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I left work last night heading for a Fighting Cocks gig with my TFL JourneyPlanner map securely secreted in my back pocket. I was feeling a bit POORLY and was starting to worry about whether i was about to get The Old Ailment again, and was thus DISTRACTED from noticing that said map had fallen out of my pocket on the way to the tube. I briefly considered going home and to BED, but BRAVELY decided to carry on, so headed off to Caledonian Road, as instructed by TFL.

Handily i pretty much remember the name of the road I needed to walk down, so trundled along it getting more and more SCARED, as it made its way through a SERIES of Scary Estates. You know the sort of place I mean - probably absolutely FINE, but in the dark, with HOODED YOUTHS wandering around and years of TV DRAMA in my mind i was a bit SCARED, especially as I was going to be walking back that way much later on, and the sight of two Community Police Officers wandering past only made me think "YOINKS! Are they NEEDED then?"

I got to York Way with an HOUR to spare so went to find something to eat - i was JUST about to settle for Nasty Kebab Shop Nasty Chips when i saw a BALTI HOUSE! HOOPLA! As is the norm, BALTI turned out to be PRECISELY the medicine I required, and roughly an hour later i was STRIDING down the road to the venue, feeling MUCH better about life and living in it... until I discovered NO PUB.

I walked around and around for a bit and even asked some locals, but to no avail, so rang CHARLIE who instructed me to walk back into town. TFL seems to be acting PECULIARLY at the moment, and checking now it seems to want to send me to different places, and thinking back the only OTHER time I've had trouble with it was when I was going to see ANOTHER Fighting Cocks gig. Have they OFFENDED the TFL JourneyPlanner somehow?

Anyway i was soon bounding along and saw a) The Eurostar and b) a FOX, which is always CHEERING and arrived at The Cross Kings in HIGH SPIRITS. Maybe it's just because it was my First Gig Of The Year (and first time unaccompanied in a pub for about THREE WEEKS!) but it seemed to me a LOVELY place, and with surprisingly OK beer too, especially for a VENUE. I WALTZED through to the gig area, and it was only after a few TRAVERSES from pub to venue that I realised there was someone on the door, by which time i had WALTZED too often to confess my mistake, so kept doing it. TOP TIPS for Free Gigs: just WALTZ through like you own the place, approximately 80% of the time you'll get away with it: FACT.

It was a full Fighting Cocks line-up and everyone was hithering and thithering getting CLOTHED and so forth. Before them were a Psycobilly Band who were... well, they were OK but were VERY polite, which is of course GOOD but seemed to distract a bit from the overall Pysobilly idea. They DID have a lot of pals with them, who were a mixture of Proper Psysobillies (Mohican Quiffs and Tatoos) and People They Worked With (suits with tie loosened), which would turn out to be a REALLY GOOD THING.

The Cocks went on and were instantly GRATE. The sound was really good, there was JUST enough room for everyone to dance, and everyone REALLY DANCED. The five of them looked like a Mirror Universe Spice Girl Reunion (with Sporty in the middle looking butch), it was a WHIRL of arms and legs and general GO. As I always say, the current line-up is ACE, they act like a BAND together and they're ALL Making An Effort and doing the choreographed dance moves BUT it's such a bunch of strong personalities that everyone ends up looking completely different. AND they all look like they're having a BRILLIANT time.

Sometimes this doesn't get over to the audience, possibly because I've seem them quite a few times playing to audiences of MEDIA TYPES/Shoreditch Wankers/THAT sort, who are far to COOL to be seen to be enjoying themselves. This was very much NOT the case last night. Let's be honest, if you're going to go out dressed as a PsychoBilly you're NOT going to be too bothered about what other people think of you, and also, COUNTER-INTUITIVELY, the sound of the Fighting Cocks really WORKED in that environment, so they gradually started dancing too - semi-ironically at first, but very quickly with GUSTO. The other half of the audience were Normal Human Beings out for a good time so THEY joined in too, and by the end it was like a gig off the TELLY, it felt like the entire ROOM was leaping up and down.

My favourite part of this was Charlie trying to give instructions to the soundman to turn the sound up ... or maybe turn it down. It was hard to tell as he was indicating with his hands while POGOING, so you couldn't be sure.

It was FANTASTIC, an opinion shared with Mr A Malloy of Kooba Radio (who informs me of a SCHEME he has to have the song A Million Ukeleles performed by... well, not a million, but a LOT of ukeleles. I support his endevour) who I spoke to afterwards. I know I always go on about them, but The Fighting Cocks really ARE GRATE, honest, see them if you can!

I headed off into the night, having remember to return the camera upon which I had taken a LOT of fairly low quality photographs, relieved that in the end I WASN'T going to have to walk through scary estates, and full of The Joy Of Gigs. Also, BEER.

posted 11/1/2008 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

see, if you'd been to poptimism before you would've known exactly where it was ;)

those estates are a bit scary though...
posted 11/1/2008 by CarsmileSteve

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