. We had to take our tickets pretty much everywhere we went so we could get back through the doors onto the balcony.
We couldn’t find the shirts anywhere, though. We searched for a while but eventually gave up and returned to Dad, asking him exactly where we were meant to be going. He obviously couldn’t show us or we’d lose our seats, so Dad took Amy and I waited for them.
Whilst they were gone, all the lights went down. A big ‘wooooaaaarrrr’-y noise filled the room. I was shitting myself – I hadn’t been ready, I’d completely forgotten that the first support band were due on, and I was still sat on my own.
Sound and Fury came on, relaxing me a bit once I knew what was going on.
As this was my first indoor gig, the power of the sound blew me away. It was good to get used to, though, considering there’d be two more bands.
Dad and Amy came back during the show. We watched it together for a bit, but I didn’t really like Sound and Fury much. It was hard to get into them because I didn’t know their songs, but it was mainly because the singer annoyed me, posing about at the front of the stage. One of the guitarists reminded me of Slash – he had a similar Les Paul and a lot of dark, curly hair.
I soon got bored, though, so Amy and I went to get my t-shirt. We had to go downstairs and get through some more doors. The guy who checked our tickets told us to go upstairs, thinking we were looking for our seats, but another one noticed and told him it was OK to let us in. I bought the Airbourne tour shirt.
We watched the rest of Sound and Fury. Dad and Amy both really enjoyed them, unlike me, and they went to get Amy’s shirt. Once they came back, none of us would move again until after the show.
Next came Stone Gods! I loved how their bass drum had the band name on it, I always think that’s so cool. There was a bit of intro music before they actually came on, then they opened with Burn the Witch, the first song on their album. It was getting me all excited – owning the album meant I knew their songs, and could get into them easily. The next song they played was You Brought a Knife to a Gun Fight, one of my favourites.
I’m annoyed with myself, though. I can’t remember all of the songs Stone Gods played, or the order in which they played them, or what happened when. I just remember a load of random bits and pieces, which I will detail now.
I only remember five other songs for certain: Start of Something, I’m With the Band, Defend or Die, Knight of the Living Dead and, of course, Don’t Drink the Water. If I’d got the album more than five days before the show I’d probably have known and remembered the set better.
However, I will work with what I have.
One of my best friends has a massive thing for Dan Hawkins, so I made sure I had a few pictures and videos of him especially for her. Personally I think he’s ugly, but a great guitarist who played well with his crowd and not at them. I often saw the standing people gathering to mosh around him when he got up on the monitors.
I thought the singer/guitarist, Richie Edwards, was really cool. He was a good frontman who worked us, the crowd, like he was headlining and not just support. I’m sure at one point he acknowledged me and my sister – everyone on the balcony apart from us was being pretty boring and quiet.
Richie asked us who owned the album. We yelled and waved. Apparently though, the album was being sold at the venue for a credit crunch beating price of seven pounds, and not enough of us had it already.
It was fun swearing, both verbally and with our fingers, during You Brought a Knife to a Gun Fight. But I think the song I enjoyed the most was actually Don’t Drink the Water. There was a little tutorial on how to sing along – there’s a few ‘oi’s at the end of lines that we had to yell. And on the funky dancey bit, Richie got the whole floor dancing. It looked absolutely mint.
They didn’t play the whole album, though, so it was soon over. It had been an amazing set, almost as though they were joint headliners with Airbourne because everyone had been really involved. My voice was almost completely gone, and my throat was sore, worrying me a bit. I wanted some voice left for Airbourne: however, I’m weird, so I also wanted to lose my voice for the next day. It gradually came back, though. wanted a drink but none of us had one and I couldn’t be bothered to move.
There were a few songs played over the sound system whilst the stage was being set for the headliners. The played Wasted Years – me and Amy were singing and headbanging like we were actually watching Iron Maiden play it live. It almost made up for the fact that I didn’t know the song as well at Twickenham.
After that, they played Overkill by Motörhead. It was amazing. The bass was so immensely loud that it sounded like thunder. Or like the venue was falling down. Luckily it wasn’t, but the illusion was pretty cool.
I can’t remember any more of the songs that played, only the three I mentioned. All I know is that after Overkill there weren’t many songs left.
The stage was all set like the video for Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast. Right before they were due to come on, we could see them from the angle we were at, just behind the amps. We watched them getting ready excitedly.
Then the lights went down.
Airbourne had a bit of intro music like Stone Gods. It was weird, because it sounded like them, but it was pre-recorded. Because I was ready, I managed to get a (crappy) video of the start on my phone. It’s on YouTube!
