The Beat Surrender

It’s funny how your actual enjoyment of a gig isn’t always down to the actual music itself entirely, it’s made up of many other factors that need to come together to create the perfect gig environment.

This can obviously be anything from the weather if you are at a festival, to the queues for beer, how warm or cold the venue is, is the sound quality good, how easy is it to see where you are, the company you are with, how much beer you’ve had and finally a combination of how up for it both the band and the crowd are.

As we approach the venue I said to my mate that I was surprised that Good Shoes were popular enough to be playing Leeds Metropolitan University, it must hold knocking on a 1,000 people I would guess and I would have thought the Cockpit or Faversham would have been more the bands size.

I was even more surprised to find that touts were kicking around outside as the gig was actually sold out, ok I’d seen them twice and they’d been a good support act but I didn’t think they had this kind of live reputation and following. As it turns out they don’t, the gig had been downsized to the edge of the bar area, which probably only holds a couple of hundred.

As a venue this made it a bit strange, I’ve never seen bands play here before and it seemed like a bit of an afterthought really, big pillars block the view if you aren’t right at the front, it has some strange right angles going on and it makes for a slightly odd atmosphere. As we get in there though the sound isn’t too bad and Ida Maria is blistering through her set, it turns out we’ve caught the last two tracks and I’m a bit disappointed about that.

Lightspeed Champion are up next but we stop in the bar for a couple more beers rather than check them out, after what seems an age between bands, Good Shoes make their way on to the stage and set about their arsenal of Gang Of Four inspired basslines and punk-pop guitar tracks that have become their trademark.

The crowd are slightly subdued until Rhys kicks them into gear with a few words of encouragement. He probably wished he hadn’t though by the time the same three or four crowd surfers had danced on the stage for the tenth time running, before kind of lowering themselves into the pit rather than leaping in rock n’ roll style.

This is where the majority of the problems lay with the gig, too many people there seemed way too young and just weren’t that into the music, they seemed content to be play fighting (well the two guys and girl in front of us were) and messing about, or as is the case for the majority of the studenty looking types…trying to cop off with each other.

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