Hobbsy

In an interview with Nothing Bad magazine Peggy Wang from The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart declares last summer’s Friend Of Mine show at Chorlton Irish Centre as her most memorable gig:

Q: You have toured all over the world with your band (The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart), where has your most memorable gig been?

A: I would have to say the Manchester gig at the Chorlton Irish Center. If I’ve ever been “high on life” it would have been at that show. It was a bunch of sweaty kids moshing to “Teenager in Love” and it just felt so surreal, like I was in a parallel universe, where people think wussy songs about love are actually kind of punk. Afterwards, we sold our merch out the back of our van in a big parking lot, and all these kids were hanging around. I just felt really happy to be contributing to such a quintessential teen moment, when your curfew’s been half an hour extended and you’re just enjoying the finer things in life, like sitting on the hood of a car and pretending to be bored.

I can understand why she’d feel this way. This was truly a beautiful moment: the first days of summer, a brutually hot evening and most of Manchester crammed into that top room beaming beatific smiles and hollering the album back word-for-word at the band. Proper life-affirming stuff.. crazy dancing and crowdsurfing.

It felt as if everyone had been hammering the album obsessively in the preceding weeks and months – I know I certainly had – having been introduced to ‘Young Adult Friction‘ on a crazy car journey en-route to Sam Pridell‘s wedding, somewhere over the majestic Snake Pass.

There’s definitely a Manchester sound to this band, so you can imagine why they feel such an affinity with the place and hold fond memories of the loved-up sweaty audience that night. I remember after the show grabbing a taxi to the Deaf Institute with a few friends (as we’d heard the band were heading there to party). We were lucky enough to chat with Peggy and the band afterwards. Lovely people :)

I didn’t get much chance to take any photos at the gig (too busy dancing like a lunatic!) – but I did film a couple of short clips. I’m not sure if they really capture what it felt like to be there that night, but it’s nice to have some kind of record of the evening:

Everything With You

View in 720p HD on YouTube

A Teenager In Love

View in 720p HD on YouTube

• Listen to Pains Of Being Pure At Heart on Spotify
• Buy the debut Pains Of Being Pure At Heart album from Amazon.co.uk

Emmy The Great played a charity gig last Wednesday at the Manchester Deaf Institute. It’s fair to say this event flew under the radar of most folk – I only randomly noticed a flyer whilst out and about at the Dot2Dot Festival on Monday night. Lazy Noggin has a nice write-up of the evening, but here’s a couple of photos I shot below:

I was in two minds whether to bother posting them as I’m pretty dissapointed with how they came out. I deliberately left the house with only my 24-70mm lens and no flash – I think the Deaf Institute can be quite hard to shoot without a flash, but I wanted to travel light. I’d also decided that I wanted to film most of the gig on my little Lumix TZ7 (which shoots nice 720p HD video, and currently sells for under £200 on Amazon). Again I don’t know if it was the difficult red stage-lights (or if I’d accidentally changed a setting on my camera) but the quality of video I get from the Lumix is usually much better than this (see my YouTube channel for examples)

Emmy played six songs (including two new ones) and I filmed four of them:

01. We Almost Had A Baby
02. The Easter Parade
03. Exit Night new song
04. Dinosaur Sex new song
05. First Love
06. Absentee

View the videos after the jump
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I made a last-minute decision at 9:30pm tonight to jump in a taxi and catch Field Music at the Salford Islington Mill. I’m glad I made the effort as it was a cracking gig, despite not being too familar just yet with their newly-released album Measure (15th Feb). It’s the second time in a fortnight that I’ve been to Islington Mill and come away with mind suitably blown. Beach House the other week is a clear contender for gig of the year… and possibly the decade :)

Here’s a quick photo of Field Music I took after the gig, shot on my pocket camera:

Just a quick photo from tonight’s Beat The Radar gig at Manchester Moho Live. I’ll try and upload some more during the week:

Last week (before the madness of In The City kicked off) I saw Rachael Kichenside’s band Run Toto Run play live at the Manchester Deaf Institute. I’ve alread posted a video of the band covering Passion Pit’s Sleepyhead from the same concert, but below you’ll find some photos I shot:

Click here to view the full gallery (25 photos)