Pre 2014, the last shows Jamie T played were way back in 2010. He took some time out with throat problems but he certainly hasn’t been sat back all that time, finally making a return with his new album ‘Carry on The Grudge’.
Despite his popularity and sold out crowd there were no diva antics here. Jamie came on stage at bang on 9pm rocking his signature ‘flat peak’ cap and kicking off the set with new album opener ‘Limits lie’. It was clear he is back and ready to give it his all.
He then played comeback single ‘Don’t You Find’, followed by a number of others from the new album such as ‘The Prophet and ‘They Told me it Rained’.
Working in chunks from each album, he seemed to know exactly what the crowd wanted. Old and new fans alike will have been pleased with the mix amongst this 21 song set.
At most gigs there are the extra loud screams when you hear the intro to a particular song, but you literally couldn’t differentiate between new and old songs. The singing was equally as loud and despite doubts about his music being too different, they all got a great reception.
Despite his new songs undeniably including more singing than rapping, it is not to say he has ditched his old songs, with fan favourites in the set such as ‘Back in the Game’ and ‘So Lonely was the Ballad’.
He ended the main set on ‘If you got the Money’, and the crowd certainly weren’t holding back. Being stood towards the side meant that we could narrowly avoid the mosh pits and possibility of a kick in the face from crowd surfers – but it was certainly making the security at the front increasingly on edge.
Jamie then shocked the audience with a performance of Sheila for the encore, a definite highlight of the night as he hadn’t played it at any of the previous shows. Followed by latest single ‘Zombie’ and ending on ‘Sticks ‘n’ Stones’, it was safe to say that the audience were impressed.
Who would have thought that when I saw this band supporting Paramore and New Found Glory a whole SIX years ago, that I would end up seeing them again now and sadly, for the final time.
I turned up to Corp, (which I should mention, seemed surprisingly less disgusting with a good band playing) to find a packed out venue of all ages, with the nostalgia of people’s teenage years arguably leading them to come and see these guys play one last time.
Opening with Artbreaker I – I was reminded straight away how great Kids in Glass Houses are live. Aled is one of the lucky few musicians that sound equally as good when performing live- if not better!
Three songs in was when the audience really livened up however, screaming back the words to: ‘Give me what I want’, the bands second single from 2008.
Aled toyed with the crowds emotions throughout the evening, shouting out – “Has anyone seen us live before!?” which had the majority of the audience screaming in agreement, only to follow it up with “well you won’t be seeing us again…” oh.
The setlist they played was perfect, with a mixture of songs which included their duet with Frankie Sandford: ‘Undercover Lover’, and ‘Easy Tiger’. Admittedly I hadn’t listened to their most recent album very much, really wanting to go and see the band whose music I fell in love with all those years ago, so I was pleased.
Slowing things down after ‘Raise Hell’ the band went into The morning Afterlife, resulting in a beautiful sing-a-long.
Kicking off their four song encore with ‘Peace’ – a track from their latest album, KIGH soon went back to their roots and sent the crowd wild with their performance of ‘Saturday,’ and ended the show on ‘Matters At All’, making sure to thank their fans and wishing them a (repeated) goodnight for the very last time.
It was only when I was browsing through last years Leeds Festival lineup that I thought to myself, why have I never listened to Frank Turner? So I checked out his albums on Spotify and soon enough I was hooked.
Following a brilliant set at Leeds, he soon announced his next UK tour so without a second thought I brought two tickets for myself and whoever agreed to come along with me.
So now, 6 months on, I can safely say he did not disappoint. Myself along with newly converted Frank Turner fan – my dad, arrived at the Nottingham Capital FM arena at around 7pm and it was filling up quickly with a mixture of young and old faces and him certainly not feeling out of place.
While it’s not like me to stay out of the crowd, my dad didn’t fancy pushing to the front and I couldn’t see a thing at the back. So we waited until the end of the first song and ran up to sit in 2 of the rare free seats. Thankfully the owners of these seats didn’t question us, just looked confused when they arrived 5 songs in and sat a couple of rows behind… (should have arrived on time shouldn’t ya) so from then on we had a brilliant view.
Frank kicked off his set with the energetic Photosynthesis; a great choice to set the atmosphere for the evening with the whole arena letting loose and joining in to sing “And I won’t sit down, And I won’t shut up, And most of all I will not grow up” and from then on it simply got better and better.
