GIG NUMBER ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-NINE
Who
I also decided on the day to give the Last Shadow Puppets album a listen but this was for nothing as there were no guest stars or any non-Miles solo tunes on the day. I presume Miles would have been keen to prove that he could do it by himself with his own songs and I can definitely understand that. On the way to the show I was listening to more Beach Boys and in fact had been trawling through their back catalogue for the previous ten weeks, originally to prepare myself for Brian Wilson, but there'd just been so much stuff that I was still at it. I also watched five episodes of Hancock's Half Hour beforehand which put me in a suitably retro mood. The highlight of the day though was the brilliant news of The Stone Roses reunion. I'd been eagerly awaiting the press conference at 3pm but then couldn't find anywhere online or on the 24 hour so-called news channels showing the coverage. It made a complete mockery of this idea of "instant communication" which the internet is supposed to provide us with, and ridiculously I only found out the news when their Wikipedia entry was updated. BBC News 24 eventually gave a cursory update but perhaps this is why Twitter is so popular, as no other site seemed to provide the "immediate" update I was looking for? Surprisingly the reunion wasn't mentioned by Miles tonight, although I'd had thought he'd had been delighted, but it certainly put this show in perspective, and the delirium of getting tickets on Friday morning was something that exceeded a lot of gigs themselves, including this one. I just hope that they actually get it together, as the last time I was so excited was when I got tickets for Michael Jackson, which didn't go quite as I'd hoped.
I headed into Wolverhampton at around 6pm as I wanted to return a library book but found the building was randomly closed. Unfortunately my psychic powers had failed to anticipate that they'd be doing maintenance work - not that I saw any workmen around - and their website hadn't given it a mention either. As I had no chance to go home and ferrying a book around with me all night was completely impractical I had little choice but to put it through a nearby letterbox and hope for the best, but I left with a clear conscience as it was the library's fault and surely I wasn't the only person to face this dilemma? I decided to stick in Wolves for tea and headed to Wetherspoons to find that it was steak night yet again. Gigs are regularly on Tuesdays for some reason so this works out very nicely for me. I ordered a pint of Brains Dark which was a lovely surprise and was included with my large mixed grill, but also got a Budvar so I wouldn't run out of drink before finishing the food. I'd half-expected to be interrogated about my order but in a pleasant surprise they just let me order the two drinks, and it saved me from having to join the bar queue twice as well. And I got all this for just £10.39, so this was a decent warm-up to the show. I then purchased a single ticket to get me into Birmingham knowing I had another ticket I could utilise for the return journey. The train was supposed to go to Plymouth but decided to terminate at New Street for apparently no reason, which didn't directly affect me but it's a useful reminder of why I must pro-actively claim compensation whenever I can for the continual poor service I receive. Just one of these days I know I'm going to get stranded in town after a show and I have a feeling that British Rail won't offer to pay my extortionate taxi fare home!
I grabbed a Galaxy Smooth Chocolate McFlurry first and they actually got my order right, which was surprising because the last time I was in Birmingham they sold me the wrong train ticket, McFlurry and cinema ticket, which in fact were the only three things I was buying, but I did spot their errors before it was too late. It's negative experiences like that which have given me such a deep-seated hatred of Birmingham. I had been pretty much been forced to get used to it as decent bands simply don't seem to play Wolverhampton anymore and my last show in the great city had been Kasabian over two years previously. The only thing I don't like about Wolverhampton is the large number of hobos who harass you as you approach the city, but if they got rid of them it would be perfect. The doors had opened at 7pm and the show was at the HMV Institute, which I was only vaguely aware of as I hadn't spotted any decent bands playing there before, and I wasn't even sure how long it had been open for. I'd researched the directions beforehand and, in a pleasant surprise, Google Maps didn't let me down. It was the #1 thing that could have gone wrong and it would have been a pain, to put it mildly, to have got there and being unable to find the venue. In fact the route took me on a walk through a much nicer part of Birmingham than I have to traverse to get to the Academy, taking me past the back of the Bullring and its church, and a square which had been dug up, presumably in order to build something to block the view of the church. Interestingly there were even some attempts to cultivate a bit of a cafe culture in the city with a few outdoor seating areas near the Bullring, but they close far too early and fail to focus on good beer like they would do in Belgium. Once I got to the venue after a nice, easy walk I was surprised to find that there were two queues outside even though the doors had been open for a while. I got in reasonably fast just after a bouncer had amusingly removed a hobo who was trying to harass everyone outside.
