Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

Oh dear, and that last entry sounded rather more melancholy than I had intended – it was intended as a reflection on how things have changed in the last year, not a discussion of the exit that wasn’t.

Thursday was the Fields of the Nephilim gig at the Astoria. Its been many years since I’ve seen them, last time was before they had turned into The Nefilim, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from them. I turned up during the support act, a mostly girl band who had a nice chunky sound but were let down somewhat by their vocalist wailing a little too much. The scary thing is that I walked in and saw the singer and thought immediately ‘thats Katie, shes really gone places’ – followed by ‘who the hell was Katie?’. And I couldn’t place her, I remember she went to Wales to go to university, but I don’t remember where she left from. After watching for a while I’m reasonably sure it wasn’t Katie, just someone who looked a bit like the sort of person she would have turned into.

After a break the Fields came on stage – I had thought I was standing at a reasonable distance back but by the time they hit the stage it was getting rather more crowded. Somehow a guy managed to appear in front of me, he was tall and sulky, looked like he’d never been to a gig before and didn’t really know what to do, I kept standing on his toes and having to move to see around him.

The show itself was energetic, with a nice mix of new and old tracks. The new tracks being met with ‘boo’s from the old-goth contingent at the back by the sounddesk, which seemed to me to be rather unfair since they fitted nicely into the overall feel of the music. Poor Carl McCoy seemed to be rather greyer around the edges than I remember, not that I actually remember seeing him that close before.

The highlight, of course, was ‘Last exit for the lost’, which turned into an epic starting really slow reaching a crescendo after what seemed tens of minutes (hence the time to think for the last entry), how had I forgotten how good this song is?


3 comments

  1. concert manners

    Sound like an interesting evening yuo had Neil.
    by the way speaking as person who has not been to a concert for many years myself. I mean I lot of years.. I think it was an open air Radiohead concert in South Park . What do you do at a concert these days apart from enjoy it.. has the etiqette changed a lot?

    • Re: concert manners

      I’m not sure etiquette has changed that drastically, though this was a goth gig so the miserablists were out in force moping at the back while the old timers were trying to make pyramids in the pit. I’m sure theres other gigs where its normal to wear pants on your head and heckle but I try to avoid those where I know about it in advance.

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