Frank and his band The Sleeping Souls went on to play a 90 minute set of a variety of songs from his five albums. He performed a large chunk of his most recent LP ‘Tape Deck Heart’ with standout tracks being Plain Sailing Weather, The Way I Tend To Be and Losing Days, alongside a mixture from older albums such as clear crowd favourite If Ever I Stray.
He proudly stated halfway through the gig that it was his second biggest headline show ever, and despite having faced criticism for playing arenas he hit back via twitter with a witty “We’ve sold five rock cities of tickets for tonight. Seems more important to me that people can get in to the show.” So you go Frank, because I certainly would have been gutted had I missed out on this.
Regardless of the fact he is now selling out arenas, Frank clearly hasn’t forgotten about the fans that have been around since his days performing at the Rescue Rooms, as he treats them not only to older tracks such as I Still Believe but also lesser known songs (but no less brilliant) like Wisdom Teeth and The Ballad of Me and My Friends.
Towards the end of the set he challenged the crowd to what he described as “a crowd participation triathlon” which in other words was a combination of singing, clapping and jumping enough to beat the previous nights crowd, so for the duration of Recovery the whole room was bouncing. This was soon toned down a notch as he followed it with a passionate performance of Broken Piano, with the audience attentive as ever and holding on to every word.
Ending the show on a high, back to the stage he came for an encore of I Still Believe, followed by Four Simple Words; in my opinion the perfect song to end on, giving audiences the chance to participate in what may have began as a heartfelt singalong by tonight’s 10,000 strong crowd, but soon turned into their last song to go crazy to, with moshing down on the floor and a good boogie at the very least if you were up in the seats.
All in all, for a man who “didn’t really write these songs to be played in a room this size and shape,” he has certainly pulled it off and there’s nothing to suggest he won’t continue to do so for a very long time.
Okay so I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve been a McFly fan since they started out nearly 10 years ago. I’ve seen them live an uncountable number of times, and loved every minute. But I can safely say last night was the best fun I’ve ever had at a gig of theirs.
This was due to a number of factors. The fact I love their music, yes. The fact we were stood right at the front of the stage, definitely! And partially down to the vodka too I guess, which cost an extortionate price of £5.50, I repeat: FIVE POUNDS FIFTY. To our annoyance we also found that not once were our bags, or barely even our tickets checked once in the venue, so we could have sneakily brought our own drinks in for free.
But whatever, this was my view for the evening, so I certainly wasn’t complaining…
Being this close, we could have been conscious of the boys being able to see us singing our hearts out and dancing around like loons, but that didn’t stop us. And although we didn’t quite get dragged up on to the stage, or the marriage proposals that myself and Lottie were after, between us we did manage to get a plectrum plus Dougie’s water bottle. Well we stole that from the stage, cos THAT’S HOW CLOSE WE WERE.
So, I should get down to mentioning the gig itself. The tour was called ‘Memory Lane’, after the song from their 2005 album Wonderland, which is literally one of my ultimate favourite songs of theirs. And although at first I thought, oh yay another greatest hits tour, with this year being their 10th anniversary as a band it seems pretty fitting.
Support came from a band called ‘The Vamps‘, we didn’t manage to catch them as they were on quite early but I’ve been told they were good. From looking on their YouTube page I can see why they were chosen to support McFly, they’re young, alright looking and they’ve even done a mega cringey version of McFly’s song ‘That Girl’, amongst various other pop covers including One Direction and Taylor Swift.
McFly came on at an unusually early time of around 8.45, but maybe it came round quicker due to the nights ‘host’ Ant Brant (or as they called him ‘Mr Antastic’) keeping the audience entertained for a short while. I say entertained lightly, because sorry but he’s really not very funny. Now if anyone remembers the band V (around back in the early McFly days and sang ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears’, he was a member.
The show began with an acapella version of ‘Memory lane’, but soon enough the curtains dropped to reveal their impressive stage set up, the distinctive intro to ‘That Girl’ kicked in, and the whole place went nuts.
The set list all in all was great. On top of all of their greatest hits including ‘5 Colours In Her Hair’ and ‘Obviously’, they were sure to please their older fans by performing some album favourites that haven’t been played live for a long time. One of the best parts of the set for me was when they played my favourite 3 songs from the radio:ACTIVE album: ‘Corrupted’, ‘Nowhere Left To Run’ and ‘Lies’.
