Saturday 19th May 2001, Bedford Esquires.
The gig started off with a set by Bedford's favourite young punks Peanukle. Even though they have seemed a bit disheartened lately, with their last couple of gigs just going through the motions, they wre on fire tonight. It could be the fact that they were cross-dressing especially for the gig (their front "man" Adam looking like a particularly gorgeous blonde bombshell) or the amount of support they got, but tonight had the enrgy of their wild early gigs. They played all of their classics, such as "Bob", and finished off with a punk version of The Summer of 69' by Bryan Adams.
Headwire have been building up quite a following recently with their energetic hybrit of nu-metal and energetic rock. Having seen them quite a few times by now, I expected a good gig and they did not disappoint. The vocalist's voice seemed a bit off from tonight, missing a lot of the notes, but he more than made up for it with his energetic stage presence. It's difficult to exactly define their sound - in a way it's like a nu-metal influenced 3 Colours Red (RIP), which is the closest analogy I can get. If they write a few more catchy songs, then success won't be far away.
And now onto the Food Fighters... The air of anticipation in the venue was intense, with many big fans of the band in attendance. Starting with the blistering "Breakout" and the melodic "Leran To Fly" the band played all of the Foo Fighters' live standards. They even made the effort to look like them as well, down to the blond haired drummer and the frontman's Dave Grohl style beard. The only problem with the gig was that the majority of the Foo's material is rather dull and samey, which is not at all the fault of the cover band, who executed it brilliantly. But as covers bands go, this one was very good, and had a lot of the live energy of the original.
Peter Burov