Wildhearts

Nottingham Rock City

July 28


technical difficulties is a word that springs to mind, mainly because ginger used it a few times. i'm one person who hadn't heard the new stuff, so on first listen, anthem was good. about 2 of the other new songs sounded good on first listen. the others i guess 'existed'. it seemed a lot of stuff had the added suckerpunch / naievety play effects, ie the 'new industrial / dance bits'. i'm sure in six months i'll love it, but for now i'll reserve judegment until i've heard the stuff a bit more. anyway, the technical difficulties provided some nice highlights including a drum change (snare i think, but idn't see) after 2 songs, with ginger initiating a crowd singalong of 'palmer, plamer'. palmer being the roadie doing the change. anyway, during this time ginger thanked us for being there, blah, and said, 'and if you here any rumours on the internet about us splitting up, ignore them'. don't know if it was a throwaway comment playing for time, or if he was just showing off his 'new found technical knowledge', or whether rumours have got back to the band. anyway, ginger is watching us, or something like that, or maybe not.

then, for the start of i wanna go, there be no sound from ginger's guitar. so he flings it away and just sings. except that for the first verse there was no sound from jef's guitar either. not good really.

so ginger had a few comments about one day the band buying radio mikes.

anyway, a bit further down the line, for another new song, he introduced the bloke whose name i've forgotten on 'female orgasm samples'. about 3 times due to them not working. so evenutally it was the bloke with a name i've forgotten on crap. i think the guitars broke another 2 or maybe 3 times after that, with more mentions of radio mikes one day being bought.

then, towards the end of the set, the song before pump it up, well, the guitars went again! this time the crowd piped up with the 'don't worry 'bout me' chant, and when ginger did get a guitar again, just jammed along with it. bit like leicester last year, though not quite as good. but anyway, the grin on his face at the end meant it was either all a big con job, or more likely, the reaction helped to appease him and calm him down. put it like this, if it had been old marilyn manson, we'd have probably had a 10 minutes set due to all the problems followed by a temper tantrum and him stomping off stage.

anyways, they come back for an encore, and guess, the guitars gone. so there's a little ditty made up about 'a band that once existed, pretty good, nearly as good as u2 and rem, and they once ran into a load of money, and bought radio mikes.' so it would appear that the new record deal didn't include money for radio mikes :)

there was a mention that every time they play rock city, the gear fucks up yet it's the best night of the tour. hmmm. also, another ginger quote at this point was 'i've got no more guitars. anyone got a guitar. i've broken my 2. it's not big, and it's not clever, it's fucking expensive.' oh yeah, and he threw the mike stand into the crowd. i did see it depart past me a few minutes later in the direction of the exit.

they finally sorted it out, did the 'what do you want to hear' bit. people shout for caffeine bomb, yawn, a few shout for geordie. danny said no, ginger introduced geordie and they played caffeine bomb followed by sick of drugs.

so a gig marred by ye olde technical difficulties. but it was good cos of gingers reactions. that's only a selection of the stuff. he could easily have just lost it and fucked off after a few numbers. he did when the played cardiff bogiez just before 'don't be happy, just worry' was released. the stuff went down twice, the second time bam kicked in the drums, ginger told us to ask for a refund and left. but this time he saw it through.

not so sure on the new stuff yet, some of the old stuff seemed tired, lovebank was just shite it has to be said. i dunno, it just didn't sound good, and the vocals were almost non-existant, maybe that was down to technical difficulties, whatever. and headfuck sounded tired, i never thought i'd say that. yet it was still a good gig. contradictions abound, but then, that's always been the way of the wildhearts hasn't it.