The lights came on to reveal the four of them, and we went mental. As on the album, they started with Stand Up For Rock ‘N’ Roll, a song made to open with. Just the intro gets you so worked up you want to run around like a crazy fool. Building up to when the song gets going, all I wanted to do was jump to my feet: but there was a yellow-vested security guard watching over us, and I knew that if we tried any such thing we’d be yelled at. So instead of standing up for rock ‘n’ roll, I stretched my arms up as far as I could and screamed along.
I rang my friend Rich during this song, as I’d promised by text earlier. He texted me saying it sounded good, and to enjoy the rest of the concert.
After the first song, we gave the guys an immense cheer. The volume was through the roof, even louder than the two supports. There was a ringing in my ears even during the noise, it was just that loud.
I know Joel yelled stuff at us at this point. But he often yelled stuff at us, he was a very friendly man. So I’m not sure exactly what he yelled when. I do know that he drank a lot, though – and chucked a lot of booze out as well.
The next song they played was Hellfire. Strange, as it’s the last one on the album, but fine in the show. I think it was after this that Joel cracked open his first can and said ‘Cheers, Newcastle!’ Every time he addressed us he literally screamed. It was so funny. We couldn’t understand him half the time.
Fat City came next. This was fun – I love how it’s called that because it makes me think of a city full of fat people.
After that was their third single from the album, Diamond in the Rough. Proper solid rock ‘n’ roll, good for shouting the extremely singable chorus. My voice was back especially for the set, and now I was glad.
The tempo slowed, but the solid rock remained for What’s Eatin’ you, a song I knew but not as well as the others. There’s always a song like that – one that, for some reason, just doesn’t stick in my head, no matter how much I listen to it.
Girls in Black was the song I’d dressed for, and it came next. I’m pretty sure Joel was shirtless by this point, but he probably had been for a while. Amy and me were almost dancing along to this, two girls in black. Of course, we couldn’t stand. All the fist pumping was making my arms ache, but oh well. You only get out what you put in.
They really slowed down Cheap Wine and Cheaper Women. It sounded strange – good, though. Another fantastic chorus to yell to. I particularly loved the line ‘she loved me tender, and she f*cked me sweet’, one that Joel changed, and sang, with relish. There was also the classic bit towards the end: ‘Women come and go…’ which he sort of spoke matter-of-factly. It was funny, it sounded like he was speaking from experience. Which, being a rock star, he probably was.
I don’t have a particular favourite Airbourne song, but if I did, it would have to be Heartbreaker. I think there’s something about the vocals – they sound a bit sad, but awesome at the same time. I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is about this song, though. Maybe it’s to do with the melody itself, it really gets to me.
Possibly their most famous song drew a massive roar from the crowd. The song the stage was set up for. Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast. I was thinking about the video during the live performance. I tend to get psyched knowing the band from the video and the band in front of me are exactly the same. They really recreated the video, too, Roadsy and Streety doing the dual-headswirling thing. Mind you, all three of them did that a lot. Joel even got up on one of the big blocky things … erm, yeah, he did that a few times and all. I remember during the first bit of the first chorus, at the line ‘I’ll sit and spin for a little while’, he twirled his finger. I don’t know why that’s important. It’s just something I remember. I rang my friend Beth during this song, too – she bought me the album for my birthday.
After that song, though, came the end of the show. We cheered for a bit, Joel said thank you, and they went off. Luckily, as us Airbourne fans are not stupid, we knew they still had to play two more songs, so we didn’t give up, chanting and screaming for more.
And they returned! One by one.
First Ryan, on the drums, tapping out the rhythm for Runnin’ Wild. Then Streety, slamming on the bass. This went on for a while, until the guitars joined in, eventually becoming the intro and receiving a wild reaction from us. If Airbourne have ever recorded ‘genuine fist-pumping, sweat-soaked rock ‘n’ roll’, this is it. Full of energy.
But that just left one song. Another energetic number, Blackjack, maybe to tire us out. It’s a fun song, though. And even though I was pretty much worn out in the arm area, I didn’t put them down.
And that really was the end. They went off, and the house lights came on, and we knew they wouldn’t be coming back again. I wasn’t too sad, though. It had been a hell of a night.
I know that was basically just a detailed setlist, making the show sound boring. It was anything but that. I know it’s now become a cliché to mention this band when talking about Airbourne, but it reminded me of an early AC/DC show. Joel came into the crowd a couple of times, like Angus used to. Only Joel pulled a pint and soloed at the same time as well. He was absolutely crazy! It’s the only word for it.
There was quite a lot of booze in the show, actually. Joel drank a lot, sent a lot spinning out into the crowd, and poured a lot on his head. I liked it when he did this – he then swirled his head around so his hair flew all over the place and sprayed beer everywhere. It looked really cool.
