Darkness Music Passport review

If you are Clare's brother and you're still smarting that we went to The Cure on Friday, then please turn away now... gone? Right, we also went to see The Darkness last night, doing another Music Passport show, and probably it was the highlight of the week....



That's about the best picture I took there, there are more pics from the gig at barflydarkness.ploggle.com... I got about 30 seconds of footage of the band for some reason playing Wham's "Last Christmas", wish I'd caught more of it, and I wish I could figure out how to play it back... it's saved as a .avi, but windows media player will only play the sound. Sure I've seen them do that before, it might well have been at the Christmas Uncle Bob's Wedding Reception gig.



Bit of a short set we thought, and while not exactly plagued by technical problems, Frankie seemed to be having a few difficulties, there certainly seemed to be a black cloud over in the bass corner. Justin seemed to be enjoying it all, the banter was there in force, and he even found time for an impromptu walkabout in the crowd. Dan was playing with more aggression and vigour than I've noticed for a while, possibly it's just that it was closer quarters than we've had for a while. This was the bands REAL homecoming show, this must be at least the tenth time they've played the Barfly, and the capacity crowd loved them. If through the medium of this review, you feel you were actually there, I expect there's still a way for you to give some money on musicpassport.org, dig deep, we want this back next year.



A few more points just to add colour, without actually blending them into a professional review; We were stood next to Justin and Dan's parents, Mrs Hawkins enthusiastically joining in the swearing in "Get Your Hands Off My Woman". Nice to hear the NME being slated, I think something must have distracted me and I missed the "Thanks to Pauly for being there from the start". No celebs in attendance, but there were a few high profile journalists. Not The Fly editor though, who missed it through a nasty accident, get well soon mate!



Also as part of the same charity affair, I saw the Pet Shop Boys on Saturday night, no idea what they were like, I got really squiffy. I know sort of how I got home though, because I took photos all the way, of me, of a burst drain, of pubs I passed, I still haven't plotted out the route I must have taken.



No more gigs now for ages, we've seen it all.

pauly :: 2004 :: Comment / reply