Week 48 - Part 2

Part Two – Kasabian

“You slouch! You’re a sloucher!”

In addition to our excursion to Bristol, the 48^th week of Gigaweek also involved a short trip to the Motorpoint Arena to see one of the biggest bands in the country, Kasabian. Escorted by my minders, burly Cousin Bish and puny J-Mo, I met Sandro at Copa where he was enjoying a pre-gig pint with Salazar.

Also present and making a long-awaited return to Gigaweek colours were P. Mushy and K-May. Their two month old baby (Aya Nappy) had been left in the care of Little P, which I considered to be a cruel and unusual punishment, but that’s for the NSPCC (who I contacted immediately) to decide.

Famous pasta pusher The Wiggler was also there, along with some of his pals who had real names, and we were also joined for the first time by part-time goalkeeping hero and full-time phone hacker CK1.

Also in attendance were Flapjack and Gavlova, which gave me a chance to refresh my memory of the weekend’s events, which wasn’t such a good idea.

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“I don’t really remember much of Sunday to be honest guys, wasn’t there some awful news that ruined the day?” I asked.

“No,” Flapjack replied.

“No idea what you’re talking about,” Gavlova said.

“I remember diving straight into a taxi from the train station. . .” I said flexing my memory muscles.

“It was quite a dive from the platform too, most impressive,” Flapjack said.

“. . . we went to that pub, The White Bear,” Gavlova continued, “where there was a Sky Sports sign, but no Sky Sports.”

“That’s called false advertising,” Flapjack added helpfully. 

“You asked the girl if they were showing the Swansea game and she looked at you like you’d just beaten up her boyfriend with a 2x4,” I said to Flapjack.

“Most women do. ‘We don’t show football anymore’ she said to me with disdain. I was quite insulted,” Flapjack replied. “I’m not racist but I always preferred black bears anyway.” 

We’d then hunted for another venue heading down St. Michael’s Hill and found a tiny, quiet old-fashioned place called the Colston Arms, where we watched the first half of the Swansea game, before heading back up the hill to a place called The Robin Hood for the second half. That was a regrettable decision as it turned out that Robin and his merry men didn’t do Sunday roasts. 

“We had to have pie and mash instead, on a Sunday!” Gavlova said shaking his head. “I’d been looking forward to Sunday dinner.”

“Never mind, I’m sure there’ll be another Sunday shortly,” I comforted him.

Next was a long walk to The Bristol Ram on Park Street to watch Liverpool, before playing a bit of pool at The Elbow Room up the road. 

“There wasn’t much elbow room there,” Flapjack said.

After Sandro had shown off his cue skills, we headed to The Berkeley, which is the Wetherspoons on the corner and played another pub favourite: the Itbox.

That was our final stop before making our way to Anson Rooms.

“I vaguely remember ‘Helena Beat’ and ‘Pumped Up Kicks’ but very little otherwise,” I said.

“I remember seeing Flapjack’s miserable face,” Gavlova said.

“They were shit,” Flapjack said by way of explanation.

“We popped in Wetherspoons before going back to the station didn’t we? But I don’t remember the train itself.” I said.

“That’s because you were asleep for most of it,” Gavlova said.

“Ahh right. I was only awake long enough to fill a toilet basin with some Strawberry Cider-red vomit,” I finished, which is when Gavlova and Flapjack decided to stop talking to me once and for all.

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Back in present day, we arrived at the Motorpoint (without being approached by any short, drunk, homeless men) and almost immediately splintered into two separate groups. J-Mo, Cousin Bish, Gavlova, CK1 and I loitered at the back of the arena near the express bar, while the B team took up a position near the gents down the right flank. I felt we had our priorities right. Unless a vomiting attack took hold of me, in which case the back of CK1’s head would have to do.

We were only in time to see a small portion from the set of Miles Kane, who was supporting. This being the fourth time this year I’d seen him (discounting the seventeen times I’d mistaken Flapjack for him), I didn’t mind missing him. He was kind enough to try to treat us to ‘Come Closer’ and ‘Inhaler’ but the vast arena swallowed most of their effect.

By the time the headliners arrived, space was in such short supply in the crowd and there were so many instruments and pieces of equipment on stage bleeping and vibrating that the acoustics weren’t such a problem. 