They then toned it down for a short while, with Tom putting down his guitar and moving over to the piano as they performed a brilliant stripped down version of ‘I’ll be OK’, followed by the ballad; ‘Bubblewrap’.
Not wanting to let their audience get bored, naturally after the band had performed ‘Smile’ we were greeted with Danny stopping the show to request various hats to be brought out for each member. Ant Brant returned to the stage, the sax players even stepped down to join the band, and they performed a cheerful medley of covers consisting of ‘It’s Alright’, ‘Don’t worry Be Happy’, and ‘Y.M.C.A’.
The show was soon to come to an end, with Tom announcing before they played the full version of ‘Memory Lane’ that it was their last song. For Dougie to then pick up his setlist and inform everyone that it wasn’t, it was in fact just the encore and that they would soon be returning to play three more. But in all fairness everybody knew that anyway, what band doesn’t do an encore?
Off they went for a minute or so, and as they came back and Tom picked up his pink ukulele we knew what song was coming next. After a good sing and dance to ‘Love Is Easy’ with it’s catchy chorus and ‘do do do do dooo’s’, it was time for ‘All About You’. They then went on to end their 1 hour 45 minute set with what was definitely the best and most heartfelt singalong of the night: ‘The Heart Never Lies’. All in all I couldn’t have enjoyed it more, and whatever your opinion is of bands like McFly, you really can’t deny their talent once you’ve seen them live. Even my dad would agree there, I only ever had to beg him once to accompany me in seeing them live (when I was 11) and he still happily came along again!
I took a few video’s, YouTube destroys the quality of them a fair bit, oh and sorry about our singing haha…
Some of you may have heard about Sheffield’s annual music festival Tramlines. It’s now in it’s fifth year, and for just £6 a day from the 19th – 21st July you can access around 70 venues across the city hosting 100’s of musicians from all genres.
There was some controversy over the festival charging at all, as it’s usually completely free but due to the council’s funding cuts of around £30 million overall, they had no choice but to charge a small amount in order for the festival to run.
After last year having the likes of Alt-J and We Are Scientists, the excitement is building for the locals of Sheffield to find out who they have lined up for 2013.
Today they have announced the first set of acts as you can see in the poster, and the rest of the lineup so far can be found here.
The lineup so far features Duke Dumont, who are currently in the charts at number 4 with their single with A.M.E, ‘Need U’, which 3 weeks ago entered the top 40 at number 1.
A lot of the acts are only just becoming known in the music scene so if you haven’t heard of many, it could be worth checking them out because this time last year that’s where Alt-J were; and now look at them.
So if you’re into the festival scene but your student budget isn’t allowing you to attend the likes of Glastonbury or Leeds, then get yourselves back to Sheffield for Tramlines. Half of the festival fun is about the drunken antics with your friends, so presuming you have your student accommodation for over the summer it’ll work out to be a fun and cheap way to do something different with your weekend, as well as discovering some new music.
To keep up to date with new announcements and ticket information, follow them on their twitter page: @tramlines.
Here’s another guide but this time I want to focus on the live music aspect of Sheffield’s nightlife. From a young age I’ve enjoyed going to gigs as often as possible but I’m finding this a lot harder now that I’m trying to live off a student budget. So I’ve written this to give you all an idea about the various live music venues you can visit and what type of thing you can expect to find there, with some being a lot cheaper and more accessible than if you’re used to just seeing bands at big arenas.
The Leadmill
The place where Sheffield’s most famous band began.
Yes the Arctic Monkeys started out by playing gigs to a few hundred people, and soon they became popular enough to have since played both the arena and stadium here in Sheffield. Leadmill is a fab venue for up and coming bands, but also some pretty well known ones such as Sheffield’s very own Reverend & The makers, The Pigeon Detectives and many more.
UP & COMING:
Bastille 19th March –
Check out my review of the gig here.
O2 Academy
I managed to see Professor Green for £5 here during freshers which was such a good night. The size is perfect, it has a brilliant atmosphere but is still small enough for you to be able to see from wherever you stand. Prices vary but the O2 quite often have well known guests at their Propaganda club night which means it’s the standard £4-5 entry and only £1 drinks.
