The Get Up Kids are a bunch of cunts

I awoke at around 8.30am on Thursday blessedly free of both tiredness and miraculously a hangover. My first thought though was "oh fuck, what am I going to do about work?" I decided to call them up and basically tell them the truth - which I did when someone finally picked up my phone. Then I read a fanzine for a while while Lloyd played some music and we waited for Cov John to get out of bed and get ready. That accomplished, he drove us to the station and Lloyd and I had a pleasant journey on the train (with table :-) back to London.

Lloyd needed to pick up something and go to New Cross Gate and then he was going to go to EasyEverything before I met him later on at the pub. I went home and started writing this :-) I'd arranged to meet Lloyd in the Wig and Gown on Holloway Road at about 6.30pm so I went up there for about 5.45 and first had some lovely chicken and chips in a place just down the road. I went to the Wig and Gown then only to discover that Lloyd had been there since about 5! No doubt enjoying the nice Leffe that they serve in there on tap - quite reasonable at £1.40 for a half. Whenever I ordered it though the barman kept giving me short measures I'm sure. When I questioned it though he just said "it's up to the line!" and I looked at the glass and just thought "What line?!". While we were there I asked Lloyd whether he'd told Discount about the Get Up Kids that night. He said he had and apparently Bill's response was something like "The Get Up Kids are a bunch of cunts". LOL :-) The story behind that remark wasn't so funny though and I won't repeat it here because it should be left between those two bands. Sean turned up a bit later only to disappoint a few people by saying that Southport had cancelled their gig at the Goldsmith's on Saturday - oops! As for the gig itself, we missed De Facto so I have no idea what they were like. I just know that they supported Hot Water Music in Glasgow and they might have had a couple of At The Drive In in their ranks. When we finally got into the Garage The Anniversary had just started their set and the place was absolutely fucking rammed. Pretty mental really but not totally unexpected as the Get Up Kids had been on both Radio 1 and on a Melody Maker cover CD in recent weeks.

The Anniversary were actually really good. They had this cool moog player and a guy who looks like someone who used to be in Home and Away! They were poppy and bouncy and harmonious and actually a little bit like the Get Up Kids! The sound was great at the start when I was down at the front but when I moved a little further back the sound was appalling. That didn't bode well for the Get Up Kids set as it was really difficult to get anywhere near the front with the amount of people that were in there.

Well, the GUKs (as they will from now on be known as I'm sick of writing their full name) predictably started off their set with Holiday followed straight after with Action and Action. Sure, they played lots of old songs including Woodson and Coming Clean but on the whole I thought they were truly shit. Even though I love their records they seemed dull and passionless. They said it was "club policy" that you couldn't stagedive which is obviously complete bollocks (especially when you think about the Snuff gig there on New Year's Eve :-) And the sound… god, the sound was fucking atrocious. Nick said later that it sounded like a bootleg and that was a spot-on description of it. Even worse was that everyone on the Fracture Forum the next day though it was a fucking great show! Uhhhhh… on what planet? Monk Dave made the only sane comment of the day by saying that it felt like being at a boy-band concert at Wembley Arena (not that he'd know what that was like - oh no, of course not :-)

We went home somewhat disappointed and depressed at the gig we'd just seen although I wasn't that surprised. There's another band not to bother going to see again.