by 3V1L5H0073R
on 26/03/2023 - 20:49
sick af. first concert
pretty good.
someone fainted at the start of one of the songs. Clairo stopped things temporarily when a fan fainted. Stopped recording right before it happend, I think, which annoys the f outta me cuz I LOVE recording the moments that may not get captured like that.
smelt of weed, ballsweat, and urine, all at once.
cost £90
best concert
we paid £5 for tickets lol
tickets cost £25. very reasonable.
SICK artist. star with a big future ahead. it HAS to happen, there is NO artist like her atm, she stands out. I could totally see her with like a load of 10-70mil hit songs on Spotify in a some years.
best fiver I have ever spent (yes, seriously, £5, they were filling seats). had seats to the right. was far, but could see it all. had one drunkard in front dancing like he was the biggest fan but was a right tard.
the most lit concert (literally, fireworks and all). best stage presence. Paul Stanley literally takes a grappling hook hoop thing and Tarzans to the middle of the arena to play 2 songs
kept forgetting that I had to go to this one. never forgot since. was a damn solid concert despite not throwing around any theatrics. it was just a legend, playing in a humble little 5-piece, in some random af small place (srsly, couldn't he have gotten any bigger? he TOTALLY coulda landed more tickets).
we got these tickets for free as part of a Sky+ competition thing, twice. apparently got the choice for which day we wanted, but went with this one cuz HAIM was the best bet. the tickets cost £70 each. quite amazing that we get to experience this crap for free. it's also why I keep this log, so I keep a log of legit music history (ok ik i'm buffing this up a lil bit, but I think recording this matters)
Durand Jones was AWESOME!
he took on a big stage in the west, called the West Stage. had a small 4-piece band, and they had great synergy. VERY few people at the start. infact, as far as I could see, the audience was the smallest I've seen out of anyone. like i'd say it was just 200-300 watching, with barely 100 at the start. I was EASILY able to walk straight up close and check it out, and got a lot of great vids, and I was a few minutes late to the performance.
imo, this is definitely the least amount of people he's ever gonna get in a concert. there is NO way in hell he's ever gon have this small of a crowd ever again, because his material is veeerrry good, and his performances are SUPER fun to watch. a lot of people didn't know the guy, and you could see that in people's faces at the front too (they were smiling and nodding but you could tell they didn't really "get it," y'know?). that being said, during the performance, I overheard people saying like "this guy is REALLY good!" and stuff. there is no way he's not gonna lead onto bigger things.
by the way, the sound quality of the concerts are surprisingly brilliant, especially in comparison to the last ones I've been to. you walk towards the stage from far away, and the volume, including the bass, sounds equivalent at any distance. it's actually almost bizarre since I am so used to hearing the volume increase with less distance.
my man also took the concert as a chance to announce his sexuality. i unfortunately didn't record this moment ffs. he said he is bisexual. he also dedicated the next song to a "caucasian man" and people laughed at that (in a like "oh wow ok cool! lol" kinda way)
speaking of gay, Romy was VERY fun. also very gay. also very fun.
she started off with a DJ set, and it was a total blast. I SRSLY wish I recorded like the 5-7min mark of the performance cuz there was a certain part of the song that I was digging. hope I can find a recording of it somewhere, or uuhhh like, hope that there's a fully recorded vid of it uploaded by the concert handlers themselves or something???? srsly, y tf does no1 bother doing that?? apart from Glastonbury, anyway.
thought the music was fun above all else. it's great clubbing music, and it's got a sorta pink euphoric touch to it all, and I dug that. will be listening to more of Romy cuz I didn't think much of her tbh with y00
Also starting in the middle of the DJ set, these 6 dancers (5 ladies and a drag) just come onto stage and start shaking it to the set. they stay on for like 20minute periods. was cool to see cuz no1 else really did that, and it added to the whole clubbing vibe. after all, Romy wants to bring the queer clubbing vibe to concerts, so it makes total sense.
speaking of dancing, a lotta peeps in the audience was dancing to the stuff, was awesome to see. one dude was throwing his right arm in the air and nearly hit me in the face with his elbow. I just kinda waved my hand in front of my face, he touches it, and he immediately switches arms. nose saved. another couple in front hugged and kissed a few times during the concert. that was the energy for them. stuff like this totally adds to the whole experience, and I rlly rlly like seeing audience reactions to the music and stuff, it's half the fun of these things.