Near the end of the show, Joel talked about real rock ‘n’ roll, and how we all believed in it. He yelled for quite a while – I didn’t catch half of it, but I got the gist, and that was enough.
I rang home during the show as well. As no one was in, the messages Amy and I left are still on the phone. There’s Diamond in the Rough, Cheap Wine and Cheaper Women and Heartbreaker (twice – one message entirely solo and the other the chorus).
And that’s all I can think about now, so I’ll leave the show there. It was brilliant.
We walked back to the car. Newcastle was full of young adults out drinking, but waves of rockers soon dispersed and evened out the chavs. The air outside was warmer than we’d expected of a late November night (Dad and Amy had had a mini-argument about jackets earlier).
I sent this message to a few of my friends:
Walking back to the car, airbourne rocked my socks and bed! I’m of course joking, but that Joel is pretty awesome! Going to a few people xxx Laura was the only one who replied, but between then and now I accidentally deleted her message.
I can’t remember much about the journey home. My ears were ringing but my throat wasn’t at all sore or dry. Amy fell asleep in the car so I just talked to Dad.
So we got home. I had a drink, and went to bed. I was sort of glad we didn’t have a(nother) hellishly long, depressing journey home, but the car had been nice and warm. Plus, although I didn’t know it then, that was the last journey I ever made in our Vauxhall Vectra (Dad bought a Land Rover Discovery the next day).
I wrote in my two diaries:
AIRBOURNE! What a strange day. I got up, went to college and went to work as usual, but then I came home from work early and went to Newcastle to see Airbourne at Carling Academy – awesome venue and the band were brilliant, really enjoyed myself. Stone Gods good too.
And:
AIRYBOURNE … put on a genuinely awesome rock ‘n’ roll show, shame we couldn’t stand but I’m pretty sure Joel saw us anyway.
This last entry also contained a ‘0’. 0 days until Airbourne.
And that’s it. I wore my shirt the next day, along with a headache and sore eyes. It was totally worth it. Go and see Airbourne live if you love proper rock!
NOTES
*When Joel pulled the pint, we stood up and were allowed to for a while ... until the yellow man eventually gave up and sat us down.
*We managed to give them a standing ovation at the end, though
* I started this on Thursday, 18th November. It is now Sunday, 1st February (Tuesday, 10th second draft). The other one only took just over a week because I had a lot of free time in Seahouses.
*Therefore, only one draft of this took about 66 days compared to about 10 for three drafts of Maiden...
*Finally my friend Laurence, who helped me with my last gig account, attended this same show but at London Astoria. Because it was Airbourne's last UK show, Dan Hawkins came on at the end and played guitar with them, leaving Joel to just sing. They played Whole Lotta Rosie. I am jealous.
Friday, 17 October 2008
AC/DC
Who else has got their 'Black Ice' tour tickets?
I HAVE!
Unfortunately, the plural of 'tickets' here means 'two', the limit per person. However, I require three - my Dad, my sister, and myself.
How crappy that the limit was set so low. I know it's to try to prevent people buying them, jacking up the price and selling them on eBay, etc, but it's hardly worked ... get on their yourself if you don't believe me.
I was in college when they went on sale at ten this morning, desperately waiting to hear from either my Dad or my cousin, both of who were on the phone trying to book tickets for the Manchester MEN show. It was my cousin who was successful - Dad tried for three hours and couldn't get through to the ticket lines; he was also on the net and everything he looked at was sold out.
Still, two tickets are better than none, right? But it's so unfair. My Dad hasn't seen them since 1980 - my sister and I haven't seen them before at all. And the band mean so much to me in loads of ways - not only are they my favourite band, they also got me into both rock and music in general in a big way. I've been waiting for this for years now. I almost feel like I've followed them since they started, and I know more about them than quite a few older people I know who actually have.
So why the hell the ridiculous limit? Raise it by one ticket and I'd have been fine. But no. Put my AC/DC-obsessed family in this position, hoping against hope something will come along. Maybe we'll have to rely on, on the night itself ... touters. Eurgh.
Thank you to my wonderful cousin, and my Dad who gave up three solid hours and a whole lot of the phone bill.
I HAVE!
Unfortunately, the plural of 'tickets' here means 'two', the limit per person. However, I require three - my Dad, my sister, and myself.
How crappy that the limit was set so low. I know it's to try to prevent people buying them, jacking up the price and selling them on eBay, etc, but it's hardly worked ... get on their yourself if you don't believe me.
