- Saturday 5th June 2004. The Thirst Club Esquires Bedford.
There was a sense of 'this is going to be a fucking good night' in the air everyone has come to expect that from a band with an "as seen on mtv2" tag on them, the place was almost full and local Luton rockers Drive Like Casey where the first band to take to the stage.
Although looking back they didn't seem to fit in with the other bands genre wise they did play one of the best performances I’ve seen them give. I've seen this band quite a few times now and I know what to expect. They've got an awesome little number called, 'Hollow' which is probably the type of song they should try and beat every time because in my (humble) opinion it's their best work to date, other songs sound pale in comparison. Stage presence was
good from the frontman 'big Dave' but the rest of the band kind of shy away which is a shame because they have some good foot stompers. And, as ever they brought some fans with them. LUTON MASSIVE I’m sure!
Next up, with an impressive array of fx pedals, were Komakino who got their name off of a Joy Division song. The comparisons end there, and they sound more like the Joy Division inspired Interpol. The songs were pretty good but all had a foot thumping bass drum beat to them which got really tedious towards the end, as did the poncy singer who was touching himself up on stage and pulling cute faces to the girls who were disappointed that Bedford Metal's Keith didn't show up... Still, they sounded good, and had to be since they had been on support with chart toppers Hope Of The States (who have produced a very good album by the way). The singer then went on to throw a mic stand at a wall to an annoyed response from the 'bastardy-bouncers' of Esquires (I love them really!!... ahem...yeah...) he also took my mate Eddy Million's cap and trashed the shit drum kit they took with them.
Then, one of the best headliners I've seen at Esquires in quite a while - Bloc Party came on. I didn't even need to hear them to know if they were good - the bassist was wearing a '...And You Will Know Us By Trail Of Dead' t-shirt. I was already impressed! Once again, a very nice batch of fx pedals were layed before the guitarists by their own roadies.
They went on to play some amazing music, the two guitarists work brilliantly off of each other, often syncopating a chord sequence and sharing the chords between them to make you look at one guitarist then the other in time to the music. It was breathtaking talent. They played the single 'Banquet' written as 'Bank wit' on the singer's setlist (which I managed to pinch on the last song).
The last few songs of their set were beautiful to say the least. The reception they got from the crowd was brilliant, imagine being in a pub when England score - it was like that but with loud and annoyingly high-pitched screams and whistles... right in my ear! bastards...
Anyway, yeah it was a great night and Bloc Party proved their worthiness of headlining and getting their royalties on mtv2.