Despite Kasabian’s chief songwriter Sergio Pizzorno’s insistence that they’re avant-garde, they’ll always be dismissed as lager-lout lad rockers by many. Luckily, we were armed to the teeth with lagers and while there were undoubtedly plenty of sing-alongs in their set, there was also plenty of experimental electronics too, particularly as I fumbled with my Nokia 0010.  

In our customary contest to predict the first song, Gavlova won a cuddly toy as the band began with ‘Days Are Forgotten’ from recently released fourth album Velociraptor! Front-man Tom Meighan’s face was prominent on the two giant screens either side of the stage, and he appeared to be wearing Paul from U2 style shades.

Before following up with ‘Shoot The Runner’ Meighan took a moment to show his band’s respect for Gary Speed, who he dedicated the show to. An emotional audience demonstrated its approval with chants of ‘Speedo’ and ‘There’s only one Gary Speed!’ and there were further mentions of the great man throughout, in what were genuine and earnest tributes.

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Having seen them at Glastonbury two years ago, I was expecting to thoroughly enjoy the show and I did. If you don’t like Kasabian, you probably didn’t. In fact you probably wouldn’t have been there at all, unless you were compelled by some ridiculous challenge to attend at least one gig every week and happened to be in the Cardiff area at the time.

Their set drew mostly from their two most recent albums, Velociraptor! and West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum, with only a couple of songs from Empire and just a few from their self-titled debut. ‘Underdog’ made an early appearance and was followed naturally by ‘Where Did All The Love Go?’ for which I felt obliged to head over to P. Mushy and Sandro to sing what was our Glastonbury anthem of 2009 (the ulterior motive being that Mr Pecker needed a leak).

‘Thick as Thieves’ was well received, as was fan-favourite ‘Club Foot’, which made the cut, unlike ‘Cutt Off’ and ‘Reason is Treason’. Newbie ‘Re-Wired’ and oldie ‘Empire’ followed with some sing-along choruses, ‘Fast Fuse’ was understandably electric, while Velociraptor’s ‘Goodbye Kiss’ was introduced by Meighan as a beautiful song and only a curmudgeon would disagree. 

Their main set closed in style with ‘LSF’, as the big screens showed some audience members lost their souls forever as they were victims of a ‘Soul Grabber’ (which I think means that they had their pictures taken) . 

Compared to Arctic Monkeys’ speedy show at the beginning of the month, this one had seemed a lot longer. That may have just been my perception rather than reality (I forgot to set my timer again), but I certainly didn’t have the same lengthy list of songs I was sad to miss.

Of course, we expected Kasabian to return for more and they did. ‘Can you feel it coming?’ asked the nosey big screens, precursing the impressive ‘Switchblade Smiles’. ‘Vlad the Impaler’ followed before it all ended, as we knew it would, with ‘Fire’, featuring King Louie.

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Outside, we had to battle our way through violent rain and although Cousin Bish took a few savage blows to his unprotected head we made it to O’Neill’s for a post-gig pint.

The post-gig pint has become an essential tradition of Gigaweek, only rivalled by the pre-gig pint (and occasionally the gig itself). It has set the scene for some harrowing events, such as the occasion that Sandro attacked me with empty cigarette packets, and some fiercely intellectual debates, such as when we discussed the best songs to contain the words ‘hot diggity dog’. 

The last post-gig pint of the penultimate month of Gigaweek featured a revelation that left all present dumfounded. Our conversation had meandered onto the subject of height, as it has a habit of doing when short people are present. I happen to inhabit the ‘Goldilocks zone’ of around 6 foot, whereas Cousin Bish is in the ‘Freakishly tall’ category and J-Mo is in the ‘Short-arse’ class. Sandro meanwhile, is an imposing 6 foot 2, so it was rather a surprise when J-Mo revealed his shock that Sandro was taller than me.

“I suppose from your low angle, it can be difficult to tell,” I said sympathetically.

“I thought you were my height!” J-Mo said to Sandro.

“But you’re 5 foot 5?” Sandro said with contempt.

“No, I’m not! I’m 5 foot 6!” J-Mo said defensively. “You slouch! You’re a sloucher!” J-Mo screamed at Sandro dementedly.

“I’d have to slouch a lot to be your height,” Sandro replied.

“Well anyway, height is nothing to be proud of,” J-Mo said. “It’s not an achievement!”

Spoken like a true shorty.

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November
 
29-4 - Arctic Monkeys - ✓
5-11 - Girls - ✓
12-18 - Wise Blood - ✓
19-25 - Wild Beasts - ✓
26-2 - Foster The People + Kasabian - ✓