for the second half, a guy pops out with this blonde short hair. I assume this was Fred again...? this guy starts DJing, and she dons the mic, doing a mix of her own songs and covers (i'd say like an 70/30 mix). really cool.
overall, the performance was very fun. it's not normally a thing I would go out to buy tickets for, but it is total something you can take as fun, at least if you don't get disturbed by the gay, because I know people who would be.
btw, this concert smelt very nice. random thing to say, but Kendrick Lamar smelt like weed, cigs and ballsweat. in comparison, this smelt like perfume, shampoo, and flavoured vapes (and grass? no, I mean actual grass. we were in a big blue tent in Victoria Park). self-explanatory as to why they both smelt like that, but the core reason IS due to the audience themselves, with Kendrick being mostly guys who don't know what a shower is, and this is comprising of mostly an LGBT crowd who prolly put more attention to keeping well, and also vape a lot. thank tha lord for vapes tho. double-whammy replaces weed and cigs in a way, and also doubles as fragrance.
ima be honest, i couldn't give a rat's arse about girl in red, and I couldn't get into it too much.
it was for the "cool girls." even that I'd be fine with it, but it feels like it's trying too hard to be punk and emo but only feels like an imitation of it more than anything else.
a couple nice tracks, but I think I would be into the live performances more if I listened to em myself first. otherwise, it really just felt like basic cool teenager stuff. the instrumentalists were pretty good ig.
and the girl was cool ig. she talked a lot between songs. asked the audience to do things a bit too, like "i'm nervous and I don't wanna sound like i'm begging but can you wave your hands when I do for the next song." has an american accent but is Norwegian, which is interesting. also said she's gon "go back to my country to do, idk, lesbian shit."
was kinda wild that she was the opening act for not only HAIM this time around, but also the Strokes in the previous All Points East day.
it was also the only performance to have actual pyrotechnics, sparks falling from the ceiling in the background. not even HAIM had that, but they didn't need it.
HAIM was fantastic, almost legendary. solid performances throughout, never-ending fun. they exerted cool energy without totally forcing it. each member visibly has their own personality and it's fun to see. Alana, is sorta just smiling in glee at the crowd all the time like a young girl. it's also fitting as she's the youngest. she was on the left, and plays a single big drum and keys. Danielle has a sorta reserved "cool neutral" stance to her, and was a very fitting middle star. she was mostly the main singer and guitarist, but donned the drums a lot too. Este was making lots of funny faces. she was mainly the bassist and backup singer, and was on the right. btw, Alana was on the verge of tears a few times at the beginning. apart from appearing to look amazed all the time, she seemed mostly stunned by the size of the crowd. you might wonder why, and they go into detail on this. sprinkled throughout their performances, they've shared some stories and their love for London. Alana and Este both did their own story times Alana and Este also did a competition, with Alana taking on the left, Este on right. who could shout the lyrics the loudest. I was on Alana's side. after it happened, they went to discuss in the middle with Danielle, who was on drums btw (and she was on it for a lot of songs too, still singing too). Este says that she won, and Alana doesn't contest that.
£10 for tickets, and we didn't even pay for it.-- NVM we got that for free!
Fun concert. Didn't think I'd ever see these guys live, but here we are, and no regrets. They played their album, which was kinda boring, and then the hits, which was not boring. They did Jackie Wilson Said twice jaja. You know that's not even their song? Sick that they did tho cuz that's the one song of theirs I put on Alternative Vice. Kevin just went "well we don't have any songs rehearsed" and decided to just do that again.
also I'm not gonna forget personally that I did this during this really hard/intense coding test for a certain company. almost may not have enjoyed the concert, except I worked damn hard the day before, and in the morning/afternoon of this day completing a huge piece of code. once I managed to pull it off (and also pull myself out of the 5h1t with that, cuz that's where I thought I was in for the entirety of that day), this concert felt almost massively relieving (the kind of relief u get after taking a massive dump), even tho I hadn't even finished the test yet and this was still on test time, I knew I was getting it done, I knew what I had to do. even if I fail, I had a lot to show for it. as for the concert, it was a great moment after doing all that crap. and it didn't even cost me.
cost £60. we arrived and queued early at 5:40, doors opened at 6:40, and she began at 8:00. we got front row centre (well leaning to the left a lil), literally only one row of people in front of us, completely unobstructed view. got clear as goddamn crystal recordings of every song (some only partial, but quite a few full songs). nobody barging around, literally issue-free. being front center-left was perfect btw. mic was not in the way of her, and she tended to gravitate towards the left-side too. srsly awesome.
quite brilliant. also the artsiest concert I've been to. she plays her album first, then a mix of songs over her career, excluding Stories (weird but ok fair enough). just an alt-rock legend really, but always trying new things out (which I always love and want to see artists do anyway), and never gets old doing it. audience loved it through and through.
