Week 3

Week 3 - Friday 21^st January - The Trinity Centre, Bristol - The Walkmen (+ Mona) - £13.75

“Mos Eisley spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious. . .”

There are various ways to describe the interesting clientele of the Burger King near Cardiff Central train station, but Sandro’s warning was most appropriate. Desperate for food, and unsatisfied by the gourmet grub available at the nearby Londis, cheeseburgers were my only option.

Quite why Sandro thought it was a spaceport is open to debate, but I should have heeded his warning. Behind me in the queue was one particularly handsome chap who appeared to have an extra pair of buttocks where his chin should have been.

I prayed he wouldn’t open his mouth.

“My friend doesn’t like you,” I heard a gruff voice say over my shoulder. “I don’t like you either. . .”

I turned. It was Sandro.

“That’s a bit harsh. You’re my brother,” I said.

“Doesn’t mean I have to like you,” he replied.

“Which friend doesn’t like me? You can’t be referring to bumface there surely,” I said nodding to the looker behind us. “No offence of course Sir.”

“None taken,” he smiled politely, “I get it all the time.”

I never did find out which friend Sandro was referring to. “All of them,” he had replied, but he was surely kidding.

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With burgers in hand and four cans of Carling courtesy of Londis (which you'll be pleased to know cost only £3.75), we headed to the station, purchased day return tickets for the princely sum of £10.70 each (not bad eh?) and boarded the 18:30 train to Bristol Temple Meads.

On tonight’s agenda were The Walkmen, a well regarded American band who’d released their latest (and to my ears best) album, Lisbon, last year. 


High praise you might think, but of the five albums they've released (plus an album of covers), I’ve only listened to two of them more than once (in other words, don’t take my word for it, I’m an imbecile and I rarely use cotton buds).

They were playing at Bristol Trinity Centre, a venue neither of us had been to before. It was the perfect time and place to satisfy Gigaweek’s spicy requirement to leave Cardiff at least once a month, for the first time this year. 


Also for the first time in Gigaweek's short history, I’d actually heard of the band we were going to see. An ominous sign.

The Trinity Centre was about a twenty minute walk from the station, and we were fortunate enough to experience the wonders of West Street along the way. West Street is an extraordinary place. A street that seems to have been imported from some exotic, hedonistic land and plonked in the middle of Bristol. A street that makes me finally understand why Skins is set in Bristol.

Every other building was a massage parlour or a sex shop, a strip club or a 'sauna'. Even the apparently reputable shops had names like Electric Ladyland and Bristol Genuine Seedbank (their pretence was that they were wholesalers of seeds). 


Suffice to say, we didn’t linger too long, two hours was more than enough thank you very much. Curiously, there was a Police station at end of street.

Opposite the Police station was the Trinity Centre, which truly is a sight to behold. Like old Cardiff venue The Point, it's a former church and a listed building, so it’s not your typical music venue, unless you happen to be a vicar. 


We’d arrived with so much time to spare, and we liked West Street so much that we decided to walk back up it to find somewhere for our obligatory pre-gig pint.

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Despite briefly being tempted by a pub that had all of its curtains closed and each of its windows adorned by the St George’s cross, fearing recruitment to The National Front we moved on. It may or may not have been called The Slaughtered Lamb.

We eventually made it back to a much more welcoming pub called the Stag and Hounds on the corner of Old Market Street. While sipping my cider I was grateful for Sandro’s analysis of my drinking technique.

“You don’t even put the glass in your mouth,” he began, clearly in awe.

I didn’t quite know how to respond to that, so I didn’t.

“I mean, you don’t so much sip it,” he continued, “as just suck the top of the glass.”

I always welcome criticism, especially the nasty, spiteful stuff my Mum comes out with, but this merely continued the theme of one of our discussions at the previous weekend. Whilst watching the prestigious covers band The Old Trafford Trio (featuring Fergie, Park Ji Sung & personal favourite, Mike Phelan) at The North Star back in Cardiff, Sandro and our cousin, Cousin Bish had declared me to be the slowest drinker of all time in front of our impressed friend, Ryan of Brum.

Incensed, I was primed with a scathing riposte when I finished sipping my cider, but by that time they’d all left.

“What do you mean, “I don’t even put the glass in my mouth?”” I eventually responded at the Stag and Hounds. “What do you want me to do: swallow the glass whole?”

“Preferably,” Sandro replied. “What I mean is that you barely even open your mouth. Gulp it boy, gulp it.”

I defended myself, explaining that I was protecting my sensitive teeth and gums from the chemical erosion of the alcohol. I’m not sure Sandro was completely convinced, although judging from his response I may well have swayed him.

“Utter bollocks,” he muttered.

Returning to the now open Trinity Centre, the girl on the door foolishly let us in. Disappointingly, she didn’t provide us with tickets. I’m not usually a ticket collector, and I’ve been to too many great events (three) and thrown away the ticket to start now, but one of the seventy-seven unwritten rules of Gigaweek was to keep a ticket from each gig.

Unfortunately, we weren’t given tickets by the Old Boy at the Fjords gig last week either, so make that seventy-six unwritten rules. The You Me At Six ticket I've got is still one of my prized possessions though.

