All in All

I am shocked to read that the Astoria, concert venue in central London and home to G-A-Y is under risk of closing and conversion to shops and overpriced flats.

In my clubbing days I used I had many a good night there, and although not perfect, it is one of my more favourite gig venues in London, and I have seen some great shows there. I was at the very show where this photo of the Dirty Three was taken (see November 2005's blog entry, the Dirty Three sank like lead balloons to an audience of unappreciating berks).

I do not want to see the venue shut, there has been too much of this in this part of London already - my favourite comic shop was forced to close through rising rents a couple of months ago and I understand sleazy bar CXR will follow before the year is out. Thank heavens there are people who care enough to try to do something about it. Read about it here http://www.savetheastoria.org/home.html

Of course, for this to be real and worth it, the concert would need to go on until at least 1am, but for this line up I would happily pay for an overpriced dodgy minicab home.

A big hands up to Mac and Popjustice.com for bringing the ticket generating site to my attention. Boadwee, what will your gig be?

I went to see Franz Ferdinand last night and I feel the need to discuss them.

I remember the first time I saw them, at the ICA doing their first London gig. Darts of pleasure had just come out and was doing nothing in the charts, I don’t think it was sold out. However, they were fantastic. Each song instantly memorable, great stage presence. One to watch, as the phrase has it.

After that we saw them at the Domino Records show night, and then they supported Belle and Sebastian at the Astoria. They were working hard, touring, supporting bigger bands (the Belle and Sebastian fans largely ignored them. Ironic as I would put money on the majority of that audience being rabid FF fans six months later chanting along to ‘Take Me Out’). ‘Take me Out’ was released and they took off. Still touring and working hard at building up a fanbase I was really genuinely pleased for them.

Unfortunately, the fanbase that had developed has been a loudmouthed laddish one. The next time we saw them, at the Coronet and the Astoria (yes, we followed them everywhere) the enthusiastic crowd consisted largely of drunken alpha males shouting along to ‘Take Me Out’, loving ‘Matinee’, hating ‘Michael’ because it was gay and ignoring ‘Darts of Pleasure’ as they never realised it was a single. Oh, and chatting through every other song because they didn’t recognise them as they only play the singles.

About this time, Boadwee in San Francisco befriended Nick from FF, obsessed about the band, and caused a slight rift by upsetting Alex and Bob. That’s Boadwee for you, but hats off to Nick for not dropping Boadwee for the sake of the band.

They’ve won awards, Alex has written a food column for the Guardian, they passed the “difficult second album” stage well, and having recently met Nick myself recently, I can genuinely say that he is a charming generous, and absolute lovely fellow. They’ve set a template for new bands and you just have to watch Kaiser Chiefs to see how much they are modelling their career on FF (but without putting half the effort in. I am very bored with the Kaisers but that’s a blog for another day)

Again, last night they were great live and although I feel that the third album will be the tester (will they go the Oasis direction of churning out more of the same again but each new release more and more boring, or the Blur direction of change and experimentation?), I really respect and admire them. However, when you see the audience they have attracted now, I can’t help wishing for a return of the ICA days: respectful audience, a little arty, etc. Frankly 90% of last night’s crowd were boozed up blokes shouting along to ‘Take Me Out’ and the rest of the singles (except Darts of pleasure, of course. You’d have thought that they would have noticed it’s their set closer for every gig and bothered to listen to it occasionally), talking through any track that wasn’t a single, and generally being the sort of audience I hate.
I do love FF but their average audience these days is putting me off from seeing them live again.