Mest and the Not Katies (20th December 2003)

I was so looking forward to this. I'd heard the venue was tiny, and I love Mest, and they played well at GC a couple of nights before so... yeah, I was psyched. Elli rang me up the night before to inform me that we HAD to go see The Nightmare Before Christmas on the big screen, so we went and the second it finished I insisted that we rush up to London and wait. Bear in mind that this is an EARLY showing. So we got there at about 2:00pm, and waited. And waited. It was fucking freezing, and we just kind of sat there while a lot of people smoked and drank. We were pretty darn close to the front of the queue as well. After a while we started talking to the people behind us, called Kate and Dot. Very cool girls! I didn't know it was possible to meet nice people in queues.

Mest's tourbus came up. It was quite funny 'cos it drove around the corner and Elli goes, "Oooh ooh ooh it's a big bus!" which made me jump and look in shock (remember we are huddled up, frozen, basically comatose). So I go, "Don't fucking scare me like that! I thought it was MEST!" and then it was! Elli got a picture with Nick but no-one else came out. Then while we were sitting on the steps of the Barfly, this blonde guy started crossing the road opposite us. We all sighed and said, "Tony poser! Oh my God, look, he has the hair... *dude gets a little closer*... and the clothes... *dude gets closer still*... and the tattoos OH MY GOD it IS Tony!" He leaned over us and rattled the (locked) door of the Barfly and said to the guy next to him (who was either Matt or Jere, too shocked to notice) "Is this thing locked? How do we get in?" We were all way too shocked to say anything, apart from Elli, who apparently said (I didn't hear her), "Yeah, we've been waiting for two hours already, of course it's locked!" but she got ignored by Tony, who just walked off round the back. Hahahaha. It was pretty funny. We all just sat there for about half an hour afterwards going, "Wow... um, that was surreal... guys... guys, remind me again, was that really Tony?... dudes, we just got rejected by Tony!" I know he had Jere and Matt with him but Tony is blonde, you kind of tend to notice blondes and seriously, major shock going on.

Anyway, so we waited for five and a half hours in total. In the cold. And wind. And rain. Elli's mum turned up to hold our coats, the doors opened at 7:32 (TWO MINUTES LATE!) and we shoved in for all we were worth. After we actually got into the place (and having managed to move BACK a couple of places) we had to wait some more, inside. FINALLLLLLLY when we got in, I was behind one person but to tell the truth I could see straight over her head, so all was good.

Not Katies
Not Katies came on amid a lot of screaming of "GET NAKED!". I think a lot of the people in the front row who had been waiting longer than us were pissed out of their skulls. I thought they were quite good, but Elli and her mum disagreed. Then they went off, and had to pack up ALL their stuff. While we waited for Mest, though, we were able to stare at the fotness that is EJ. No, he really IS fot, I'm not just saying that. I have no idea if he is an absolute wanker or anything, but maaaaaaaaan...

Mest
Well by the time Mest came on, me and Elli had been waiting for about seven and a half hours, through wind, cold, rain, drunken fans and tired feet. So actually it was a mixture of relief and excitement.

You know how in most gigs, you're really enjoying it but you can't help feeling tired and in pain and you secretly hope they won't play for ages and ages, so you can go home and put your feet up? Well that really didn't happen at Mest. Their setlist was quite short, actually, and they didn't play What's the Dillio?, which upset me quite a lot as I was yelling at Tony "PLAY DILLIO!" but I was ignored. They did play my favourite Mest song of all time, Hotel Room, yay! EJ played guitar for Cadillac, like he did at the GC gig. Tony got some guy named Steve up to play a song too, which was really cool.

There are actually several reasons why I had SUCH a good time at the gig:

1. The atmosphere was just really relaxed and nice. Tony joked around with us and 'cos the place was so tiny, he could hear us too which was nice. Interaction is always a bonus.
2. Again because of the tiny place and lack of barrier, we were all so close and it felt really inclusive. Even if we'd been standing at the back of the room, we'd still have been closer to the stage than we were at GC.
3. They played really well, although Jere forgot the words to a song and we had to remind him!
4. Every single person in there was a hardcore fan. Even when Jere forgot the words, you could hear them because everyone was singing them at the tops of their voices.

So yeah. I had an amazing time. I have to say that I think that was the best gig I've ever been to. Brilliant band, cool venue (the smaller the better!), nice people, and at the end Elli forced EJ to give her the setlist.