Birmingham Academy 30/10/08
Each movie is around 10 secs and 5mb in size. mpgs.
The gig was great..what else can I say ? Why weren't you there ? :)
The theme of the evening was white T-shirts as you can see from the picture above. My pics weren't great so I've just zipped them up below if you want to see them. If anyone has any other stuff from the tour, I'm happy to post on the site.
Song wise they played 10 in 40 mins - in no particular order - Move Mountains, Never Enough, Info Freako , Bring it on Down, Right Here Right Now, Real Real Real, Who ? Where ? Why ? , International Bright Young Thing, Idiot Stare and Zeroes and Ones.
The guys haven't changed much - a bit more beardy with Iain and Alan but thats about it. Alans bass didn't work initially (WWW ? ) and Mike messed round the Never Enough verses but it wouldn't be a real JJ gig without that. You need to go next time you know.
(Thanks for permission to post this)
Last night was all about 1988, as we are - impossibly - 20 years on from the release of the Stuffies first album 'Eight-Legged Groove Machine'. I still play that album (on the i-pod, natch) - the tracks are as fresh and exciting as they ever were to me, invoking possibility and the start of something new.
The Stuffies we more of a movement than the sum of their body of work. With PWEI they were pre-Manics sloganneers. Not political, but Miles Hunt and Clint Mansell were/are leaders. I did/do feel really grateful to have them around.
That four legs of the eight legs are gone isn't lost on anybody and it wasn't dwelt on last night. Neither were albums 2-4 when the band gave themselves up to the corporate machine (there was an inevitability to this and I don't blame the band for the fact that we lost them for a while - we got them back later).
Highlights of the night were The Stuffies' failure to play Size of a Cow or Dizzy. I fucking hate those songs. Fiddle I can take. Tambourine fuck off.
Jesus Jones were so good. Their set was every bit as powerful, anthemic and vital as the Kaiser Chiefs gig I attended the week before. The venue was already packed when they came on and they played like they were the main attraction. I actually forgot that they weren't and was surprised when the left the stage so early (then remembered there was another band due to come on). I love Jesus Jones, though for me they never delivered on the promise of their first effort. Still, they have ten or so great tunes and god are they sexy now. I realise Mike aways was but I didn't appreciate that at 17.
I remember in 1988 Jesus Jones were due to play a small gig at the Bull & Gate in Kentish Town. I was desperate to go but just couldn't get tickets. Me and a friend went up to London after school one day (which was an hour by train from where we lived) and knocked on the door but it was closed. Later I called the venue, and had a long and v. pleasant conversation with a guy who worked there and who was friends with the band. It was way cool talking to him, but he was of no help with tickets and we missed that gig. That incident reminds me of the very big deal that music was in my life at that time (bet I had to ask my mum's permission to make that phonecall, ringing London was expensive back then).
Someone recently wrote something about my own career. In the piece he mistakenly (and laughably) describes me as being into 'grunge'. GRUNGE??? Fuck me, don't confuse one of the best periods of British music ever with something manufactured in the States years later to monetise young people's misery.
It makes me think 1. how rotten it would be if that period of music (grebo, alt rock, err...) hadn't come about and 2. how much it matters that it isn't lost. When I go to these gigs I wonder where 75% of the original fans have gone. I make it my business to know when these bands are playing and it wouldn't cross my mind to not continue to support them. Like, forever. After all, how lucky are we that we have something far better to remember than the predictable, sold out, soulless crap produced by the likes of Oasis (yours to see live at an extortionate price).
I love The Wonder Stuff, I love Jesus Jones, I love PWEI and all the bands from that era. I can keep this going for as long as you can, boys.