I realised that in fact Miles Kane had been upgraded to the larger room and that WU LYF were playing upstairs, which is a surprise as this was two "big name" acts playing a relatively small venue on the same night. In fact this was possibly the only night of the tour which hadn't sold out many weeks in advance, but judging from the size of the crowd it must have sold out in the end. There was what appeared to be a library on the ground floor and two flights of stairs led us up to the main entrance where we had to show our tickets again to get inside. I believe that the balcony entrance and the other room were up the next flight of stairs and the utterly disgusting toilets were outside the room, which is always a negative as I don't like having to go in and out. I headed inside but it was very busy as the entrance was slightly off-centre so everyone was crowding around it, plus the room seemed bloody busy too. I wish more venues would copy the Civic in having an open floor plan where you could easily get inside and find somewhere to stand, but in fact it was a pretty nice room with a large balcony area where everyone was pretty close to the stage. I gradually edged my way forwards thanks to the morons who were leaving before the main act and found a comfortable position where people weren't trying to get past me every five seconds. The Miles Kane logo was already up and the support band Folks took to the stage to play a bloody loud slot. I think they went down reasonably well but it was hard to tell due to the volume, which was equally high for Miles Kane. In fact I think that my ears were absolutely fine afterwards and I damaged them more by listening to I Wanna Be Adored very loudly on the way home on my iPod! One of the group was wearing a Folks t-shirt so I'd presumed that they were fans of the band rather than the band themselves, and the singer asked us to shout out for Miles Kane and then said we weren't loud enough so asked us to do it again. How many times must I tick off a support band for shamelessly name-checking the main act? And they made it worse for themselves by then doing it all over again. Despite the fact that I'm writing this up just six days later I'm afraid I can remember almost nothing about their songs besides the fact that they were loud and long and that another guy sung a bit, so I'll swiftly move on.
The DJ had come up with the revolutionary idea of playing some decent songs before the main event and kicked off the good music with Wreckin' Bar (Ra Ra Ra) by The Vaccines. Along with Miles Kane they're probably the most exciting "new" hopes of 2011 which made me proud of the fact I'd seen them both within the year, but I do wonder how much I've missed out on by not attending a summer festival, or if things really are that thin on the ground? The crowd were certainly much younger than I and judging by their reaction they considered The Vaccines to be very exciting too. This was followed by (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction before Processed Beats, which I immediately recognised as a Kasabian song but I was surprised that the crowd went mental to it as if it were Fire. I've always seen it as a fairly minor song of theirs but was surprised to note that it's actually from their debut album. Scorpio Rising by Death In Vegas was less appreciated by the masses before the decent run of tracks ended with eternal crowd-pleaser 20th Century Boy by T-Rex. I'm always frustrated when somebody plays one of "my" songs and everyone goes crazy, as it just goes to show that they should just play good tunes all the time! The worst example is Radio 1 fuckwit Chris Moyles who occasionally plays something decent and then acts as if he's given us an amazing treat and reads out hundreds of messages from people who loved the great song. If he and his audience like good music then why not just play it all the time rather than interspersing it with shite? The crowd were chanting "Miles" and there was a pretty excitable and downright rowdy atmosphere with some tossers throwing beer cups into the air, but thankfully not on me. Miles gave a few slightly disapproving looks, but I got the impression that as long as they didn't hit him he didn't particularly mind.
The lights went down and Miles Kane bounded onstage to play Better Left Invisible, which was a fitting opener. I've always been interested in how live sets differ from "greatest hits" sets, but as far as I'm concerned they should be near-identical, although perhaps some of the hits should be saved for later in a live set? I do certainly understand why Miles wouldn't want to go onstage with Come Closer and that he wanted to save it for the finale. He seemed genuinely thrilled by the turn-out and the enthusiasm of everyone, and generally much more pumped up and jubilant than you may expect. It also may well have been a dress down day for him, as Miles wasn't in the full suit as expected, and the way he looked at us was as if it was the largest crowd he'd ever played in front of. I'd always pictured him being suave and laid back onstage but it was easy to get sucked in by his enthusiasm and you could tell that he was enjoying himself. The set-up was very simple, with just some lights and a black backdrop along with the aforementioned minimalist logo, so the emphasis was very firmly on the tunes, which is understandable but is always tricky when you've only got the one album to choose from. Counting Down The Days was a decent second song, before Rearrange which was the first hit. However, as I stated above, I'd just been pounding the album relentlessly and all the tunes rolled into one, which is the problem when you end up hearing the b-sides as many times as the hits. There were four other members in his band including a Noel Gallagher lookalike on guitar but the group basically blended into the background and left Miles to bask in the limelight by himself. In fact he played every single song from his album plus four other cuts - Before It's Midnight, which is a b-side, newbie Woman's Touch, a Jacques Dutronc cover called the The Responsible, plus one more I'll mention again later. And, no, I have no idea who Jacques Dutronc is either!
