Rob Skipper once more forces me into a night out

The Hares and their line ups: 8.0

Hola. This be a blog about Thursday, in which me and Ant went to a gig up in the Old Queens Head pub near Angel in northern central London. Ant had become aware of its existence in the afternoon, which thus led to me coming home to only a quick wash before we headed out.

The pub is fairly tiny. About the size of a rich mans living room, but it had a high ceiling which gave it a more grandiose feeling, you will see from following pictures. The drinks were fairly extortionate but not too badly priced for the area and we were only having the one anyway, what with work the next day for me, and some attempted job hunting for Ant.

We passed the legendary Skipper on the way in, who seemed to be checking up on the attendance, I'm pretty sure he gave Ant a familiar smile but I cannot confirm. Skipper was organising the shindig and the acts appeared to be close friends who he was giving a chance to perform. Lovely man that he is.

We found a seat at the back and commenced watching, having come just in time for the first act which was apparently 45 mins behind anyway. Glorious.

1) Jay Brown was the opener. She was a pretty cool act, seemed very fresh and at ease on stage. Her songs were unorthodox and caught the attention straight away while at the same time being within the bounds of the mainstream indie. She also had a lovely voice:

Photogenic

At ease

View of the venue. Pretty cool place.

The last photo should give an idea of the look of the place. Looked very much like a Tudor room which had started to decay. Post modern the right words?

A vid of the last third of one of her songs is available for you to check out:

2) Next up were the Itchy Teeth, who were talented musicians to be sure, but definitely had a whiff of Ant and Dec about them. If Ant and Dec are your cup of tea, then you missed out. Their act seemed quite short, definitely more of a fun amateur band then up and coming methinks.

Yep

3) Sissi was act #3. Definitely appeared to be her first ever performance in front of a crowd and she handled it pretty well. She has a pretty amazing voice and she didn't falter in both her keyboard and guitar playing.

Observe le chic trainers

Ant pointed out (and I tend to agree) that the lyrics weren't amazing, but at her first gig I think quite a bit of talent otherwise shone through. You can see what I mean by the lyrics in this song which uses coffee a little too powerfully for my liking:

Here final song was a mellow one where she sat on the stage, I was quite impressed how the room quietened down for her to sing clearly.

4) The Lost Brothers were fourth and had flown in from Ireland especially for the gig. They played pretty mellow indie and played it well.

It was hot in the place and even hotter on  the stage. The guy in the hat must have been roasting.

Out of a choice of two videos of them I shall choose the shorter but more interesting one, as they invited Mr Skipper onto the stage to jam with them before playing a song he clearly had never heard before. It's a pretty cool test of his skill that he managed to play along with them despite not knowing anything about the tune:

5) Before the appearance there was enough time to see the final act - Babeshadow, who unfortunately I took only blurry photos of:

Blurry

Babeshadow were the most exciting band up to that point, the guy on the right of the photo looked about 6'8 and had a sense of humour. Their songs were catchy and upbeat.

Finally there were the mighty Hares. They were the headliners but nobly spent as much time on stage as the rest, which wasn't too long. By this time my battery was dying repeatedly so I couldn't take a video but my personal favourite and their final song was Barb Wire which ya can listen to on their myspace: http://www.myspace.com/haresband. Pink Radio is also a great one.

They lacked the fantastic bassist they had when I saw them for the first time in Camden a few months ago. They were also without the lead female singer. However the performance they put in was excellent and had the steadily growing crowd on their feet for the first time all night.

The Hares

Substitute lead female vocalist did a stand up job

They're worth checking out are ze Hares. They have lively upbeat songs that can't fail to turn a good night into a great one. I would thoroughly recommend!

P.S. Remembered I owed you a large video of 4MP singing Beatles songs but unfortunately it was on my laptop that crashed! :( Apologies!