So it was off into Newcastle for a
drink and a bite to eat prior to the gig, headed on to Pink Lane and
ventured into The Forth, ordering their 3 for £10.00 taster platter.
Some lovely squid in black pepper, perfect with an ice cold cider!Quick look at the watch, just after 7.30 pm, the support band should be on now (doors were at 7pm) so off on a short walk to the O2 Academy.
Once inside it was pretty clear we must be too early, maybe about 50 people milling around in the venue, ahh well makes it easier to get served at the bar, so JD's 'n' coke duly purchased we made our way to a decent spot, dead centre just in front of the mixing desk. I say 'we' because apparently the missus also benefits from my gig ticket gifts!
After
about a 30 minute wait on come the support - The Membranes - a band
I've not heard, but I did recognise the singer and bassist ( John Robb)
from a few punk documentaries shown late at night on BBC4. A sound
reminiscent of early PIL, they played an energetic 'post punk' set and
despite imploring the crowd to dance - I suspect this was an ironic
request - the crowd stayed rooted to the spot, drinks held firmly in hand.
Greeted with appreciative applause, they soon finished their 45 minute
set.By now a sizeable crowd had filled the Academy and as is usual the two 6' 6" members of the crowd decided to stand inches in front of us and off we went on the side step shuffle to try and get a half way decent view.
It was approaching 9.30 pm before The Jesus and Mary Chain took to the stage and singer Jim Reid announced they would be playing a short set by way of an introduction before performing Psychocandy in full.
They launched into April Skies and were sounding really good, rattling through the set, over far too quickly for me! When they came back, it all went
horribly wrong. Everyone apart from the vocals was turned up to '11'
and, although you expect distortion from TJaMC this went way beyond
listenable. The vocals were completely overwhelmed, totally lost in a
sea of distortion and feedback with ever rising volume levels - my ears are still
ringing!Now the O2 has never been great for sound but with this level of volume you really need a sound engineer on top of his or her game; tonight we were just left to suffer and the songs became indistinguishable from one another as the feedback and distortion took centre stage. I don't often leave gigs early, this would be only the third time in some 43 years, but it was becoming painful and to be honest a bit pointless, it was simply just noise. So we left with about 20 minutes of the set still to play. I think if we'd stayed any longer we would be walking out into the cold North East air with bleeding ears!
I don't mind loud, in fact in the right circumstances LOUD is good, but at this gig it just ruined what could have been a classic night.
