Hiya!
So this is my new blog! I just started up a Beauty Blog (Daisies of the Galaxy) and loved it so much I thought I'd do an 'events' blog too. So basically, I'm lucky enough that I get to go to lots of events, such as music gigs, film previews, theatre etc, quite often and thought I'd write a blog about it.
I've been lucky enough to go to a lot of events recently, particularly music gigs such as the Wombats, so I will write about them soon even though they were a while back.
The most recent gig I've been to was Foster the People, at HMV Institute in Birmingham, on Monday (21st Nov 2011).
I first heard Foster the People on Radio 1 at the beginning of the summer and fell in love with their song Pumped Up Kicks, it was just a perfect summer song; so, I bought the album too. I wasn't disappointed and really liked the album, however the only thing I found was that it was difficult to learn the different songs as individual songs (with the exception of Pumped Up Kicks) so I would have perhaps have liked a bit more variation in the album, but I still love it nonetheless.
Then, my sister was looking on Pure HMV (The HMV loyalty points reward scheme thing) and found a pair of tickets online for not that many points. So we bought the tickets and although HMV managed to mess up yet again (they don't have a great track record of being very reliable); we got in.
I'd actually never been to the HMV Institute before and was nicely surprised! It's a really nice venue actually, and dead practical too because it's got three tiers so unless you choose to stand on the ground floor, you should be able to see from pretty much wherever you sit. We went up to sit on the balcony and got a really good view of the stage (which always makes a gig much better).
The gig 'started' at 7.00 but the support act didn't come on until about 8.15 so it was quite a wait, but it was easily filled.
The Support act were called Unknown Mortal Orchestra, and I did youtube these before I went to the gig and have to say, I thought they were quite a nice little band from the songs I listened to. However, unfortunately, on stage they didn't sound nearly as good. All their songs on youtube sound really underproduced, but to get the vocals as they are on those tracks, there had to be a fair amount of autotune going on! Either that, or the singer had something wrong with his throat at the gig! It wasn't only the singing that wasn't so great though, the songs were just boring and blurred into one another. Unfortunately for them too, the reaction from the crowd wasn't great, it wasn't bad, but there was sort of no real reaction; a few people (like me) clapped at the end as they went off, but most people just didn't bother. Overall, their performance could have been so much better, but it just made no impact on the crowd! They just needed some stage presence and a new lead singer (or to give him some lemsip or something). I have to say, I was disappointed.
There was then another wait for Foster the People to come on, they must have come on at about 9.15 ish, a good half hour after the support act had finished anyways. But again, the wait didn't really bother me.
Then when Foster the People came on, the crowd got excited. I can't remember what order they played their songs in so unfortunately I can't put that here, but they played their first song which was really, really good, then once that was over, and the crowd had cheered, they like took a break for a minute! Then they played the next song, awesome again, crowd cheers, wait another minute or two! This went on through the whole gig, and it was so frustrating! When they played their songs it was awesome, and the crowd loved it, but then they just kept putting all these breaks between songs whilst they fiddled around on stage and did all this whining stuff on guitars and keyboards in between times which was even more annoying than silence! So the whole crowd would get buzzing and dancing and hyped up throughout the song, and would cheer and clap at the end, but the breaks just allowed the buzz to die, it broke the rhythm of the gig, and the crowd were left standing around just waiting for the next song to start. It was incredibly irritating because if they'd just played without all the long breaks in between it would have been such an awesome gig, like 10/10, but the breaks just let them down so much!
Another thing was their exit, after playing all their songs except Pumped Up Kicks, they just walked off stage, no 'thank you, goodbye' or whatever, they just walked right off, which was just weird. And then, once the crowd had cheered them back on, they didn't say anything again! It was all just a little bit weird to be quite honest! But anyways, the encore song was this amazing long mix of Pumped Up Kicks, and it was just awesome! The whole crowd was obviously loving it, and you could tell the band could tell that the crowd loved it too, which you could see made them very happy, which I always think is really nice, especially when it's quite a new band because it shows that they do actually really want the audience to like their music, and do really appreciate the support as opposed to some bands who make music for the sake of making music and don't really care what anyone else thinks of it. Anyways, so this mix was just amazing, and was just such a good end to the gig.
So overall, despite all the breaks and the weird exit/entrance bit for the encore, I still thought this was a really amazing gig! I now love the album even more because hearing all the songs live gave each of them that distinguishing feature so that they all now stand out, I have managed to find a live version of Pumped Up Kicks which is fairly similar to the awesome version they played, and I have to say, I really did enjoy the gig!
I think their next album could be amazing too, and if it is, I'll certainly be going to see them again, and will hope that next time, there won't be so many long gaps!
Hope you like the review!
Feel free to leave any comments!
x x x
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