With the country still in the midst of lockdown and no sign of any live music in the foreseeable future if at all this year I thought I would take the opportunity to look back in the archives, sounds posh I know but it’s just an spreadsheet, and revisit gigs I attended on this day down the years.
May is typically a very busy month for gigs being part of the usual album release cycle and I have three for my trip down memory lane for you down the years
1999, Bruce Springsteen, Earls Court, London
For tonight’s show I went with an absolute Bruce fanatic who has probably seen him over fifty times easily and goes multiple times on each tour. This was the first of four nights at Earls Court and Micky probably went to them all. I’m a big Bruce fan and have seen him eight times myself but tonight I just wasn’t feeling that well.
We had decent seats in the behemoth that is Earls Court but the sound was very loud and muddy or maybe that was the cold I had. Looking back at the setlist now it was killer. A real hit fest with four tracks from each of The River, Darkness, Born in the USA and Born to Run plus a couple from Tom Joad and the recently released Tracks rarities album. Such a shame I didn’t really appreciate it at the time. My least memorable Bruce show but I’m sure it was probably great.
2011 Band of Heathens, the Lexington, London
The Band of Heathens are a talented group of singer songwriters on their own right who comes together under this moniker. I am guessing that John and Graham were here tonight for what was a brilliant show. These guys are such a talented bunch of musicians sharing vocal duties throughout. I have no idea what the setlist looked like as I think that they generally act without a set list and so looking at other lists at that time don’t help much. Whatever they played though was great and another added to the list of excellent shows at my favourite small venue in London, The Lexington.
2015, the Strypes, Boileroom, Guildford
I wrote about this gig at the time here and every word holds true. I remember this tiny venue down the road from us being absolutely rammed as John and I squeezed in to get a decent vantage point. Sadly this band who had so much raw energy and talent split up in ‘18 so we will no longer this slightly throwback sixties R and B band no more. A sad miss but I have some great memories form the few shows of theirs I did see.
That’s it for today’s trip down memory lane. Here’s hoping we can get to some form of normality soon. Support your small local venues and smaller artists in these difficult times, stay safe and keep on rockin y’all