Week 27

Week 27 – Thursday 7^th July – Tribes – Cardiff Arts Institute, Cardiff - £5.50

“Roll with the punches. . .”

The post-Glastonbury blues had hit Sandro hard. The knowledge that he’d have to wait two years for the next one to come around was clearly tormenting him and he’d been camping in the garden ever since we returned home. I tried to persuade him to have his first shower in two weeks and join me for another gig. “What do we do when we fall off the horse?” I asked but was met by silence.

“We get back on the horse!” I said answering my own question, 

“Sorry, but I’m not a gymnast,” Sandro answered glumly.

He came around though; however we were still left with the tricky proposition of actually finding a gig to go to. It can be surprisingly difficult during festival season, and it took us at least seventeen minutes to find a rescheduled gig from new boys Tribes, who had been due to play Cardiff in June but had been forced to cancel. 

The contrast with the trials and tribulations of Glastonbury couldn’t be wilder, with tickets at a mere five pound fifty each rather than two hundred, and in place of the muddy fields of Pilton, we found ourselves at Cardiff Arts Institute, one of Cardiff’s least muddy venues. This venue of course, was the scene of the infamous Daedelus gig in March; the closest we’d come to failing in our Gigaweek challenge so far, a memory that still sends chills down my spine. We also had no additional companions, which left us in the unfortunate position of having to talk to each other. 

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Our arrival at CAI was prompter than usual, courtesy of a lift from our sister, Ugly Betty, so we had an hour to fill before the first support act. We grabbed a couple of costly Peronis, which were expensive enough to make cans of Red Stripe seem appealing, and sat down to discuss phone hacking, and who’s phone we’d each hack if it wasn’t morally reprehensible. Sandro surprised me by choosing Gok Wan, whilst I opted for Gandhi. 

As music venues go, the Arts Institute is a pretty small and unusual one. It doesn’t host too many well-known bands and is more suited to the DJ’s that frequent its stage than live musicians. In fact, this was the first time I’d be seeing an actual band play here and I was wondering how they’d manage. 

Sandro and I remained respectfully seated for the first act, who appeared to be just one man, though he may well have had a backing band that remained hidden from our vantage point. He could even have been a She, or one of those in-betweenies, you couldn’t be too sure from our position. 

An atypical feature of the place is that everything is essentially narrow and elongated, and things are at right angles to what you’d usually expect, which may not make sense, but imagine a clock. Not a digital one, that would be pointless. A clock with two hands and a big round face, and maybe a pair of squinty, bloodshot red eyes. 

As you enter CAI, the bar runs along the left hand side at 9 o’clock, there’s a small staircase down to the dance floor beyond it at 12 o’clock, and once you reach 12 o’clock, the stage is to the right at 3’o’clock, with a big black curtain to the left at the new 9 o’clock and a door leading to the garden and smoking area at the new 12 o’clock. If you reach 12 o’clock and your still with Sandro, you should start to panic.

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Very few people had made it to the dance floor to watch the first support act, but Sandro and I and a few more headed down the stairs for the next band, who were a local group called We’re No Heroes. They were a trio that did indeed look like heroes, especially the one in the Spiderman outfit, and they were undoubtedly exponents of the best-named genre of all, Math-Rock. 

Sandro immediately spotted similarities to Foals, which could have been due to their long faces, or their distinctive guitar playing. They shared singing duties, and did their best to enthuse the tiny crowd, inviting us unsuccessfully to move away from the black curtain at the back. They were good fun though, and set Tribes up nicely. 

Tribes had a certain look about them. There were at least two hideous vests that they’d probably insist should be called tank tops, and hair was universally unkempt and possibly unwashed. Those observations are not intended to be derogatory though, in spite of the use of the word hideous. I frequently wear hideous vests, and Sandro’s hair is famously unkempt and unwashed. The singer had that Julian Casablancas style vacant expression that suggested the NME would love him, and he tried to encourage a few who were lurking on the fringes to join us on the dance floor. 

“It’s our first headline show in Cardiff” the front-man said to the modest audience and Sandro, whose arrogance knows no bounds. “We look forward to coming back many times in the future” he added touchingly, probably anticipating bigger crowds and venues in the coming years. 

The wife beater vests detracted slightly from the “New York Cool” they may have been going for, but they had some decent songs and were pretty entertaining on the whole, so may be worth keeping an eye on. More importantly, it was a taxi that would be taking us home, rather than a pair of wellies.

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The taxi driver was an interesting chap, who wanted to start his own business, an accountancy practice, but had been hindered by the dreaded R word. 

“It’s been hard but you know, I’m young, the world is my oyster. Roll with the punches,” he said.

“Err, Ok. Still, at least you’ve got this gig as a taxi driver eh?” Sandro consoled him.

“Don’t fit the mould,” the taxi driver replied,

“Sorry?” Sandro said,

“When I’m producing, that’s production,” the taxi driver said, “It’s all there,” he continued inexplicably, leaving Sandro and I baffled.

“Well, good luck to you pal. The sky’s the limit eh?” I said as I paid the taxi fare,

“Don’t tell me the sky’s the limit, when there are footprints on the moon,” he said, before speeding off, and hopefully crashing.

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July

2-8 - Tribes - ✓
9-15 - ?
16-22 - ?
23-29 - ?