Got this for cheap cuz of that cool Sky thing that gives you tickets. This venue was tiny af, like the smallest I've ever been to. For a band this influential, idk how this could happen. Peeps were modest about their space too, nobody was pushing in/out or anything. Speakers were louder than desired too, with drums stabbing you in the ears, I had to tense my ears just to avoid the pain of that everytime.
Concert was sick, especially for a band this influential. Man whips out a microwave for one song and hits it (with a baseball bat) to the beat of the track. He misses a few beats here and there, but that was cool. Solid af playing. David Pajo from Slint was there, shredding the guitar, kinda showing almost just knowing how good he is. But I never knew until AFTER that he was actually from Slint, so the fact that I managed to see him too just BLOWS my mind - like what is he doing with THESE guys? was this a dream come true for him?
Also someone interesting was Hugo Burnham's daughter, Tess, singing counter-melody vocals for half the songs. She stood at the far-left, dark corner of the stage, where you almost couldn't notice her, but was really playing along to the songs. Also it's interesting to think that she is the youngest person in the room, probably me being second? Most people were middle-age cuz well, the band was mostly known for their work in the 80s.
Jon King (singer) engaged the audience and talked often, was gr8. Was talking about Black Sabbath at one point, saying that if it wasn't for Birmingham, there'd be no metal - which I think is true cuz they did it in 1970. The closest thing to metal around that time was The Who and The Beatles' White Album (ok no there was Led Zep and Deep Purp lmao). Now that I think about it, Birmingham also had Napalm Death, who made the first grindcore album in 1987.
yh yh, sidetracked. music and performances was sick. insane that I got to see a band like this because they just so happen to be only known in the country for the most part, and that I get to see em cuz nobody else wants to.
caught this twice. sorry to all other players tryna get in. had to do this on my phone since my PC's CPU was busted and the Steam Deck was throwing a hissy-pissy bitch fit over playing roblox, so phone it was. first time in and it was aight... til I lose connection halfway through! second time I ensured this won't happen. I grabbed my charger and went straight to the router and sat next to it on a beanbag.
both concerts were kinda the same ordeal. Weyes Blood would post an image on Twitter of where she was in the game, and people would try and locate her. at one point she posted a picture of her robloxian in a lake and I was the first to find her. she was just prancing about in the middle of the water trying to figure the controls out. once people saw us there, a whole crowd just ran and huddled around her character. people would shoot loads of questions and it would be virtually impossible to answer them all properly. on top of that, the speech bubbles of everyone in that mass of people was just z-fighting all over the place. she eventually figured out (or ig somebody told her) that there is a server message function which would allow her to sent a custom notice message to all players in the game, which she proceeded to use for both concerts. she also tried to make everyone play minigames like "go find 3 artifacts in the forest" or something, and whoever got them first won a "special prize", but idk who tf bothered to do that and wtf the prize even was and whether or not it was even worth everyone's time for a game they don't care about since there was somebody who literally changed their life in the server rn. most people just stalked Weyes Blood.
the concerts themselves comprised of her standing in some "stage" area, like next to a campfire, or on a performance stage inside a cafe cabin. this would be invisible-walled off so players wouldn't huddle around her character and she'd be visible to everyone. she'd then pull out a guitar tool, do a guitar playing animation, and everyone would hear a pre-recording of her playing the guitar and singing. to make it as live as possible, she would type out her lyrics as fast as she can in the chat. she actually typed most of the lyrics out in time, I was quite impressed with her live performance there, well done Natalie. after each song she'd do a Q&A. she answered various questions about stuff like fav movies, songs, etc. i shot a question about Ariel Pink. SORRY OK I HAD TO. Look, man, she has collaborated with the guy before, hell, she was a fan of him in the past. ofc, she didn't answer, either because of the barrage of people asking questions, or the fact that that is such an awkward question to ask, but what is she gonna do? ban me from Camp Witchwood 1984? ooooh nooo, what ever will I do then?!?!?!
