support from ligament

first known live performance of 'christmas song'

reviews/comments

from tom:

it was a pretty crazy gig, ligament were pretty crazy, i liked them, they reminded me of err... i dunno, this is an awful description but somewhere between shellac and early cable... that is a bad description, ignore that... but i had never heard them before, they were alright.

the main strange thing was that the venue was soooo small. it felt like seeing them at the beginnings of their career... it really was strange, especially after seeing them at the astoria and glastonbury previously this year, doing huge shows.

the lights dimmed and the opening beats of "superheroes" rang out... much cheers and all that... slowly the band appeared, barry first, merging the straight beats into cut up mad whack shit, and then stuart, martin, dominic and john. right from the start there seemed to be problems with the sound (the pa was really not cut out to handle their sound, and the size of the venue can only to be to blame)... stuart was looking around kinda disgruntled for much of the tune, and had barry's help a couple of times in sorting out problems with the equipment. it was almost like they'd never soundchecked in the first place. nevertheless, it was cool to hear them play superheroes, finally, so long after its release. the ending was cut short, kinda abrubtly, but they led thru beautifully into "small children", which was gorgeous as usual...

xmas steps suffered severely from the pa problem, but the band soldiered on. luke sutherland was in attendance to play the violin at the end ; his solo was extended, and the song cut short to end as he did.
ex cowboy : well, nothing to say really. it was great. yeah.
stanley kubrick : nice, but it didn't sound as good as on the record i thought. stuart introduced it as "our new song".
ithica got that little riffy bit stuart has been known to play tacked on the beginning. it was awesome.

they next played another new tune from the ep i guess, stuart asked the audience to be quiet because it was a "soft one"... then he added as an afterthought "not so you can hear it, but so that we can..."... he started off by holding his hands over his ears so he could hear. barry played keys for a few bars, was joined by john and martin and the band played on for only a couple of minutes. it was really short.

kappa was really loud. helicon 1 suffered a little from the bass being out of tune a little, but it was the highlight of the show. like herod was the same as always, heh... big moshpit style actions going on tho'. it was getting nasty in there...

it was a good show ; great for the size, but it was a shame the sound was so poor. barry had to keep shouting stuff at the engineer. actually, you don't realise just how tall barry is until you stand 5 cm away from him!

from http://user.pa.net/~fehrs/melissa/concerts_mogwai2.txt:

alright, last night's mogwai show was incredible. how a band can manage to be as consistently brilliant as mogwai has proven to be is absolutely beyond me.

i managed to convince 3 other people in my halls to join me at the concert, and only one of them had ever even heard mogwai before, and that was only the peel session. so we got into the paradox (usually a really cheesy nightclub, but it worked well for a concert venue) just in time to see the opener, ligament. they were a three piece guitar band with good, heavy, crunchy sound, but the screaming, metallica-esque vocals got to be enough for me after about three songs. at this point, my friend was glad that he had purchased the mogwai earplugs at the merch stand (yes, mogwai now have their own line of earplugs!).

dj kool keith ran the djing between sets, and was one of the most crap djs i've ever heard (and i've heard alot). i've no idea who picked him to tour, but it wasn't an informed decision.

mogwai came on about 10:15, and by this time i was solidly in the front row, centre, and the band came on stage to a piped intro to bmx, and gradually picked up their instruments and joined the pre-recorded stuff. stuart made good use of his robocop figurine once again, and the entire set was just as solid as when i'd seen them in philly (minus the long soundcheck like there was in the city of brotherly love).

some highlights:
*stanley kubrick, since i'd never heard it before, was a great surprise. i really need to pick up that new ep.
*right before "x-mas song", stuart explained that it was a brand new song, and he asked the crowd the be very quiet, as it was a very gentle song. this one was phenomenal. it started off with a lot of long keyboard tones from barry, and stuart added in the twinkly guitars i love so much, and martin had the brushes going in this mad rhythm i can't even explain. can't wait for them to release this.
*stuart's guitar nearly knocking me in the head while he sat down and played during helicon 1. yes, i was that close.
*the added violinist at the end of xmas steps. i'm not completely sure, but i believe he was playing part of godspeed you black emporer!'s song "moya". in any case, very nice touch.
*john's souvenier pennsylvania "john" plate that he hung on his amp. ;)
*watching my uninitiated friends jump a mile high during like herod, and being complete mogwai fanatics by the end of the set.

we hung around the bus after the show, and i got a chance to talk with barry about the lack of flutes this time around, and how much martin loves the scary rabbit i gave him in philly (but barry said he's frightened of it; won't go near it). barry promised us that the rest of the band would come out in a short while, but after waiting 2.5 hours in the freezing cold, we had to give up at 2am and go home without any sigs. =(