Quicksand was particularly excellent and led to quite a sing-along, which should be no surprise considering that it was co-written with Gruff Rhys! Also it may have been during My Fantasy when a couple of wankers to the right of the stage decided to have a fight, which led to Miles stopping the song and waiting for them to break it up before continuing. It was a lovely moment when everybody pointed in their general direction and chanted "wankers" until they stopped fighting and Miles restarted the song, not that I could see what they were doing from where I was standing. Strangely enough I don't think that they were ejected, which is pretty unforgivable of the bouncers who were busily harassing those who were enjoying themselves. They ordered a few people standing on each others shoulders to come down before spotting that there were more people in the balconies standing up and having fun so decided to head up there and order everyone to sit down. Quite a few of us down below were following all of this, as eventually the bouncers pretty much had to give up as everyone wanted to stand up for the finale, but they should be ashamed of themselves for not doing anything about a fight because they were so caught up in disrupting the fun of the masses. In their defence though I suppose if anyone had wanted to stand that badly maybe they should have purchased a standing ticket? The aforementioned cover version turned out to be an exciting rendition of Hey Bulldog by The Beatles, although I had difficulty recognising it until I heard the title phrase. I was thinking it was something off The White Album, Abbey Road or by Lennon solo but just wasn't able to place it. This was then followed with Come Closer which went down very well as it's clearly his best song and it was enhanced by a nifty false ending and reprise which was the best part of the whole evening.
Miles then left the stage as everyone except me screamed for his return. I just couldn't see what else he had left to play so didn't see any point, as it was hardly as if Alex Turner was going to show up to have a romp through Mardy Bum! It turned out though that I'd forgotten all about Inhaler so an encore was fully justified, although the excessively crazed crowd reaction slightly less so. The truth is that Come Closer is comfortably his best song so it wasn't right that Inhaler went down so much better, but in fact I even spotted a crowdsurfer! Also nearly everyone around me started moshing but my concern for my glasses plus the principle that it wasn't his best tune prevented my participation. However this was most uncharacteristic behaviour from a Brummie crowd so I'm not quite sure what was going on! It turned out to be just the one song encore which is understandable as there was little else left to play. It had been a fairly early finish and I was tempted to have another pint but decided to be more constructive and spent the 20 minute wait for the train drafting this review on my phone until its battery pretty much ran out. Also I got a Coke from a takeaway on the way back but I had to ask the moron behind the counter twice to get my change! Once I got back I just went online and had another look for The Stone Roses press conference but to no avail, but as I didn't have to go to work the next day I was able to chill out a bit. I hadn't expected this to be the best show ever and it definitely was the weakest one of my 2011, but Miles Kane was as good as I'd expected, and it could be interesting to go back in five years time once he's written some more tunes and give him another chance.
Mark: 7.0/10
Miles Kane
Support
Folks
Where
Birmingham HMV Institute
When
18th October 2011
Price
£11.50
Who with
No-one
Position
Towards the back
Comments
I first got into Miles Kane through The Last Shadow Puppets, obviously, and it's interesting to now note that their style is much closer to Miles Kane's than Alex Turner's, albeit sharpened up by Alex's sheer talent. I was then drawn to his solo album largely because I'd heard Gruff Rhys was heavily involved, although I've yet to notice any of his backing vocals. I had originally planned to just download it but eventually decided it would be easier just to purchase it. Miles Kane is definitely a kindred spirit as his first ever gig was Super Furry Animals too and he has an impeccable sense of style and music. As for his talent, he definitely has some but unfortunately I don't think his music can ever live up to the awesome bands he worships, which is probably why he feels the need to collaborate so strongly. Maybe he just needs to join a band with the right unknown person who he can work well with, and he may even take over the world if he gets it right? This show had been announced many, many months in advance but initially I wasn't interested. I decided to just go for it though in a splurge of gig purchase alongside Manic Street Preachers, Half Man Half Biscuit and The Bluetones, figuring that I may regret it one day if I didn't go along. I heard the album over and over again in an attempt to really get into it before the show. In fact I'm starting to think that this isn't the best approach as it's really "forcing it" and ultimately makes the songs kinda roll into one. Also I often don't feel like listening to the songs once the show has passed as I'd heard them so many times. I guess it's still better than the alternative of being ignorant of the tunes so I'll stick at it until I find a better way of doing things. All I can think of is not bothering to see these bands until I'm "ready", but then I'd end up missing out on some great concerts and would join the party late, and I always find seeing the live show can be the key mechanism to amplify my love of the band, so I guess I've just got to make that leap or give up on new music altogether.
Setlist
Better Left Invisible
Counting Down The Days
Rearrange
Before It's Midnight
Kingcrawler
Happenstance
Take The Night From Me
Quicksand
The Responsible
My Fantasy
Colour Of The Trap
Telepathy
Woman's Touch
Hey Bulldog
Come Closer
Inhaler
