The Beat Surrender

It’s not often that you’ll find me travelling all the way to Nottingham for a gig, but such is the draw of this band and such was their performance on the recent NME Awards Tour in Leeds that I couldn’t wait to see them again.

Now usually I’d try and get their by train and have a good old beer up, yes sometimes it means the gigs are little bit hazy the next day and you have to rely on the badly typed text on your phone to remember the exact set-list but alcohol adds to the experience of a gig in so many ways.

One of the ways it doesn’t add to a gig though is when people make the ill informed decision to throw full pints (in plastic glasses don’t worry nobody was injured) into the crowd. Now I’m used to seeing the odd pint going flying but I’m not sure if this is a Nottingham tradition but this was a constant throughout the gig, the most annoying being the gin and tonic that landed on my shoulder and stunk for the journey home.

It’s not the smell that upsets me though it’s the waste of perfectly good alcohol and the fact that people must have more money than sense. Tonight though I was going down by car with a mate of mine (cheers for driving Ben!) and alcohol wasn’t particularly on the agenda. So yes, Kev is sober at a gig and it feels weird, not least because things are still gonna be crystal clear in the morning.

Before we get onto the band that has made ebay millionaires out of anyone with spare tickets I’ll run you through the two support bands. First up was The Reverend and his band The Makers a group that you can’t help but watch and be enthralled by. Firstly because the singer is a sneering wanker. Now I don’t mean that in a bad way, yes he does sneer at the crowd in a Liam Gallagher stylee, however he has two dances. One is a sort of eighties robot thing, the second is where he looks like he’s calling the crowd wankers with his constant arm by side sideways hand shake thing he has going on.

Despite what I’ve just wrote I like him and I like them, they are entertaining and the dance-rock funk with witty and down to earth lyrics are a real treat and a surprise bonus to the evening. Next up was The Little Flames, a band I’d heard of but never heard anything by. Four blokes come on stage first and they are then joined by a female lead singer a couple of minutes later (how rock and roll eh!). They spend the next forty minutes boring the pants off me as the rhythm section and the vocal style really don’t seem to go together, it results in a dull nondescript noise and me left wondering why the first band weren’t on second.

The buzz of expectation before the Arctic Monkeys come on is unbelievable, we are stood towards the back as I’m not sure my recent ankle injury at football would stand the mosh-pit, as it happens we have only just judged it right as the entire floor is pretty much bouncing throughout the entire gig. Finally they arrive and the place goes mental. A quick hello and they then launch straight into Riot Van.

This is followed up by a rocking View From The Afternoon which is the new single. By this stage it’s carnage at the front a constant stream of people are heading back as they can’t take the heat and crush near the stage. The set whizzes by and they no sooner stop a song than they are straight into another one.

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