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When we entered the support band Mona were playing. There was something vaguely familiar about them that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Fortunately, when we met up with our friend Dante Tyte and his friend James, Dante put his finger on it for me. Wait, that came out all wrong. What I meant was that Dante pointed out that Mona bore an uncanny resemblance to Kings of Leon. Not early hillbilly Kings of Leon, but more recent big-selling, almost shaven Kings of Leon. Surprisingly, they hailed from Nashville, Tennessee.

Presumably named after the vampire of the same name, Mona sucked. . . (Sorry.) 


In actual fact, Mona are hotly tipped (which I think means they have warm fingers) to be one of the ‘big new bands’ of 2011. Their singer has even said that he wants to be bigger than Bono, which would make him about 5 foot 5. He sounds like a lovely, affable sort of chap too. 


When speaking to the NME about their former guitarist’s departure he said, "I ended up getting in a fight with him and beating the shit out of his face. He just wasn’t right for the band." I think we’re all agreed that if you’re not right for any particular band, then at some point, you deserve to have the shit beaten out of your face.

In fairness, from what we saw they had ‘big’ tunes (I don’t know what that means either) and were probably a tad better than The Sky Designed. More importantly though, the Trinity Centre served Red Stripe on tap, which delighted Sandro. Naturally I stuck to bottles of Kopparberg and cans of Somerset’s finest cider, Thatchers. I apologise, I can't remember the exact costs of each.

By the time I'd stopped reading the labels of the various bottles and cans, Mona had left and The Walkmen had appeared on stage. Their singer Hamilton Leithauser wore a rather fetching blazer, and seemed about as emotionally involved as Val Kilmer in Top Gun. His bandmates echoed his demeanour, and we couldn’t help but wonder, are they too cool. It’s possible you know, just ask Sandro.

They opened with the brilliantly named title track from their first album, 'Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone' before recent humdinger 'Angela Surf City' so I was very much on-side from the outset. Maybe it was my lack of familiarity with some of their songs, but there seemed to be a slight lull as we approached the halfway mark in their set, when they brought the tempo down.


Maybe they were just consciously allowing for people to refill pint glasses and empty bladders.

“How much do you think they owe The O.C. for their career?” Sandro wondered aloud during one of these slower moments. I didn't have an answer but I did have enough knowledge to then discuss The O.C. at length. 


It was superb, what a shame it led to stuff like The Hills and God knows where that will lead. If I seem easily distracted by things such as beer labels and American TV shows then, ooh, look a beer label!

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Soon after this riveting discussion, a giant who sounded Scandinavian and was dancing with about as much grace as a Scandinavian giant, stood on my toe. Naturally, I apologised.

Thankfully, so did the giant.

“Have you seen the band before?” I thought he said, clearly feeling compelled to have a conversation to avoid any ill feelings regarding my throbbing toe.

“No, this is the first time I’ve seen them,” I said in reply, to which he wore a blank look. Should I have said yes, I thought to myself, he’s quite tall after all.

“Have you seen the band before?” he repeated menacingly. Was he giving me the chance to change my answer?

“No,” I said firmly, sticking to my principles (which in this case is: never lie to really tall people). “This is the first time,” I repeated, but he still looked unsatisfied. I envisaged my principles becoming more flexible if he asked again.

“No, no,” he said shaking his head, “did you see the band before?”


Aah, that made more sense, I’d misheard him. He wasn’t such a sinister Scandinavian giant after all.

“Yes,” I said.

“Weren’t they just like Kings of Leon?” he said to my amusement.

“That’s exactly what my friend said!” I told him, turning to bring Dante into the conversation.

Dante was standing, staring fiercely, like a coiled spring. Like me, he’d misinterpreted the situation and thought it was all kicking off. He had that look in his eye that said, “If he swings for you, I’m gonna bite his face off.”

Thankfully no faces were bitten off, as reality dawned on Dante, as it had for me, and they briefly discussed the Mona/Kings of Leon comparison, before the Scandinavian giant disappeared into the masses of the crowd (except his head and shoulders, which remained visible).

The Walkmen regained my attention after a while with trademark effortlessness, with another couple of beauties from Lisbon. First they blew me away with 'Blue as your Blood' and then brought the house down with the triumphant 'Victory'. (See what I did there?)

They left the stage after a fine rendition of 'Juveniles', another young song (it ends soon, I promise), before returning for a splendid encore.

The three song encore included the wild 'Little House of Savages' (I said soon), which they followed with their most famous and finest song, the show stopping, perfect finisher, 'The Rat'.

They decided it wouldn’t be the show stopping, perfect finisher after all, instead playing one extra song. A song that I can’t name because I’d never heard it before. I probably wouldn’t have recognized it if you’d played it to me again two minutes later. Not that it was a bad song, or I suppose it could have been, seeing as I can’t remember it, but because in the words of Russell Crowe, I’ve got dead ears mate.

Dante and James kindly offered to give us a lift back to Cardiff. We gratefully accepted, though Sandro was disappointed to miss the chance to walk down West Street once more, and I was disappointed not to have the opportunity to maximize the value of my return ticket. Who said I was tight?

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January

1-7 - You Me At Six - ✓

8-14 –Fjords - ✓
15-21 - The Walkmen - ✓
22-28 - Walter Schreifels