ten years! ten fuckin' years. in all the times i've seen mogwai (8 times now), it took me 10 years to see/hear them play yes! i am a long way from home! for whatever reason, every time that i've seen mogwai play, they have never played this opening song from their first album. but that bit of wrongness was finally rectified! i finally heard yes! i am a long way from home live!
when the lights dimmed and their roadie stepped over to barry's laptop and hit the space bar. the opening words of the famiiar monologue that precedes long way started. a few words in and i recognized it and gave out a big, yeeeeaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!!. not even a song in, and they already made my night.
after they finished the main song, they even played the speech of barry saying some really hilarious fucked up shit played backwards (as it is on the album). and even though it was backwards, i still had a chuckle to myself because i knew what he was saying.
what followed the opening track was probably one of the best sets i've seen mogwai played. they played a pretty varied set. they managed to play at least one song from each of their six albums. and despite it being a tour in support of their latest album, the hawk is howling, they only played 2 songs from it. and i didn't really have a problem with that considering i wasn't as into the album as much as i was expecting to be. it was just a really good "best of"-type set, visiting classic songs like summer and xmas steps as well as later tracks like glasgow megasnake and travel is dangerous. it was funny to see barry (burns) singing not one, not two, but three times - regular singing on travel is dangerous and then using the vocoder on killing all the flies and hunted by a freak
i was surprised at how quiet it was when they played xmas steps. during the opening bit where it was just john and stuart playing, not one member of the audience ruined it by coughing or yelling out a "whoo!" this is a rarity in itself because there's always one fucked in the audience that can't handle uncomfortable silence and always has to break/ruin it by yelling something. but it was a perfect version of the song. when dom's bass came rumbling in, it even caught me by surprise!
they encored with my father my king which made me really happy since i hadn't heard them play that live since 2003. when barry started strumming his guitar, i was they were going to play we're no here but i totally got psyched out by stuart when he began the melody of mfmk. of course, they ended with the extended feedback. stuart manipulating his guitar pedals and john sustaining the final chord via his 20 billion effects pedals.
the only real bad thing about the show was that it was all seats. and you can't really rock out sitting down. it's too constrictive. but it was a small sacrifice to pay to see an awesome show.
