The Mighty Tones!

Well, what can i say about The Undertones?... Maybe that they are THE GREATEST BAND THAT EVER LIVED! I simply will not be able to put into words how much i love these guys!

Yes, they are an older generation band but to me that only makes them that much better. I hate saying that our generation has no hope when it comes to music, people now days think that the likes of N-Dubz and Jessie J and Maroon 5 are the way forward, and if thats true, then please i wish to die NOW.

What happened to the people who could actually play instruments and write their own songs that were actually decent. Yes there are those that are still great today and i can only hope that they will prevail over all this 'POP' shizz cause it really is just dire, but anyway i must stop this rant now or i will ramble on for 10 pages about how shit the music is today.

Back to The Undertones, My all time Favourite band, EVER! So far i have seen them 9 times and i do hope to see them many more, however, now that im off to NZ it wont be an easy task, unless they come to me (i can only hope).

1. Shepherds Bush Empire - 13 October 2007 (London - UK)
2. Dingwalls - 22 September 2008 (London - UK)
3. Nerve Centre - 14 September 2009 (Derry - N.I)
4. King Tuts Wah Wah Hut - 27 February 2010 (Glasgow - Scotland)
5. 229 Club - 2 April 2010 (London - UK)
6. King Tuts Wah Wah Hut - 31 March 2011 (Glasgow - Scotland)
7. o2 Academy - 1 April 2011 (Birmingham - UK)
8. Powers Bar - 17 June 2011 (London - UK)
9. The Cockpit - 9th December (Leeds - UK)

All 9 of these gigs have been absolutely EPIC, but now, im going to Rank them in order of EPICNESS!

1. - 4
2. - 9
3. - 6
4. - 2
5. - 8
6. - 3
7. - 1
8. - 7
9. - 5

Not to say that 9 wasn't great, because it was, they all were.

I will post you a link to my YouTube page where i have posted Many a video from Undertones Gigs :)

http://www.youtube.com/user/amycfc1991?feature=mhee

So, im going to go ahead and guess that not many of you will know who the undertones are, but you should cause they are amazing. Anyway The Undertones formed back in 1975 with the members including;

Feargal Sharkey - Lead Vocals

John O'Neill - Guitar

Damian O'Neill - Guitar and Vocals

Michael Bradley - Bass and Vocals

Billy Doherty - Drums

From there they played up until 1983 where the band separated and went their separate ways. Then in 1999 the best thing to ever happen in music happened, The Undertones Reformed with only one difference Feargal Sharkey was no longer with the band as he had different ideas about what direction he wanted his music to take. Instead Paul Macloon joined the band as Lead Singer, and this is the man who i have seen at the front of the stage every time i have been to see them. I would have liked to have seen the undertones perform with Feargal Sharkey just because he was an original but im perfectly happy with the way they are :).

So that was a brief history of the undertones, one of the best punk bands ever:)

i literally cant find any words to describe how great they are so im going to stop and let you discover them for yourself, otherwise i will just ramble on and on and that wont be interesting to anyone, if anyone does in fact read this thing....

BYE BYE :) xx

SetList

Here is the setlist from, Saturday's gig :)


Blow It Up
Wreckin' Bar
Tiger Blood
A Lack of Understanding
Wetsuit
Teenage Icon (New song)
Under Your Thumb
Post Break-Up Sex
All In White
Wolf Pack
No Hope (New Song)
If You Wanna
Family Friend

Encore:
We're Happening
Norgaard

Here are a few photos from the evening :)

The vaccines you shouldn't be afraid of...

So I'm here today to tell you of a recent experience of mine, and yes, it does involve seeing another band live.

To me their is no greater feeling on earth than the one I get whilst watching a great band play great music live.

3/12/2011 Marks the date of the day I was getting to see one of my favourite bands play live, not for rather first time but for the third, but this time was different, as the previous two times I have witnessed their magic were both at music festivals, so although both shows we're amazing experiences for me, they obviously weren't quite as intimate as I would like. Not intimate in the sense of the size of the venue, although I do tend to prefer a smaller place, but more so in the sense that everyone is there for the same reason as you and everyone is able to feed off of each others excitement because you all feel the same and you are aware of what's to come.

so after spending some of the afternoon walking around Cambridge city centre, waiting for the time when we could check in our hotel, two o'clock finally came around and we headed to our room for some last minuets of RnR, and unbeknown to us we would come to appreciate this much needed rest.

