This was a Fortuna Pop! organised line up featuring Bricolage, The Wave Pictures and Wake The President, and Falling & Laughing in what was a pretty fantastic celebration of the Sound of Young Scotland. Not that we have many links with Scotland, but I think that our name secured us the spot at the bottom of the bill.

The first problem with a London gig is getting there on a Friday afternoon, when band members finish work at 4pm and soundcheck is at 7.30. Weighing up the options was a tricky one and the plan chopped and changed from staying at a Travelodge on the outskirts and booking a more traffic savy-taxi driver, to ferrying the whole band directly to the venue by cars.

Eventually, a Bearsuit myspace bulletin about London traffic scared half of us into taking the train (more expensive but at least you know when you’ll get to London with some degree of certainty) and half by car. I’d love to know how Birmingham bands who play London a) loads, and b) midweek, manage to cope with this stress. Seriously, I can think of no bigger headache than having to get to London on a Wednesday for an 8.30 set after finishing work at 5.

The train won by about half an hour in the end although the car only just made it in time to get a brief sound check, although in true first-out-of-town-gig fashion, an amp, a pedal and the copicat all played up.

The Buffalo Bar is a splendid venue downstairs, and is also independently run. It’s just the right size for small scale indie gigs, and just the right lay out to make it seem full with small numbers, but with a decent capacity, of about 150 I think. It definitely filled up early and the audience were there to listen to all the bands too, rather than chatting away over everything. This is possibly testament to the strong line up too.

We put in what was a slightly shorter set than usual but filled the time with idle chit chat in between songs. I’m still trying to work out whether this is frowned upon or not, I have the feeling that it’s either something you really like or really hate. Personally I like it when bands chat between songs, because you get a good impression of who the band are and why they are making music. Speaking of music, we made loads of mistakes too but I don’t think anyone noticed… shhh…

There were some nice comments after the gig too. Stu told me one which I really liked, about a girl who used to live in Birmingham, getting all nostaglic after hearing us namedrop so many Birmingham locations in lyrics.

Wake The President were on after us. They are a very enjoyable band to watch with some strong tunes and some good guitar work, I think they were my favourite band of the night. They had some strong melodies. It’s easy to instantly compare them to Orange Juice, but they had more a more laid back feel about them and had some parts which were a bit talky – prompting comments about how ace the Scottish accent is. The singer was wearing a The School badge too!

The Wave Pictures were on next, they used to be the backing band of Darren Hayman apparently, and you can tell, the first song launching off in very Hefner fashion. This is by no means a bad thing although it did make me wish that it was Hefner playing, that is, until the singer pulled out a ukulele and played it excellently, in borderline rock solo fashion!

At around this time I got the only disappointing crushing blow of the night – the pinball machine that had been sat in the corner, inviting me over all night, wasn’t working. Gutted.

Bricolage were the last band up. I’d seen them standing in the crowd earlier and thought “they look like a band”, so I was happy that my spidey-senses hadn’t let me down. I own a 7” by Bricolage too (the excellently named ‘Looting Takes the Waiting out of Wanting’) although it’s still sat in my in-pile. They were a very competent band who had a shade of Orange Juice to them – like everyone tonight. Two vocalists (both on guitar) contributed excellently to give the songs melodies a gentle feel.

There are some photos of the bands from the night online too, at what looks like being an excellent London Indie photography site called Underexposed.

Excitingly, my KateGoes t-shirt which I wore for the gig was spotted too, by someone from the PRS Foundation, which is a charity that funds new music – although their website seems to have only been infrequently updated since 2005. We had a nice chat and she told me that KateGoes had won a competition with them and are playing a gig in Camden, on the 7th February, with the three other bands who also won. This could be an excellent excuse to go down to London and support a good local band – though there are only 50 places for each of the four acts so you have to get in touch with KateGoes via their myspace if you want to go.

There most information that I can find out about this gig is on the KateGoes myspace, I can’t seem to find anything by googling KateGoes and PRS Foundation, which is a little worrying, as I wouldn’t of minded finding a bit more out about the competition - it sounds quite interesting.

The car was quicker back than train the next morning too.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 26th, 2007 at 1:37 pm and is filed under , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.