Going to 11 - or maybe higher!

The days of "Dad, you're too difficult to buy a Christmas gift for" are long gone and on 18th Feb I happily went along to the first of my Christmas presents - The Jesus and Mary Chain performing their debut album Psychocandy.

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.

Some great Prog!

Midlake at the Playhouse July 10th, part of the Mouth of the Tyne Festival and I have to say an inspired booking by who ever organised the event. It's not often I get to see the same band twice in the same year, but I'd seen Midlake earlier at the start of the Antiphon tour back in February, so it was going to be interesting to see how the sound has developed. It's definitely fuller sounding and is all the better for it, good tracks on the album have become excellent live vehicles for the band, in fact I'd now say Antiphon is my fave album by them.



September 22nd, Anathema at Newcastle's O2 Academy this time with the missus who had dismissed the last band we saw together, Midlake – the Glasgow gig, as not being Rock 'n' Roll enough for her.

We caught a few songs from support band Mothers Cake and I'm afraid they didn't impress.

There seemed an interminable wait while the stage was made ready for Anathema, probably due to them being moved to the smaller hall, maybe a little over 200 in the audience, where as the night before they'd sold out in, yes you guessed it, Glasgow! It was a tight squeeze for the six of them on stage.

The audience were well up to this one and they were greeted by a mighty cheer and roar as they took to the stage and opened up with The Lost Song parts one and two from new album Distant Satellites, listened to in silence by a totally engrossed crowd, literally erupting in to applause and cheers when the song ended. Next up was Untouchable parts one and two, a real fave of mine, and once more the audience we totally in to what was being presented to them, no one talking through the set, everyone concentrating on the gig, which was wonderful.

This was a real old school gig, no flashy visuals, basic lighting and I think it was all the better for it. The music stood on it's own and the vocal interplay between Lee Douglas (much given to doing 'thumbs up' to the crowd!) and Vincent Cavanagh was excellent. They played tracks from the past 10 years including a wonderful version of 'A Natural Disaster' from 2003.

Like all the best gigs it was over far too soon, I could quite happily have listed to them in to the small hours, in fact once we got home 'Universal' was quickly placed in the CD player and left playing as we drifted off to sleep.