So along came 4 o'clock and we decided to head off into the town centre as it was quite a walk. it took us maybe just over an hour to get into town and by this time we were starting to get a bit peckish so we went into pizza hut to enjoy a nice filling pizza.
After leaving Pizza Hut we felt we deserved a nice alcoholic beverage so we went to the local weatherspoons, where I had the best drink ever, Jeremiah Weed, or Jezza Wezza as I like to call it, and my father indulged in a nice refreshing beer. As it started to get more busy in the pub, being a Saturday night, we headed of towards the venue,nowhere before making our way in we stopped at other pub just round the corner where we were charged extortionate amounts for two drinks so we promptly decided one round was enough.

They were letting people in! so we headed into the venue, handing our tickets over to the inspector to be checked they were quickly handed back to us and put in a safe place to be pinned up on the wall at home with the rest of my music memories. After waiting and waiting and more waiting the first support band finally came on and they were ok but everyone knows, including they band themselves who were joking about like as if anyone would be interested in actually buying their E.P, are just there to warm the crowd up a little bit and get the adrenaline pumping. They were a decent band but as the night goes on you soon realise they have a lot of learning to do before they are headlining their own gig. The second support band, Frankie and the Heartstrings were a much more experienced band than the first as one could tell in they way they connected with the crowd and the general presence about them. Before these guys came on to play, we were a little confused as to whether their actually was two support bands or not due to the fact that there was a half an hour gap in between the two bands, which to us, seemed like too long a gap, but it makes perfect sense because The Vaccines themselves only have one album out and so have to fill the time before they play.

As Frankie and the Heartstrings left the stage after a pretty decent performance the anticipation and excitement swirling the room reached an all time high as everyone on the room couldn't wait much longer. Heckles were being thrown at the empty stage left right and centre, albeit a pointless activity as the band will come on at the scheduled time and not at the request of the fans, but people just couldn't hold it in any more. The songs the were playing to the crowd got louder as the time drew closer and the song the played before the came out happened to be a song by my favourite band The Undertones, with a classic everyone has heard, teenage kicks. So after singling along to that they played the intro to The Ramones ( another classic band) rock and roll high school, which only happened to be The intro they used to come on stage to, so as the stage flashed a brilliant blue reaching across the whole of the backdrop the screams started and the cheering and clapping was deafening as after a looooooong wait The Vaccines FINALLY walked on stage.

Song after song, even the new ones not many people had heard before, was welcomed by every person in the Cambridge corn exchange with smiles n thief faces and words pouring from their hearts. The most popular songs, If you wanna,most break up sex and Noorgard proved to be the most energetic as mostly everyone in the room goes absolutely fucking mental, and its absolutely fantastic to be able to be involved in something as simple as that. The thing I love about The Vaccines is that they all seem to be down to earth guys who do realise how lucky they are to have been able to get to where they are so quickly, I mean who knows, maybe if they left a week later things would be completely different. Arni (bass player) amazes me whenever I see him play life because he always just stands quite still looking out at the crowd in what comes across to me as amazement and awe, which pleases me some because he may be realising how lucky he is to ne apart of something so unique. I love watching the chemistry between Freddie and Justin when they are on stage together, they completely gel and seem to bounce off of each others energies, and when they aren't embracing in a hug or playing closely together, Freddie is seen to be bounding about the stage playing his guitar flawlessly and Justin is leading the pack with his amazing voice and amazing lyrics. Pete, like any drummer, doesn't have to chance to jump around the stage like everyone else in the band, and so he has to prove how well he can play from that spot at the back, ad he sure does this, his drumming complements off the other threes guitars and vies versa. The sound they create together is such a unique sound that when people ask me to put them into a genre I really really struggle because it's just a complete mixture of different styles and not everyone could pull that off as well as they do, they range from 50's style rock and roll to 70's punk and everything in between. at the end of the gig and the encore they all bowed graciously at the front edge of the stage and exit stage left to an array of cheers, claps and whistles.

So to sum it all up it was an amazing night and an experience I will always remember.