overlap

Another one from the department of gigs booked some way in advance because there wasn't much else on the calendar for the week, and out of curiosity. As ever I'm amused to find that looking like you belong somewhere and acknowledging security personnel while your body language tells them you are not exactly waiting for their permission to be somewhere can get you into places you are not supposed to be. In this case it unintentionally got me into the gig bypassing the front door, and merely meant I didn't need to pick up the ticket I'd paid for, so it's not like anyone's being put in the poor house, but it still amuses me greatly. Support band Fight Like Apes are a completely new one on me. The name doesn't exactly promise great things, and it takes a couple of songs to make sense of exactly what is going on. Best comparative way to describe it is what you'd get if you put a cement mixer on a turntable spinning at half a revolution per minute in a room where in the four corners you had variously the following: the unlistenable industrial variant of Depeche Mode at any stage after the glorious popness of See You, Avril Lavigne and Alanis Morisette competing in the world championships for the screech-shouting style of vocal, Pop Will Eat Itself at their most sample-frenzied, and your local rock pub's poor Metallica covers band. They seem to be having fun, and some of the crowd seem to like it, but it's really not a good sign when a member of the band disrupts the set for sixty seconds to fetch a pair of glasses that flash in a couple of colours in the dark. The brutal variety of it all makes me wonder if they actually know what they want to be, though I'm sure they'll survive without my fanship, and maybe someone my age not getting it at all is something they'd actually consider a recommendation, I've no idea. It is possible headliners The Ting Tings might turn out to have just the one outstanding song, but I'm happy to take the chance. Before they come on I'm amused to realise that with this being a freshers' week gig, it's genuinely now the case that some of the crowd are literally half my age. Getting out of my familiarity zone is no bad thing, and I have heard good things about them, and I do find That's Not My Name intriguing, but I'm not so keen as to get myself right into the middle of the packed crowd. Watching from the side gives me a different view of the stage, and where FLA suffer for their variety, the consistency of the Ting Tings shows a band that flows naturally. The fact there are only the two of them on stage may help with that, but they make a captivating pair. Obviously there's not so much excitement can be projected from behind a drumkit, and by the time we get to Fruit Machine and Traffic Light, everyone is having a great time. I have enjoyed current single Be The One every time I hear it on the radio, which proves there's more than one song familiar to me, and the set reaches a perfect climax after a little over an hour, with them returning for the inevitable encore run through That's Not My Name. There's a hint of the space in the sparser bits of Toni Basil's Mickey in TNMN, and it is a fine example of the slightly blunt, slightly stupid but thoroughly glorious sound of a great pop single. Which is more than good enough for me, and especially when the fitting brevity of the set means I'm home before the 10.30 news is finished on the radio. One of the more interesting moments in going back to a venue I've not visited for a little while is the high glamour quotient in evidence among the crowd, on which perhaps more later. Here's Katie. See what I mean about taking in the side view. Ain't Faking This is a line from The Ting Tings' song Shut Up And Let Me Go

Labels: gigs, The Ting Tings