UP & COMING:
Bowling for soup – 17th October 2013
Tom Odell – 30th October 2013
Sheffield City Hall
This venue is home to a variety of entertainment; from musicians to comedians. With a capacity of just over 2000, it’s small enough to feel involved but bigger than your average nightclub.
I will also be attending a McFly concert at the end of April so will later be telling you all about that! From front row may I add. (don’t laugh, I bet you’d all sing along if 5 colours in her hair came on.)
Check out my review here.
UP & COMING:
Leona Lewis 3rd May 2013
Bill Bailey 6th May 2013
The motorpoint arena accommodates up to 13000 people and is home to the bigger acts, having myself seen bands such as My Chemical Romance perform there in the past and they regularly host performances from the likes of Olly Murs, The Script and One Direction.
UP & COMING: One Direction – 13th + 14th April 2013 that’s this weekend, somebody come with me PLEASE? I‘m genuinely not joking…
Don Valley Stadium
Sadly, Sheffield’s biggest venue has been just this week announced as closing down. Often know as the training ground for Sheffield’s Jessica Ennis, it has also had it’s fair share of major musicians performing there such as (again) the Arctic Monkeys and hosted large events like Sheffield Hallam’s Party in the park.
West Street Live
Interested in finding out about some new musicians in the area? Or you are one yourself needing somewhere to play? West Street Live is your place. They are open every night and entry is FREE and they welcome local and national musicians of every genre. They also offer a variety of unique drinks from what I’ve heard at very good prices.
The Viper Rooms Similarly to West Street Live, The Viper Rooms offers big opportunities for small up & coming artists, mainly on a Wednesday when they have a variety of different performers each week, from catchy pop musicians to soulful songwriters.
Plug Plug isn’t just for the club nights, it also offers a wide range of live shows too. A few weeks back they had Chase & Status performing there and during freshers week I saw Sam & The Womp. (Who? I hear you ask, but you all remember that ‘Bom bom bom’ song…)
Over the Christmas holidays, I became familiar with a new band: Bastille. I noticed that they were playing at Leadmill in march and mentioned it to a friend who is a fan of theirs, but then made the school boy error of deciding to wait for our next loan installment before buying tickets, so you can imagine my disappointment when I went on the Leadmill website to find it had sold out. 😦
I was determined I was going to see them live though, so I kept checking back on the Leadmill website and was lucky enough to find that a few weeks ago there were suddenly two tickets available. Obviously I brought them without a second thought and this is my review of our time seeing them.
Just look at that beautiful face. If that’s not enough to make you want to see Bastille live though then seriously, go download the album because that should do it.
(Just want to add, that photo isn’t mine it’s from here.)
After listening to their debut album ‘Bad Blood’ on repeat constantly in the run up to their gig, I was even more excited. And they certainly didn’t disappoint.
This was the first time I’d been to Leadmill to see a live band, so it seemed really strange seeing it at full capacity, and with us barely able to fight our way through the crowd to get a decent view we definitely regretted not arriving earlier. Coming on stage to an excited and impatient crowd at around 9.30pm, Bastille began with their album’s title track Bad Blood, which called for a major sing along from the crowd and got everyone in the mood. They then went on to play nearly their entire album, plus those such as ‘Poet’ and ‘Sleepsong’ that older fans of the band will know.
My favourite song of theirs is probably ‘Things we lost in the flames’, it’s a ballad track from the album, and hearing it live literally gave me goosebumps. The lead singer Dan Smith, sounds equally as good live if not even better than on the album. ‘Overjoyed’ and ‘Oblivion’ were also amongst my favourites to be performed, with everyone singing along to every word.
They even surprised everyone with a brilliant cover of City High’s ‘What Would You Do?’, this was definitely one of the highlights as with so many of the crowd knowing the song and being clearly impressed at their choice of cover, the atmosphere was amazing.
Unfortunately my camera has been playing up so I was unable to get the quality of pictures and videos that I’d hoped for, but my phone camera isn’t too bad so here’s a clip of it.
They ended on ‘Pompeii’, their number one single at the time and then returned to play another couple of songs, ending on crowd favourite and debut single ‘Flaws.’
Pompeii. (Please excuse my singing)
So yeah, if you get the chance (and they’re playing festivals such as Leeds/Reading) then I highly recommend this band.
Alt-J and We Are Scientists, the excitement is building for the locals of Sheffield to find out who they have lined up for 2013.
Shuffle 