Diary of an up and coming sociopath

We recently got back from the Ash gig at the Zodiac. A gig many week’s in the making and slightly special both for being the first time I’ve seen as play a normal venue (I’ve seen them do 3 festival appearances) and, even more so, for occurring in a venue sized well below what Ash could expect to fill. It’s considered a rare treat when a big band plays a small venue and this is probably one of the first times I’ve had the chance to see that kind of thing (besides 4Scott which was a charity deal.)

The gig sold out in hours and I only bought some tickets by virtue of being at a computer at the right time, really (then again, I’m always at a PC, so…) The resultant crowd was made up of some pretty hardcore Ash fans, and a bunch of university students who snapped up the tickets because the gig was local. I fall closer to the latter category there, to be honest, along with Nikki, and presumably both Si and his friend whose name I didn’t catch, so if you’re a huge Ash fan, I’m going to say on behalf of us: “Ha!”

Prior to the gig we went to Nandos. Rachel was going to come but she appears to have caught the stomach bug which is being passed around Oxford colleges at a semi-alarming rate. Si was just recovering from it, in fact. For a change, Nandos weren’t playing their usual mix of dodgy latin salsa style music, but had deigned to replace it with some dodgy latin pop style music. An appropriate application of the term “Better the devil you know…” if ever one. As we left Nandos it became obvious that it was freezing cold outside. Our first clue to this was the ice - frozen water if ever I saw any!

We hung around in Tescos for a while avoiding the cold. Corned beef was on offer - 100% free. The offer ends tomorrow so we considered snapping up the cans and then reselling them to the consumer while pocketing the profit. 25 Kilogrammes of Corned Beef resold with at least 50% profit could’ve been a real money spinner, but we had to leave and all thoughts of “Only Fools and Horses” style corned beef antics soon passed.

The ticket seemed to suggest that the doors would open at 7:30 where the website clearly stated 7:00. This is a pretty bad situation to be in because even once you’re there, the doors rarely open on time. I think we waited about 20 minutes before being admitted at about 7:45, which is forgivable. It’s not the 40 minute wait of last week, that’s for damn certain.

Once inside the Zodiac, we took the opportunity to check lots of things with UV lights. Money, credit cards, driving licenses… All kinds of things have secret UV-light based glyphs on them. Evidence, perhaps, of a secret UV-Light based society living parallel to our own? I’ll let you decide.

The first band was “Winnebago Deal” who I believe are a local outfit. They seem to play here a lot anyway. They are well position in, I understand, the genre of “noisecore” which - again, solely in my estimation - appears to be the musical term for ‘unlistenable shit’. Yes, yes, oh look, I can hear you thinking: “James is calling a support band crap again, what a surprise!” But wait, my hypothetical friend - This band really was shit. It was a good half hour of mindless thrash with arguably some lyrics thrown in, but no-one was too sure. This was not a band that falls into an area I define as music. It was the support band equivalent of being raped in the ear. I was glad for my ear-protecting foam plugs, frankly, because I can’t see they accomplished anything in that gig besides punctured eardrums.

Perhaps it was a test, though. A test to see how much we really wanted to see Ash. I suspect Winnebago Deal’s reputation preceded them because once they were gone the place filled up quite suddenly. Ash came on stage to Kill Bill’s theme tune, “Battle Without Honor Or Humanity” and had a really cool projection screen where they put up their various logos correlating with each song, along with other promotional images (like the Pat Lee drawn band members from the best of.) They played all of the new album, which seems like it’s going to be quite good. They also avoided slow songs with a frigntening accuracy. “Yes, it might be heavy and fast but you don’t know it so you aren’t moshing and it’s therefore your chance for a rest” seemed to be their philosophy. I’m not complaining, though, because it was great. I spent a few songs watching with Si and Nikki, and a few in the moshpit, though after “Goldfinger” I decided I should go and get some water, when it occurred to me the reason I felt a bit dizzy was probably because I’d only had a single glass of coke to drink in the preceding 8 hours. It felt as if the floor was moving at one point, which I didn’t take as a good sign for my health, but on clsoer inspection it turned out that yes, the floor was actually moving. In between songs I decided to weigh up my chance of surviving, should the floor we were on tumble onto the floor beneath. Then it occurred to me that should this happen, fledgling band “planes mistaken for stars” might have had their entire fanbase killed before it had really begun. Something to think about.

For reference, the setlist went exactly like this:

Girl From Mars / Meltdown / Orpheus / A Life Less Ordinary / Evil Eye / Clones / Walking Barefoot / Star-Crossed / Out Of The Blue / Shining Light / Renegade Cavalcade / Detonator / Goldfinger / On A Wave / I Won’t Be Saved / Envy / Vampire Love /// Darkside Lightside / Petrol / Projects / Burn Baby Burn.

When I got back, I discovered Ash are playing the SU in June, though it may coincide with my Pixies date. I should do some research into that to figure out whether I go to Ash or not. Tomorrow Nikki and I are in London seeing Placebo. It’s not like we spend all our time at gigs, though, we just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see Ash play the Zodiac and had to go to the other Placebo date to accomodate that. It seems that gigs are like buses in that respect. You wait hours for one and then three turn up at once, but they all smell bad and are filled with people invading your personal space and then they don’t run on time and you’re left wondering why they’re so expensive in the first place. Hmm, maybe gigs are even more like buses than I first suspected.