(Part 1)
Writing breathes life when it contains something that means something to the person holding the pen, and so having the opportunity to review and write about some of the best artists has been a bucket of fun but not always suitable for print.... Here are just a few of the highlights - the stuff that didn’t make into The Independent…
It’s probably important to take into consideration before we enter this music filled world, that before I got this job, I had never been to a gig. Not that I wasn’t a fan of all things music. But to say I was not a fan of crowds was possibly an understatement in a much longer story (For another day.) More and more with this job I seemed to place myself in front of things that I thought I couldn’t do; tubes, crowds, lifts, trains- any crowded small spaces, which seemed nothing short of unfortunate and downright exhausting, until I can across this paragraph one day;
‘We attract that which we fear most into our lives, so we may know what our fears are, face them, and master them.’
Diana Cooper
* * *
David Guetta- Brixton Academy
Brixton, from whichever angle it’s looked at, is just not somewhere I think I want to live. Ever. I don’t quite know how to go about describing this infamous part of London without slipping into stereotypes or regurgitated opinions, but there was a sharps bin in the porta-loo toilets of the Wetherspoons- and so I think that probably sums it up.
The streets this particular warm evening were lined with people covered in neon paint and very little clothes- a slice of Malia/ Falaraki or whichever Brit-endorsed island takes your fancy, heading for one place- Brixton academy to worship the DJ-ing legend that is Mr Guetta.
Inside was a hot sweaty jungle, thousands upon thousands of bodies dancing as if that Saturday night was to be the final sunset, the body heat radiating to such a temperature that it could be felt from the entrance, you could barely move inside without being covered in someone else’s sweat. This happened to be the exact combination of elements that would usually have me running in the opposite direction.
But I couldn’t write a review from outside. So beer in hand- off I plunged into the jungle.
And oh what a jungle. The best way to describe this gig would be somewhere along the line of it being the love-child of a passionate affair between Las Vegas and Ibiza in the height of the season, with a light show behind the decks that was like Disneyland on drugs mixed with Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory on an LSD trip. This was music, when it completely engulfs you, when it’s the only thing that matters, when you can’t remember your own name and don’t even want to and when pitching up a tent and living in Brixton academy forever sounds like your vocation.
The best thing about David Guetta when you see him live is his facial expressions when he’s DJing. He looks so ecstatic at the music he is playing, looking up wide-eyed from the decks with such delight to see a collection of random party lovers enjoying the music he’s passionate about. There’s something very genuine about the blonde Frenchman, a man so in demand by every musician in the charts, he’s moulded pop into an entirely new dance genre that the mainstream are lapping up by the gallon.
Down in Brixton, he climbed onto the decks, arms spread wide, almost Jesus-like with the florescent glow of lights behind him raving away. Somehow I managed to get the Phrase ‘Guetta is God’ into my review. And they printed it.
I woke up the next morning with the feeling (no not just the hangover feeling) that something very significant had happened to me, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I’d rumbled in the jungle and didn’t flip out and panic. Last night a DJ saved my life…
Camden Crawl- Razorlight/Tychy Stryder/Lethal Bizzle/ CockandBull Kid
Camden to me is the Narnia of London; technically part of the same city, but a different side of the coin: you’re never quite sure who you’re going to meet …The crawl had gigs taking place all day and night in numerous bars from one end of Camden to the other and I’d spent the day happily drinking Corona and going from one venue to another skipping ques with the magic thing called a press pass with friends, when who do we bump into? Pete Doherty….
Doherty strolled in front of me at the cash point and I couldn’t resist the temptation- I leant over as the screen flashed ‘you have insufficient funds’.
Well well well..
He turned around giving me a full frontal view of actually how unattractive his was. Pete is the type of guy you want to hose down with a jet wash and stick on a sunbed for a few sessions; dirty, pale, and in need of a bit of Lynx. His skin was sallow but not drawn, in fact he looked slightly poggy-faced like a badly put together plasticine man, wearing some ridiculous hat that I’m sure somewhere was ‘cutting edge.’ Just not here around people with their sanity intact. (Can I just chuck in here- why oh why do men where skinny jeans? And what oh what is wrong with girls that like men in skinny jeans???)