I was in college when they went on sale at ten this morning, desperately waiting to hear from either my Dad or my cousin, both of who were on the phone trying to book tickets for the Manchester MEN show. It was my cousin who was successful - Dad tried for three hours and couldn't get through to the ticket lines; he was also on the net and everything he looked at was sold out.
Still, two tickets are better than none, right? But it's so unfair. My Dad hasn't seen them since 1980 - my sister and I haven't seen them before at all. And the band mean so much to me in loads of ways - not only are they my favourite band, they also got me into both rock and music in general in a big way. I've been waiting for this for years now. I almost feel like I've followed them since they started, and I know more about them than quite a few older people I know who actually have.
So why the hell the ridiculous limit? Raise it by one ticket and I'd have been fine. But no. Put my AC/DC-obsessed family in this position, hoping against hope something will come along. Maybe we'll have to rely on, on the night itself ... touters. Eurgh.
Thank you to my wonderful cousin, and my Dad who gave up three solid hours and a whole lot of the phone bill.
Monday, 18 August 2008
Wizard Rock
Oh My God
I know that's an overrated expression to use on the Internet, making you sound like some angsty ZOMG!!!11eleven!!-style teenager, but when I say the three words, I mean them.
Is there a more nerdy, pathetic genre out there?
I've been watching random videos on YouTube to try to find out more about the world of Wizard Rock, or 'Wrock' as it is affectionately known by its fans. And I have one question. Which is also indeed one word.
WHY?
Why do they have to take over everything I love? Sure, I've read all of the books, I got the last three the day they came out and finished them in ridiculously short amounts of time (but I didn't go at midnight, the saddest thing you can possibly do). However, I also got 'Chemical Wedding' before it was published. And I will not tell you how extreme my methods were when I got 'The Missionary Position'. Rock and roll is unconventional, alternative, a different way of life for us awesome people who say 'NO!' to the normal. Now it's in the process of being taken over by geeks. What will they do next? They already have seven epic books, five films so far, two accompaniment books and another on the way, about a million unofficial ones, about half the net devoted to fandom, fanfiction, fanart, etc ... what more do they want?
It would be OK if the new bands were talented. They, sadly, are not. Nearly every band are terrible. I'm not just saying that because I don't like the idea, I'm saying it as a musician and a rock fan. The singers can't sing, and the musicians often have no previous experience, they just feel they can play because they are spreading the Harry Potter word. Hasn't it been spread enough already? The books are the most famous ones in the world, for crying out loud!
OK - there is the point that Led Zeppelin drew inspiration from Lord Of The Rings. Yes indeed they did. However, their name is not 'Frodo and the Hobbits'. And they did not write every song - sorry, did I say write? I meant 'rip every song off from' - the books.
'Wrock' is unimaginative, uncreative, and just plain wrong. Come on, nerds - read Harry Potter and leave rock music alone. You know nothing about it.
I know that's an overrated expression to use on the Internet, making you sound like some angsty ZOMG!!!11eleven!!-style teenager, but when I say the three words, I mean them.
Is there a more nerdy, pathetic genre out there?
I've been watching random videos on YouTube to try to find out more about the world of Wizard Rock, or 'Wrock' as it is affectionately known by its fans. And I have one question. Which is also indeed one word.
WHY?
Why do they have to take over everything I love? Sure, I've read all of the books, I got the last three the day they came out and finished them in ridiculously short amounts of time (but I didn't go at midnight, the saddest thing you can possibly do). However, I also got 'Chemical Wedding' before it was published. And I will not tell you how extreme my methods were when I got 'The Missionary Position'. Rock and roll is unconventional, alternative, a different way of life for us awesome people who say 'NO!' to the normal. Now it's in the process of being taken over by geeks. What will they do next? They already have seven epic books, five films so far, two accompaniment books and another on the way, about a million unofficial ones, about half the net devoted to fandom, fanfiction, fanart, etc ... what more do they want?
It would be OK if the new bands were talented. They, sadly, are not. Nearly every band are terrible. I'm not just saying that because I don't like the idea, I'm saying it as a musician and a rock fan. The singers can't sing, and the musicians often have no previous experience, they just feel they can play because they are spreading the Harry Potter word. Hasn't it been spread enough already? The books are the most famous ones in the world, for crying out loud!
OK - there is the point that Led Zeppelin drew inspiration from Lord Of The Rings. Yes indeed they did. However, their name is not 'Frodo and the Hobbits'. And they did not write every song - sorry, did I say write? I meant 'rip every song off from' - the books.
'Wrock' is unimaginative, uncreative, and just plain wrong. Come on, nerds - read Harry Potter and leave rock music alone. You know nothing about it.
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