The Gig Thread

[Burberry Knight]

I'll be seeing him 3 days before that in Glasgow, hoping they play some songs from that album to warm them up.

[Snowy]

Any of you lucky bastids going to see this?

I am

A mate who I usually go gigging with pinged me Devy's tweet yesterday, and I wee'd some happy wee

[Mantis]

Not really a gig, but been pressed by the missus into buying tickets for Hamilton in London so spent half an hour in a virtual queue on several different tabs trying to make Ticketmaster not crash out every time it found a pair of tickets. Only 440 something days to go until the day I managed to finally grab some for.

For all you uncultured metalheads, it's a musical about Alexander Hamilton as told through the medium of hip hop. High brow stuff. -_-

Also going to see Richard Barbieri in Birmingham in March a week after Devy. I really love the guys solo stuff outside of Porcupine Tree so am pretty excited for it.

[Snowy]

Had a mammoth search on my hands yesterday when the other half asked me to buy her and her mum tickets to see Elbow... quite a while after they went on sale!

The tickets were available, if you wanted to pay tout prices for them. Eventually contacted the Eventim Apollo directly and managed to get them some stalls tickets at face value, and added Elbow to my gig tracker!

[Snowy]

Saw Gojira last night. Fuck me crossways what a band. Tighter than a duck's proverbial, and that drummer... Mind utterly blown, gig of the year so far.

That said, Devin on Friday

[Burberry Knight]

Damn, love me some Gojira. Seeing them on Friday and I am seeing Devy tomorrow!

[Mantis]

Devin on Friday too. Gave up on the Nottingham gig in the end and am spending the weekend in London instead. Impossible to resist hearing all of Ocean Machine live.

[Burberry Knight]

Gojira just delivered the best show that I've ever seen them play, possibly the best that I've ever been to. Truly amazing.

Enjoy Ocean Machine, you twats!

[Mantis]

Well that was quite an experience. Nothing else really beats hearing those last four or five tracks in a row. Dev apologised for getting emotional afterwards but I didn't really see when he was referring to.

I clocked you Ian. In your Gojira hoody sneaking back from the loo during Tesseract. Bit too far away in the crowd to call you out though. We had a killer spot right in the middle of pretty much the entire room, just high enough up the slope to see over everyone but close enough to the stage to see everything.

[Snowy]

Haha yeah that was a bastard when I realised I was on the opposite side of the venue to the bloody gents and had to cross the whole area - but can confirm that it was indeed me in a Gojira hoodie so good spot We were down the right hand side - walked in during Tesseract and basically strolled straight up to about 5 feet from the barriers. We had a rather strange girl who spent the entire gig headbanging while wobbling around like a thing possessed and doing odd little kung-fu kicks who kept a nice space for us throughout. Also I am probably wrong, but would swear that Natalie Dormer was in the same spot as us - if not then it was her lost twin - hard to keep my eyes on Devy at some points

I am surprised you missed him getting emotional though, he dropped several lines from Funeral in particular.

Oh, and I got a nice doodled-on drumhead signed by all the band

[Mantis]

I saw him drop a few lines from Funeral but didn't realise it was because he was getting emotional, thought he'd just forgotten the lyrics. I was a bit too into it to really notice myself by that point. Funeral and Bastard are two of my absolute favourite songs.

Still sort of letting the whole thing soak in. That was such a good gig. The sound wasn't as perfect as the the Albert Hall but I think he nailed the vocals anyway. Glad he played those Transcendence tracks at the end too, they sound pretty killer live.

[Snowy]

Ah ok - I saw his face when he dropped those lines, and it was clearly not just a lapse in memory - touching that the song still hits him after 20 years!

[Mantis]

It's about a friend from his childhood who was stabbed to death when he was 16, so yeah it's pretty heavy content. I guess playing the whole album in one go really brought all the memories back.



This gig is definitely going to stay with me for a while.

[Snowy]

From an interview on TeamRock:

But the most stirring songs on Ocean Machine are those that confront that cruel plane of existence head on. Life, a sonically uplifting rumination on the preciousness of existence, and Funeral, a hymn-like address punctuated with desperate cries, were written following the death of 16-year-old schoolmate Jesse Cadman. On the evening of October 18, 1992, he was senselessly stabbed.

“He was killed walking home by a group of kids that wanted his hat,” says Devin quietly.

Though Devin and Jesse weren’t close, Devin was good friends with Jesse’s sister. He also played in local band Grey Skies, of which Jesse was a fan. When it came to organising his funeral, the Cadmans asked Devin to speak in church – something that left an indelible impact on him.

“I hadn’t experienced death in a tangible way prior to that, so when we went to the funeral and I had to speak, I remember I hadn’t anticipated they were gonna bring the body out, and I just panicked,” he says. “I couldn’t cope with it, and I wasn’t alone in that, either. It was a real heavy time for a lot of people, because it was our first experience with that sort of thing, and it was senseless. It affected my teen years profoundly.”

Jesse’s parents became involved in youth work and politics, and Devin is moved to learn that his mum, Dona Cadman, has publicly spoken alongside the mother of her son’s killer. “It’s a testament to the parts of the human condition that are worth fighting for,” he says.

Understandable that is it a track that is tough to sing!

[Animalmother]

Sounds like it was an epic gig.