The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart at Chorlton Irish Centre (22nd May 2009)

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: