Good Friday with Hippy Van, Phish Tacko, and Captain Backfire at Bar Vida

Hippy Van open the evening with an extremely short set cut short due to technical difficulties (breaking their synth). The three songs they do play however sound fairly strong despite it being hard to tell weather the singer is singing or eating the microphone. Their only young and with a bit more experience (and luck) might turn out to be a decent listen.
Phish Tacko follow and the crowd starts to pick up as they cruse through a tight set made up of Indie covers and their own material, all of which is tight and well rehearsed. They know exactly where the other band members are going and move effortlessly through the songs whilst still giving enough to the crowd to get a reaction.
After a quick change around, not even enough time to buy a drink, Captain Backfire take to the stage. They kick off with the vocal intro to ‘Good Friday’, the crowd (mainly their friends) singing straight from the off, before launching into their ‘Aint No Sunshine/Jam’ intro and ‘Blue Room’. Its easy to see at this early stage the band are up for tonight and are feeding of the audience, the performance is at a level I haven’t seen from them for a long time. The John Mayor cover ‘Good Love’ followed with the audience joining in the choruses, and then straight into their latest song. This shows how far the band have come in the year they’ve been together, the music is tight and they play for the most part at least facing the audience, a massive achievement considering that this is the first time the whole band have played this together. Proceedings are then slowed briefly with ‘Adaptations’ which whilst slower doesn’t kill the atmosphere, whilst showing the writing skills of the band and lining them up for new cover (again unplayed as a whole band) J.K’s ‘Canned Heat’ this is again fairly tight and gets the crowd back to singing and dancing. Lead singer Joe then announces, ‘As it’s Good Friday… well go on then’, the band launch into the song of the same name and are rewarded with a small but highly energetic pit erupting in front of them. After prompting the first line they don’t need to or indeed bother to sing the choruses, they wouldn’t be heard for the audience singing back to them anyway. They end on ‘I’ll Be Waiting’ which again gets an excellent response singing and dancing from the audience. The last two songs being their best known gives the night ending it deserves. By the end of the song members of the audience are on stage congratulating the band.
The energy level kept up throughout the night is outstanding and its easy to see everyone has enjoyed themselves.
Well done to Joe and Ray who between them got an out standing sound from the skeleton of equipment available too them.
If you missed this you must be either deaf (in which case well let you off), or stupid.

Stiff Little Fingers - Leeds Met - 6.3.08

The opening notes to ‘Go For It’ ring out the crowd starts to sing along to this instrumental song and the last stragglers rush in from the bar. Minutes later Stiff Little Fingers take to the stageopening with ‘(It’s a) Long Way To Paradise (From Here)’ whilst at the front of the stage the crowd go wild, and continue to do so for the first three songs which are played without a break. The sound quality is unbelievable and the bands enthusiasm and energy is amazing, despite lead singer Jake Burns having turned 50 two weeks ago. This band have been going for 30 years and its obvious to see, they know the songs inside out and pick a set which includes all of the crowd pleasers and the songs they enjoy the most.
Part way through the set they pause for Jake to tell us about when The Specials used to play the next song ‘Doesn’t Make It Alright’ and people used to tell them it was ‘great they played that Stiff Little Fingers cover’ (it was The Specials originally for those who don’t know). The crowd then breaks down into a strange mixture of pogoing and skanking for different parts of the song, the band look as if they love it. ‘Barbed Wire Love’ also provides a great moment when the slow bridge of the song sees the crowd stop jumping around and raise their lighters in the air and start waving their arms, moving seamlessly to going wild when the song kicks back in again.
The first part of the set comes to a close and the band leaves the stage to cries of ‘Oh lay, Oh lay, Oh lay, Fingers, Fingers’. They return and engage in the mammoth ‘Johnny Was’ with the whole room singing.Having now seen this band for the last three years running its obvious why they are still going and that they are most defiantly ‘Still Burning’!

Jimmy Eat World – The Roundhouse London 3rd March 08

Anxious fans gather in front of the stage, hoping that Jimmy Eat World will be better then the support band who have just left the stage after playing 34 minutes of uninspiring synthesizer ‘rock’ which lacked any punch and didn’t even involve a bass guitar player. Trust me if you missed them you really were better of then those who stood through them.

Anyway…The lights go down and J.E.W take to the stage launching into the first song, the crowd go wild… well for 20 seconds or so and then they just stand looking at the stage doing very little, a process repeated for most of the night. J.E.W however play extremely well and deserve more of a reaction. The size of the room also means that you can practically see the whites of their eyes and it’s clear to see that this extra date on the end of the tour was not too much for the band who are clearly enjoying themselves. When they role out songs from the Bleed America (Salt, Sweat, Sugar) album the place goes wild and they become the exceptions to what was said above. The crowd are singing and dancing, the bands energy and performance level rise and its plain the see that these are the audience pleasers. The new material was also strong and a song apparently un-played for years ‘Just Tonight’ is also one of the better tracks.
I got the impression that most people in attendance were old fans who had waited along time to see the Bleed America (Salt, Sweat, Sugar) album played (I’m told this is the bands first UK tour in about 5 years) and this theory seemed to be proved when, closer ‘If You Don’t, Don’t’ seems to have everyone in the building is singing, and the band left triumphant.
In the latter part of the set Jim Adkins announces that they will be playing at ‘Download’ metal festival held annually at Donington Park, claming to be scared because people look shocked whenever he tells them. He then launches into a stereotype chugging metal riff joking ‘We’ll be fine, we can do that for 40 minutes easy.’

For a band I only really went to see because Rob my mate has wanted to see them since collage, not to say that I didn’t want to go. I was impressed and would defiantly see them again and recommend that if you ever get chance go. They are playing Download remember.