The best rock concert I've been to so far. £62 well spent. So yeah, doors open at 6, we come at 7. The schedule was this:
We come in late to DeepTAN playing, a 3-girl punk-version-of-Wet Leg band. We pretty good, kinda chill ig? They were decent, likeable.
the soundguy comes in to test stuff. He does the bass first, coming to the stage and playing a riff. I was humming Black Sabbath - Paranoid to myself all day, idk y, and THEN HE PLAYS IT. he then does other riffs that were sick too, for like a total of 15 seconds - which I DIDN'T RECORD FFS. the audience cheers ironically, but irony soon wore off cuz he then goes to the guitar and plays some more, to genuine cheers. every time he played, a light on his head would switch on (I THINK that was his goPro taking a picture).
The Chats walk in, pick up their instruments, say hi, and start playing. No BS, immediately in after like 10s. and they rock HARD. hard punk rock music the almost classical way, like almost Tony Hawk's Pro Skater crap. and the crowd gets engaged real fast, with them bobbing their heads real soon and even forming a goddamn moshpit. yes, a moshpit for an OPENING ACT. every time they talk, they throw in a lil quirky Australian mannerism, just incase you forgot that they were from Australia. People would snicker at them sounding remotely Australian at any point of the singer talking. Overall, they slapped. And they left as fast as they entered. Lemme tell ya, high-octane music will get ANYONE in concerts going (ok ig it depends on the crowd too, which here, the objective of everyone here is to rock out).
Queens come in, start playing No One Knows, the lighting goes hog-wild (it looked brilliant, some of the best lighting I've ever seen so far), and the crowd IMMEDIATELY starts moshing REAL HARD (like, they don't mosh this hard for the rest of the concert). Couldn't record any of it because I was busy being transporting around by everyone else. Kept my arms in front of me to hold off anyone from in front of me, with my legs bent incase I get pushed around.
Josh Homme was fun. For one song, he said something like "this next one is a stone-y.. kinda song. I dunno, I've been smoking... a lotta weed lately". They also mention the name of the city often, as have the other bands. Josh Homme did bring up "This is a working-class city... Y'all work hard.. but once in a while... you gotta jiggle". Josh introduces the band at one point, and when it comes to the guy, Deano(?), crowd starts chanting it like in football: "DEENNOOooooooo DEEENOOOoooooo". At another point after a song, a guy very close to me starts chanting the name of the band in the tune with Seven Nation Army, everyone follows along, and Josh comes to mic with a cigarette hearing this, and sings "I'M GONNA FIGHT EM OFF", swinging his head in a funny way, waving his cigarette hard a lil too, before leaving the mic. people called for more but they hit it with the next track. also yes, they played Make It With Chu. funny guy next to me kept yelling random stuff like "KEEP PLAYING!... PLAY FOREVER!!!"
It's ridiculous to think they only played 11 songs, about 45mins worth, yet made it last double and made none of it feel like they overstayed their welcome. (NVM, they did 18 tracks - POINT STILL STANDS TH0) this is something for me to learn from in terms of knowing your place in time, and giving to the audience more of something you and them may have felt like they might have wanted. there is quite literally nothing more I could ask for, other than for them to have played Gonna Leave You, lol. imagine if that was their closer, woulda been very fitting. someone even called for it in the audience.
awesome new up-and-coming band! i see a bright future ahead of them!! wish each of the members all the success!!!
as solid as a concert can get. it's easy to forget the bigger thing they are known for, and I like how they go with this sorta smaller scale, but they feel perfectly rated. like this venue size felt right for them. crowd was a total mix of people of ages.
they played for nearly 2 hours almost without stopping (minus encore wait obv -- what is the meaning of encore anymore other than a break? i feel like non-encore moments stick out to me a lot more now, like the one for Billy Nomates). Thom had 2 little "outbursts" at the crowd, kinda, over people being rude ig.
first one, a guy on the right side shouted during the beginning of a song, shouting Thom something-something. Thom on the mic says a lil quick "shu- up" right before he has to start singing the lyrics. few secs later, he slowly raises a middle finger towards that side for a few secs. rest of the band didn't rlly gaf or didn't notice or was more focused on their thing.
second time, Thom was playing Piano and his attention was focused on the keys, but then he faces up a little, with a kinda pissed look on his face, and turns to the crowd. "in 5 minutes you can talk all you want so could you shut, the fuck, up?" crowd cheers, uhh guys idk if that was the right response for that
you know a guy is good when it's gotten everyone who's been to see him to reconsider if they should see him.
£30.40.
£90. But reduced to £27.50. you bet I was excited when I heard about this one until I heard the initial price. time travel to 23rd June, the tickets are 28 quid. yeah, did they really think they were hot enough for today?
£65.