Public Enemy – Tramshed

You’re sat on your comfy couch on a Sunday night and it’s absolutely lashing it down outside. You’re halfway through a good boxset on Netflix and your Sunday lunch is settling like the Titanic at the bottom of the North Atlantic. You’re thinking “why in the name of all that’s holy have I booked tickets to see a hip hop gig?”

Then when your alarm wakes you up at 5am for work the next morning and you’re so tired you turn the radio on instead of turning the alarm off and every inch of you aches because you’ve been bouncing around and you didn’t get enough sleep BUT you still have a stupid grin on your face and a Public Enemy shaped ear-worm ringing in your head – then you’ll have your answer and you’ll know you’ve been at a great gig the night before.

Sunday night was our first visit to the new Cardiff venue The Tramshed

I think it may just what The ‘ Diff needed in terms of music venue. Just the right size between the smaller Globe and Clwb Ifor, and the horrible ginormous aircraft hanger that is the Motorpoint.

Fully equipped with a cloakroom, viewing balcony, bars up and downstairs and a cracking sound system is a little gem. The only issue I can see is parking – and then only when it’s raining. Like it was on Sunday. Boy did it rain. Il pleut comme une vache qui pisse. On a corregated roof.

So as the steam rose off us like a Pontypool scrummage on a wet Friday night we waited for the band and hoped they could raise our spirits from the near dead.

Take a moment and think what you might get from a live hip hop gig?

Did you think of a hooded dreadlocked Flava Flav doing circuits of the stage on a hover board?

Did you imagine marines guarding the stage

and getting down to do press ups

Or of rock hard rastas leaping into the audience (followed reluctantly by the security staff) to eject beer throwing morons (for that is indeed what happened)

Of Chuck D’ belting it out

Of fist-bumps and high-fives

Of hip-hop congas around Hendrix style guitar moves

Of audience participation and a bouncing mosh-pit

Of the best scratching DJ you’ve ever seen

And of a venue so damn hot in every sense that Flava Flav started to dish out water

Well – I can tell you that we got all that and more. This was more than a gig – it was a show.

If anyone ever says hip hop is boring just point them in the direction of Public Enemy. These boys know how to party.

A fantastic set by a brilliant band – do catch them if you get a chance.  Highly recommended

Hip Hop, Animals and an Iconic Iconoclast

The second week of March was a bit of a corker for us music-wise with three very different events at three very different venues.
Glass Animals
First off was a night at our favorite Cardiff music venue The Globe  to see Glass  Animals :

We first saw Glass Animals last year at Buffalo Bar in front of about twenty people but this night they were playing to a full audience of several hundred – the place was pretty packed with mostly youngsters and students. If they continue at this rate they’ll be filling Wembley in no time. The band play a groove-heavy indy-funk with lyrics that successfully walk a tightrope of suggesting something totally dark and somewhat filthy whilst simultaneously making no sense whatsoever – or maybe that’s just my dirty mind – whatever. They played most of their irresistible Zaba album and even threw in a cover Love Lockdown by Kanye West which saw lead-singer Dave Bayley disappear into the adoring crowd. We met Dave very briefly after the Buffalo gig:

and he and the rest of the band seem a lovely bunch who are obviously enjoying every minute of it all so I’m really pleased to see them move up to bigger venues and hope they continue to go from strength to strength.
Hip Hop at Gwdihw:
Next up for us was an impromptu gig at the tiny but perfectly formed and totally wonderful Gwdihw bar just off Churchill Way. We’d been kicked out by daughter 2 so that she could have some friends around without the parents hanging around like a bad stink so we decided to kill a few hours in town. We started off with a couple of drinks in Cosy Club which as always lived up to it’s name – we even managed to get a candle-lit window seat overlooking The Hayes which was a first for us. This was the day Wales beat Ireland in the Six Nations so the scenes below us were absolute carnage whilst being pretty amusing to watch – thankfully it all looked to be good humoured fun.
Next we grabbed quick Mexican bite at Wahaca, the highlight of which for us were Margaritas sat in the upstairs window-seats – again watching all the fun of battlefield-Cardiff as it unfolded below us. Then we headed off to Gwdihw where a hip-hop band were already in full flow when we arrived. We missed the start of the gig so sadly I have no idea what the band were called. I’m not a huge fan of the hip-hop genre but these guys were giving it everything including the kitchen sink – two rappers, great funking rhythm section, Stevie Wonder-esqe keyboards and a full brass section.

It was great infectious fun and when they threw in a cover of Jungle Boogie – well, I was buying whatever they were selling.  That we happened to wander in of the street to catch their set was one of those fabulous happy accidents that can make a night special.

Morrissey is meaty:
The third gig of the week was to see the godlike-genius that is Mozza. Yes – Morrissey was in town and we had booked our spots at the front for the main event. The list of acts that can get me to pay to go to the Motorpoint Arena, an aircraft hangar of a venue with the audio characteristics of… well an aircraft hangar is a short one but Morrissey near the top. The evening started on a high when I found out that my brother had secretly bought a ticket and was joining us Ffion the merger-regions of Cheltenham for the pilgrimage – what a dude. We headed into The Motorpoint with some trepidation – after all it’s not unknown for Moz to cancel at the last moment. Our fears were somewhat allayed when we saw the signage announcing that the venue was meat free for the evening and sure enough it became clear that Mozza was in the house.
Buffy Saint Marie proved game if slightly incongruous support for the evening and was followed by a video montage presumably of some of Morrissey’s favorite clips including the New York Dolls and a nicely judged tribute to the recently passed Steve Strange – him being a valley’s boy after all.
And then – the lights were down, Mozza was there and everything was at peace in the world. Looking well if slightly chunkier than the svelt lad I first saw live waving gladioli back in the Smith’s heyday he turned up in every sense. Kicking off under a backdrop of images mocking the Royals he was in great voice as he tore into The Queen is Dead and on through a full set which included a few of his Smiths numbers alongside songs from throughout his solo career.
As stagily aloof as ever Morrissey gave the sly air of being above the entire hero worship nonsense of the crowd whilst thoroughly enjoying every minute – even dryly demanding “a full explanation” for boos at the sight of an Everton Jersey in his stage backdrop.

Being Mozza there had to be an element of in-your-face finger-wagging and that was fully provided by the “Meat is Murder” section which was accompanied by a traumatic eye-opening video showing the treatment of animals in the factory food system. A show-stopper in every sense of the phrase, I’m not convinced how justifiable it was in the context of a live sure but it certainly had made me reconsidering my food priorities.
He managed to raise the crowd again with a rendition of Every Day is Like Sunday and by the time he closed the set with a killer version of The First Of The Gang To Die we were all back at top pitch.

Further evidence that he was loving it as much as we were came when he tore off his shirt and threw it into the crowd, departing the stage bare-chested.
His closing comment of “remember, whatever happens I love you all” was a melancholy reminder of his recent cancer scare but that aside it was a real high-note of a concert and a fab evening.