“Can I borrow 20 quid?” He asks me.
I stare at him as he looks unfazed at me and the other people in the que. Someone whips out their wallet.
“Yeh here you are mate, yer there you go Pete” the guy behind me says.
“Thanks mate he replies and scuttles off.
I probably would have given him some money, but he’s not my ‘mate.’ So I didn’t.
Swedish House Mafia – Alexandra Palace
The record label EMI decided that they liked me and my 5 star review for their boy Guetta, (they have since sent me every single he has ever consequently worked on and his album download 3 weeks before general release thank youuu) and so sent me four VIP tickets for Swedish House Mafia at Alexandra Palace for a review.
The atmosphere in the entire area of North London was brewing like a cauldron of bubbling excitement but we were so busy getting pie-eyed on the interesting combo of jaegger bombs and Cornas in the Wetherspoons (it’s always a Wetherspoons) that we missed the Swedish DJs themselves who were having a pre drink in the VIP bar we had access to. Damn the jaeggermister.
Ally-Pally’s impossibly high ceilings give it an outside feel - something that many revellers took literally as cigarettes were smoked all night and looking around I had a feeling that no amount of security could control this crowd. This was verified by the ‘apples and pears’ style voice that rolled through the crowd calling ‘Pills, mdma, gggggget cha pills and mdma right ere…’
Raving away to their hit tracks- pumping electric rhythms with snappy baselines- I turned around to see one of my brother’s friends, who from the expression on his face, looked like he couldn’t remember where he was and what he was doing. Considering there was 25,000 people in there, it was quite a coincidence that ‘Crazy Liam’ was there wandering about. It’s not quite so much of a coincidence that he was on his own in a state of merry dishevelment; having been on a group holiday with him in the past, the nick-name ‘Crazy Liam’ arose from his entertaining yet worryingly erratic behaviour when under the influence; including pouring bottles of San Miguel over his head grinning like a mad man, and humping the sand in the middle of the night informing us all he was in fact, a turtle.
We took him under our wing, or under our legs- as he became a perfect candidate for sitting on his shoulders sing at the top of our voices “Whose gonna save the world tonight..”
Razorlight/ The Noisettes- Clapham Common
When the rain falls and it’s festival season, you pray to the Lord for Hunter welly boots, and failing that, pray for a Moroccan style VIP tent with unlimited alcohol.
Clapham common was wet and grey and my buddy and I positioned ourselves on the cushions in what looked like the Moroccan tea tent that seen in the desert of Sex and the City 2. Not bad. Also not bad was the company- we befriended a group of guys that to be honest didn’t look like they belonged with the funky looking music mogals (neither do I to be fair), aged between thirty-and thirty five and completely uninterested in any of the artists playing- in fact they hadn’t heard of most of them. BUT what they did have was unlimited free drinks tokens as their buddy was head of security and so viola, they had two new best buds in the form of two Essex girls.
We continued to get sloshed sheltered from the rain until our pyramid of beer cans grew to an impressive height and I realised I bet go and review some music.
Razorlight were belting out the classics (write some new material soon mate?) Johnny borrell looking like a rock star in so much as he looked dishevelled and we danced in the rain and the mud to those cracking guitar rifts.
The merriment continued as we wandered into the nearest pub along Clapham Common, a pub that had the genius idea of giving us wet and muddy music lovers a box of Jenga. As we descended into new levels of merriment, became more and more difficult (especially with forfeits of shots) until it was a complete impossible game that no one in the history of the earth could have ever possibly have done so why was in invented- bah humbug.
Read the Reviews:
David Guetta
Camden Crawl
Swedish House Mafia
Razorlight
Part 2- Foo Fighters, Black Eyed Peas, Take That and many more…
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