As you may have gleaned from my previous blogs, my favourite ever live band is Mogwai. I was fortunate to catch them at a very early stage in their career though I did miss them play at Preston Adelphi in 1997 as I had only just become aware of them. Around that time, I heard Ithica 27/9 off their debut album Ten Rapid and I knew I was smitten for life as I had been searching for that band who would not baulk at the edge of the sonic cliff but were deliriously happy to spring off into the noisy abyss!
My first viewing was at Manchester Roadhouse in 1998 and bar a promo event at Sankeys Soup the following year that I didn’t hear about I have seen every one of their subsequent Manchester dates, which sits currently on 11 in the fair city alone with two more scheduled this year. This will bring my overall attendances up to 36.
They have had a very gradual rise in profile, which in some ways I have been eternally glad about as it has resulted in them never or very rarely progressing to play soulless arenas. Their soundtracks for Zidane and the Returned TV series in the 2010’s eventually led through to their remarkable achievement of a No 1 album in 2021.
Prior to such infamy, the 15th time I saw them in September 2006 was their biggest gig thus far as they were playing the iconic London Royal Albert Hall. Thus, on that Friday I left work at lunchtime and walked over to Preston train station. En route I bought a student rag mag from a chap who I struck up conversation with when he commented on my band T-shirt.
On arrival in the smoke, we headed over to Holborn and had a leisurely afternoon in a boozer watching the Ryder Cup, we then caught the tube to High Street Kensington tube station. In a pub near the station, we saw the Mogwai boys themselves but left them to their own devices.
PNE were live on TV that night and I did a quick scouting mission to a nearby pub where I identified they weren’t showing the footy, but I did see comedian Helen Lederer enjoying a teatime drink. We subsequently walked down Kensington Road alongside Hyde Park to the venue. I have always viewed the highly distinctive Royal Albert Hall as the musical Wembley, so I was very excited to attend.
The initial germination of the idea to build the hall was devised at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and it was officially opened in 1871. It is held in trust by the nation and managed by a registered charity which receives no government funding. It has staged the proms since 1941 and there are events held there all year round and it has a capacity of 5272.
I respected and thoroughly enjoyed the old-fashioned values of tannoy announcements providing a countdown to the performance. We were sat to the right of the stage on the front row of the balcony which provided an excellent vantage point, though it was a tad alarming nipping to the loo mid performance in the dark as it was only a low barrier preventing a significant fall.
It was self-evident that this was a huge event for the band as they had their families in attendance and at two hours remains the longest ever show I have seen them play. They finished their main set with ‘2 Rights Make 1 Wrong’ and ‘Glasgow Mega Snake’ and then on their second encore played their 20-minute opus ‘My Father, My King’. Subsequently they didn’t play this outro track for many years, but they have rebooted it on recent tours.
Three years later, Gill and I were in the same Kensington area and I became aware of a mini festival taking place. So, in the grounds of the nearby London Imperial College we sat in the sunshine and witnessed a set by the Fabulous Boogie Boys. They were a seven-piece band led by Sarah Warren and the other six members donned in red zoot suits, they played an entertaining set of lively covers of relatively obscure tracks from the 1940s/1950’s.
