March 2004 Archive

At this point I should probably mention the fact that Lydia had (somewhat obsessively) knitted a scarf for My Coxon, which she was intending to give to him at the gig. Now I'm not totally convinced she would have actually given it to him, but seeing as he was currently in the same pub as us, Sarah and me thought she should go for it, go up to him and give him the scarf. Which, one gin and tonic and a large amount of calming down she did!

He seemed slightly taken aback, or perhaps just surprised, but he seened to like it, and we all had a somewhat brief but very cool chat with him about the virtues of Fibbers and his missing drummer. (At which time I attempted to make some terrible joke about him having to do an acoustic set - it was the best I could come up with considering the circumstances!) After he'd thanked Lydia again and gone back to his band, we managed to sufficiently calm Lydia down (again!) and get to the gig.

Now I must admit that I had heard very little of Graham Coxon's solo work, apart from the current single Freakin' out, but the gig was good. The support act, Bloc Party were in a similar vein to Grahm Coxon's own recent work - loud, guitar-driven pop-rock, whose sound almost seemed to big for the venue. In fact the only crictism that could be levelled at them was that live, and in a venue of that size, there was almost too much going on in their music.

The arrival of Graham Coxon at 9:30 brought with it a certain smugness, what with having met him little over 2 hours before! I could pretend that I knew the songs we has playing, but to be honest, as previously mentioned, my knowledge of his work is a little thin, suffice to say he certainly was the 'rock' portion of Blur. The size and intimacy of the venue, as well as the packed crowd created a brilliant atmosphere, and the gig was topped of by it being Graham's birthday that day, with the audience even starting an inpromptu chorus of Happy Birthday (allegedly started by our very own Lydia!)

Graham rounded off the night (and the encore) with the current single, which possibly got the biggest response of the night - there was much jumping to be seen, reminding that fibbers really needs a higher roof. It was also a riminder to me of how great the gig was - not only did I get the chance to see the excellent lead guitarist of Blur in such a small and intimate venue, we even got to meet him! A thoughly 'rockin' gig, at York's official #3 place to rock. After friday, I'm pretty sure it should be at least #2...