Not another painfully long review of the last gig I went to, but an announcement.
Frost* are playing the Peel, Kingston-Upon-Thames on the 20th December (that’s a Saturday people, so no excuses!), and tickets are only £10 advance!!!!
Who are you to resist?!?!?!?!?!?
Let me know if you want to come, and I will get tickets…..
….THIS is why I don’t post very often! When I get started on a post, I find it difficult to stop, and it takes over an hour to finish it!!!
Brevity is not in my vocabulary…….
Aaahhh…..back from camp. Another good one, lovely weather to begin with, then it decided to change its mind every five minutes - sun, spitting, sun, cloud, wind, sun, rain, etc, etc. All the way through the second half of the week. Didn’t seem to dampen anyone’s spirits though, and a good time was had by all. It was nearly ruined (for the leaders) on Friday evening, but that’s not a story for a public forum….nothing untoward, just a clash of personalities.
Anyway, I wanted to start catching up this blog on the events of my life, as I have been very lax for the past….well, the past two years really, from about two months after starting it…
So on July 3rd, Myself, Mark, John, Kyle, Limpet, Rob (not brother Rob, friend Rob), Troggie and Helen (that’s Kyle’s girlfriend for those not in the know) went to see Spocks Beard at the Islington Academy, London. I have been looking forward to seeing the Beard again ever since the last gig last year, so as soon as tickets went on sale, I snapped eight up. Tom was going to go, but he ended up going to Silverstone to see the Grand Prix.
In the torturous months waiting for the gig, I kept on looking at the site, and one day discovered that the Beard had a support act this year (they did not last time out). My first reaction to this was “Nooooooooooooo!!!! this means less Beard time on stage!!!”…..oh, what little did I know….
After I got over this disappointment, I thought I’d better go have a look to see who the support act were. ‘Frost*’ was all I knew, so I had a look around, and someone posted a link to their site on the Beard Forum. On their site is a link to their Myspace page. Mark was down at the time, so I gave him a shout to come up and have a listen with me.
As I am waiting for Mark to come up, I have a read of the bumph on the page. My fears were increased at the mention that the main songwriter, Jem Godfrey, wrote tunes for the likes of Blue and Atomic Kitten………oh god……..
When he finally finished his cigarette, I clicked on the first track - it was called ‘Hyperventilate’……
It was one of those moments, when we both realised that we were about to embark on a truly wonderful musical journey. It was a simple piano line repeated and built upon, layer after layer, till the whole band kicked in.
We both sat, staring awestruck at the screen for a few seconds, then slowly (and perfectly in sync) turned to look at each other, then simultaneously smiled in acknowledgement - we had found something great. Truly great.
That very minute, I had jumped on Amazon and bought a copy of the album ‘Milliontown’, and got hold of it by ‘other means’, as I couldn’t wait for the postal service to deliver it at their ever-increasing leisure. Once it had finished ‘arriving’, my brother and I went on one of our now ritual car drives to sample the album at a respectably loud level (my dad, bless him, has no tolerance for music played at appropriately antisocial levels) - it was an awesome experience….what an album. That night I ordered Mr Kyle to come round and have a listen, as he is also a disciple of the church of Prog. He did the very next day, and we repeated the ritual to the same effect - Mr Kyle was speechless.
This was three months ago now, and the album has blessed my ears nearly every single day since then. I cannot get enough of it. One of the great things about Prog Rock is that it requires mutliple listens to fully appreciate it, since there is so much going on, so many layers to discover. This album is a masterpiece - really synthesiser heavy (Jem, by his own admission is a total keyboard geek), but with great playing from all the members of the band. As with all great prog, it encompasses several different time signatures (the first track alone contains passages in 7/8, 8/8, 10/8….and that’s just from memory - there are probably more), but whereas much prog seems to use it as a gimmick, and forces the music into the time signature with often jarring results, Jem seems to have a real understanding of the musicality of these different beats.
I could go on and on about the orgasmic beauty of this album, but you really have to listen to it to appreciate it - my words cannot do it justice.
If you have listened to the album, and want more, I heartily recommend visiting the Frost site (Click Here) - there is a blog (one of the finest and funniest blogs I have ever read), a forum that is jam packed with free downloads of demos, alternative versions, etc etc (look in the ‘Toys’ category) and links to the Myspace and Youtube pages. The You tube stuff is particularly recommended, as Jem has taken video records of the creation of this and the new album, as well as tour footage - he’s a truly funny guy, and the videos are very entertaining.
Planet Frost - the Youtube category.
Definitely worth a visit. But back to the gig. By the time we went, I was probably more looking forawrd to seeing Frost* than the Beard, if the truth be known.
But the gig itself - after an uneventful drive up there (Limpet and Rob fell asleep), we hopped a tube from Richmond up to Islington (with one change), with Troggie keeping us amused with random Shakespearean poetry and other strangeness (my sides were hurting by the time we got off the tube). I had insisted on getting there stupidly early so we could be at the front of the queue, so once we got to Islington we had time for meal and a drink or two. That is, if we could find the venue. The Academy is tucked into a recess of the main street, so we actually managed to walk past it for about half a mile before we decided the dozy cow in Jesops had led us astray. Once we found the place, we popped into the local Wetherspoons (or some other such souless fast drink establishment - ‘McPubs’ I like to call them) for a drink and much mirth and merriment.
Doors opened at seven, so I insisted on getting in the queue at six, and we were only about twenty people from the front, so that worked out ok. The hour went really quickly (for me anyway), mainly because Troggie developed a serious case of ‘Random Newsreader Tourettes’ for the duration (you’ll have to ask him to demonstrate).
Our earliness paid off, because we were able to secure front row standing positions to stage right (and thats even with Mark poncing around putting his jacket in the cloakroom!), and we settled in to await the magic. About two seconds after settling in my position, I realised that the keyboard tech messing about with Jems Synth was not a keyboard tech at all, but the man Jem himself! I got a smile and wave when I screamed his name at him!
Is it just me, or do other people get a buzz when someone famous on stage makes eye contact with them? About five minutes later, Jem popped his head out from backstage and pointed a video camera at us…….it is here that I stop my Frost tale, and hand you over to one of the aforementioned Frost* Reports. This is the gig we went to - look for us at about 3:50 and again (more clearly) at about 5:50……
Now, if I’m to be brutally honest, I would say that the sound wasn’t great for the band, but as it turned out, the sound engineer had not worked with them before, and they had a limited amount of time to set up. They were still brilliant though, and I will definitely be going to see them again if at all humanly possible. They have another gig in London in December apparently - I may have to do some investigating…..
Spocks Beard on the other hand, sounded as awesome as they did last time round - pure sonic perfection. And their set was wonderful too. I had gotten wind of their set list on the forum a few days before (I tried not to look, but I couldn’t help myself). I was gutted not to see ‘At The End Of The Day’ on there (my all time favourite song by anybody, ever), but they did play ‘She Is Everything’, and I was nearly in tears by the end of the guitar solo, and even closer to tears by the time they had reached the climax of ‘The Great Nothing’ (twenty seven minutes long! The whole song, not the climax…). It was superb.
Afterward, I blew a large wad at the concession stand, buying a Frost* T-shirt, a Spock’s Beard T-shirt, their live DVD and the Frost* Tour CD (containing sneak previews of their new album, as well as some excellent exclusive videos), and while I’m trying to wrestle it all into a carrier bag, I think to glance over my shoulder…and there’s Alan Morse standing at the top of the stairs!!! Oh my god!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Alan plays guitar for Spocks Beard by the way, and f*ck me but can he play!!! The guy is one of my idols. So I go running up the stairs, thinking to myself “for christ’s sake, think of something interesting to say!”. In the end, I just shook his magic hands, thanked him for a great gig, and asked him when they are going to start on any new material. I think I didn’t make a total cock of myself at least.
Oooo! Ooooo! and I got my photograph taken with him!
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Coooooooooooooool!!!
And, to cap it all, when I got to the tube station, I fished around in my bag to have a look at the stuff I bought, and found out that the guy had somehow given me two extra Spocks Beard T-shirts by mistake! I don’t like to steal, but I wasn’t about to walk all the way back, and possibly miss my train, so I gave one each to Mr Kyle and Rob (they would not have fit Troggie and John, Limpet already bought one, Helen was already wearing my Frost8 T-shirt, and Mark had already left by this time (he missed Alan - gutted!). So that was nice bonus. Plus we had been tipped off about a car park in Richmond that was less than quarter the price of the one we usually use….AND the cars were still there (and in one piece) when we got back.
ANNNNNND…..while we were queuing for the gig, some guy was handing out free CDs of a band called ‘Magenta’, and listeing to it on the way home…..they are seriously good too!!!!!!
Altogether a fantastic night!