Sick Of It All

My earliest memory of music is being terribly young and dancing around my living room to Abba with my father. Fastforward about 7 years and Im stood at the Astoria in London trying to meet Machine Head, who were playing their second night, to get me into the show that night because I had been told that I was barred from the venue the night before for stagediving.

After being stood in the foyer for three hours with noone to talk to, a man comes out with his arm bandaged. I look up, and bored out of my brains, I start talking to him.

"How did you hurt your arm?" i ask inquisitively
"Ahh at the show last night" He replies with a grin on his face.
"oh right.. where did you play last night?" I ask, hoping he is someone with Machine Head so I can start my "pleeeeeeeeease help me get into this show.. you will NEVER believe what happened!!" speech.
"Bradford"
"ahh ok"
"Are you coming to see us tonight?"
"who's us?"
"Sick of it all". The band were playing downstairs at the astoria 2 with a band from Long Island called VOD.
"Oh. no. sorry. I'm trying to get into the MachineHead show"
"Oh. OK. You don't like us?"
"Not really. You aren't really my thing. I like metal and punk, not hardcore"
"Oh ok. Thats a shame. Well, I have to go. It was nice meeting you"

I had actually picked up Scratch The Surface around half a year before this meeting and only given it one listen before storing it with my hundreds of other tapes.

A couple of months later, I had gone to my first real hardcore show, which was an eye opener, I heard they were touring again. I dug out the tape and gave it another listen and fell in love with the album. For 6 months, it never left my walkman. They announced dates and as I was at university in Southampton, I booked tickets for Portsmouth and told my brother to pick me up tickets for their two dates in London at the Garage..

They blew me away in Portsmouth. I stood there for the entirety of their set with my jaw on the floor. I had seen hundreds of bands by this point in my life and never had I seen a band with so much enthusiasm and dedication.

The next day, I trained it up to London for the first of the two London shows. I was stood outside the venue with my best friend, and the man that I met at the Astoria walks out of the tour bus.
He looks at me and says
"hey. weren't you at the show last night crowd surfing all over the place?"
"yeah. haha that was me. I had a bit to drink". All I could think was "Please don't remember me from the Astoria.. please don't remember me"
"Haven't I met you before?"
"um.." I pause. "Yeah. I met you before the VOD show".
"HAHAHAH HOLY SHIT, you are the Machine Head girl. What, you like my band now, huh?"
I felt my face go bright red.

The rest, as they say is history.

There is no band that I have gone out of my way to see more than this band. There are no songs I have listened to more times. There is no band that I get so excited about seeing that I can't sleep the night before. The lights go down, their intro starts, and my stomach does flips and i'm grinning like a Cheshire cat. And after 5 days of following them around the country, I have lost my voice.. I am happiest when I am stood watching them onstage, singing along. The band end their UK leg of this European tour in Norwich tonight, and I am sat at work, miserable because I am not on a train right now going there.

Thank you for giving me some incredible memories.

Good Charlotte

Having a little sister means that you can warrant doing many things in her name. Going out of my way to see Good Charlotte at the Brixton Academy last night to take her was definitely one of these things.

Pop punk, which is undoubtedly my favourite genre of music following hardcore, is a terribly guilty pleasure of mine. It reminds me of summer and good times. While my love for Good Charlotte does not exceed my love for New Found Glory, they are pretty high up there. And free tickets when i have nothing better to do on a Sat night? Yes PLEASE!!!!!!!!!

The crowd was comprised of a mixture of people which came as a great shock. As with any pop punk show, there were many young children with their parents. But there was a surprising amount of people in their mid-late 20s, people in the late 30s and as icing on the cake, many goths.

There was also an astounding amount of bad tattoos. Spotted in the crowd was a girl in her mid-20s with "MADE" tattooed on the back of her neck, a girl that couldnt have been older than 15 with the lyrics to "Hold On" in scripture on her arm, and my personal favourite, the girl whos picture was taken sneakily with the "My Chemical Romance" tattoo on her back. When she is in her 20s, she is going to regret that one terribly. But hey, at least its small enough to be covered up.

The band themselves were pretty good. Joel spoke possibly a bit too much between songs, gushing about his new baby daughter and how in love he is, as well as the usual "we wouldn't be here without you guys" schpeel. They played all their hits, the highlight being "girls and boys" and ended with what felt like a 20 mins speech about how the band could still play "lifestyles of the rich and the famous" because it didn't matter what the press thought as they didnt pander to them. The song still contained a certain amount of irony considering both Joel and Benji are currently involved with two of LAs biggest socialites.

All in all a good night. Sorry about the crappy phone pictures.

Cheap Thrills

As you get older, it becomes harder and harder to muster up any excitement for new bands. You find yourself in a rut of listening to bands you loved 10 years ago, and sticking to what you already know. Once in a while, though, a new band will come along that changes this. A band that gets you pumped and excited about hardcore again.

Recently, this has been Cheap Thrills. The band, hailing from the Ruhrpott area in Germany, first came over to the UK with Borrowed Time from Syracuse last September. The show at the 12Bar was competing with Bane/Ceremony/Blacklisted and Have Heart at the Peel the same night so not many people were out to see them. They then had the arduous task of playing second to last at From The Heart Fest in Colchester, and to pretty empty midweek underworld show. The band have not had the best of luck in the UK. I am hoping this will change soon.

The awesome thing about this band are that they are all of the older generation of hardcore kids. All members are over the age of 25 and grew up listening to old NYHC bands and this can be heard in the bands music. They chew up the cro mags with sick of it all with breakdown and spit it out with some EGH.

In a world where many hardcore bands cite their influences as being bands like Guns Up! and Bracewar (no disrespect intended to these two bands), its a breath of fresh air to hear a band that has none of this in their sound.

Check them out!