Tour 2000

The day started with a train ride to meet Su and Lori as Jez and Chugg had decided to make their own way over. Su and Lori met me at the train station about 4pm and we spent the next hour driving in circles looking for City Hall. Miraculously, when we finally decided to go into a pub and ask for directions we discovered that it was about 100 yards away, behind the pub, so we decided to stop in the pub and get some food. Jez and Chugg turned up as we were finishing dinner and told us that they’d seen some idiots queuing up even though the venue was all assigned seating. Tim Allen and his friend Paul arrived soon after, although they quickly disappeared to buy some beers for later, as it was Chugg’s birthday.

We made our way to the venue about 8:30pm and were surprised by the size. While waiting out front to collect our tickets, Saul’s dad walked past, recognizing Su and I from Leeds, and from, well, just about every gig he goes to as we always seem to bump into him. When we finally took our seats, he was on the same row and seemed a bit worried we might be stalking him. The band opened with five new songs. I particularly liked “Gudi Waddy” (?), which sounds a bit like a New Order song, which can only be a good thing, and was very danceable. When Tim walked into the crowd during “Say Something” the whole place erupted and loads of people ran down to the front, which I was glad for because it enabled me to stay down there after I was through taking photos. Su had printed up a banner declaring it to be Chugg’s birthday and I gave it to a woman down the front to hold up, which she did about three songs into the set, and then handed it to Tim who read it off, much to Chugg’s embarassment. Funnily enough as well, Tim and Saul both chastized someone who was talking down front during “Top of the World” with Saul flat out telling him to “Shut the fuck up” to cheering from the crowd.

Tonight, “Born of Frustration” was conspicuous by its absence, replaced by “How Was It For You” as the tune before the encore, and “Fred Astaire” made its way back into the set. Personally, I really enjoyed the show, the new stuff gets better every night, and the crowd were really up for it, despite it being a seated venue. “English Beefcake,” the new song I hadn’t particularly enjoyed in Norwich, sounded a lot better, perhaps because everyone was singing in key this time, and overall it was a fantastic gig. Not everyone agreed though, as Dave Baynton-Power told us after the show that the sound on stage was really poor and the band felt they had not played particularly well. Even more interesting though, Dave also told us that after their gig in South Africa with the Smashing Pumpkins, the band were going directly into the studio with Brian Eno to try and record the album in three weeks. He reckoned that since they’d done both Laid and Wah Wah concurrently in six weeks, they should be able to do this one in three, reasoning that they needed a change of tactic in recording from Millionaires where they were a bit too precious and picky. Hopefully this will cut down on the overproduction that I personally despised so much about Millionaires and I know that I’m personally looking forward to hearing what they do with these songs a lot more than I have about any of their new stuff in a very long time.

In any case, after the gig, we headed back to Tim Allen’s, where we were sleeping that night, had some booze, made fun of his new massively large jeans, and went to sleep. (Justhipper)