Mystery Jets

I went out. I saw a band. I had a good time. I wrote about it in a gonzo esque style. Long live the good Doctor Gonzo

 

We arrived at the gig in a timely fashion. We managed to hold onto basic time keeping skills in our differing levels of inebriated states. Although I had never attended any gig at The Soundhaus before, I knew the way from The Racehorse public house through countless excursions from countless drunken evenings before. Although my photographer was absent, presumed missing, this musical event would not wait for him to grace us with an appearance, which never occurred.

The room was somewhat small, even though it was longer than your average main hall. This wasn’t the main priority. This was to find the bar and get into a state to which we would thoroughly enjoy the music that would be blessing our ears for the first time live. Though this didn’t go completely to plan, as you shall find out.

We found the bar and procured our poison, though probably too much considering the afternoon of consuming countless foul tasting beverages in many of the town’s most easily accessed pubs. I, myself, was already far past any state of enjoying the kind of music that would be showcased on that precious evening. However, once you get into the tragic routine of drinking for the sake of drinking, it is far worse to stop than it is to continue. This I knew from terrible experiences of ‘I’ve had enough’ syndrome, where, as soon as the evil beverage stops touching your throat, the carbonated soft drinks neither quench your thirst, nor stop the horrors that manifest themselves in the oesophagus and stomach.

The idea of drinking vast amounts of liquids has never been one I have been particularly fond of, but in the pursuit of making this an experience that couldn’t be equalled, I made the decision that an afternoon of drinking was probably best for intensifying my senses, and so got to work soon after 1pm, a time we all deemed to be acceptable for consumption of such potentially fatal beverages.

I heard the sound of twanging guitar strings, and some sort of thumping bass, and assumed that this must have been some sort of support band trying to stimulate an uninterested audience into submission. No one was interested. We were here for one reason, and one reason only; to see Mystery Jets.

After twenty minutes, the sound of applause filled the room, probably as a sign of gratification that the band had finally ceased playing and were making a swift exit from the stage.

Another ten minutes seemed to drag at my soul as the second support band set up their equipment, ready to continue to onslaught of poor music played by amateurs designed to make the audience erupt into a manic frenzy, with a desire for real music that remained unquenched. We were like addicts waiting for a fix that could only be delivered by the synth enveloped goodness of the main event.

Although it has to be said that this second support band were better than the first, and probably added to their small following that evening, they relied heavily on a vast collection of over rehearsed covers in order to keep the rabid dogs that was the audience at bay.

They left the stage with a sense of urgency that can only be compared to that of a small male fleeing from his own insecurities, only to find them faster, and indeed larger, than he is. The appeal of pretentious ‘I am the next Peter Doherty’ front men is one I, to this day, have never understood. They seem to attack you with purposefully badly performed slurring vocals and an attitude that none can ever deem attractive. Is this the state of the music industry, where people feel they have to emulate heroin addicts in order to get some sort of following?

Finally, after a long evening of terrible music, ill tasting beverages and the drunken lambs that haunt music events with fabricated drama and illogical urgency, two things happened. The first was relatively un shocking, and that was that the Mystery Jets finally donned the stage, looking a little too like everyone else to be aesthetically pleasing. The second, more shocking, event was that I realised that my cohort of drunken, pretentious students had disappeared from view, and in fact, from the venue itself. It was then that it struck me. Through all of my musings, and self narration of the evening, I had neglected them. When I found them, two of them were talking of walking for some sort of food, as this is one of the cravings one gets when unsatisfied musically and under the influence of one of the last legal drugs, and the rest had decided to expel the drug from their system in highly unflattering ways behind buildings. I made the decision to leave them to their own devices, knowing full well my help was neither needed nor wanted by any of them. That was the last time I saw them that night, though they remembered as much about what they did as I do.

It was at this point I realised not only had I drank too much of the liquid, but that I was missing a vital musical experience. So I turned and made my way through the housing estate back to the well concealed entrance of Soundhaus. I got in just in time to hear the song I had come primarily to hear, although I had missed the start due to the annoying behaviour of a doorman and his attempts to prove I was too drunk to re enter the club. It has to be said that I am of the group that when asked to prove that they are sober enough, spouts useless information that is irrellevent with the goal of confusing the questioner into forgetting what his/her purpose initially was, and convincing them that someone who was ‘too drunk’ wouldn’t be able to recite such information without immense thinking time.

The song in question, ‘Two Doors Down’, was better live than it was on their album. This was mostly due to the album version being over produced by sound engineers who haven’t the slightest idea of how the song is meant to sound, only how to sell the song to the masses of naïve children who embellish over produced music that they get fed by official releases. These children have no idea of the value of bootlegged material, and as such are primarily musically retarded.

Shortly after the song finished, I felt somewhat faint. This was most probably caused by the alcohol consumption, and not due to any connection with the song in question. However, after another pint of the foul tasting concoction, my stomach settled and I felt better. Checking the time, I decided it was best if I left before the set disappointed me. I am of the mindset that it is better to leave whilst the going is good than staying ‘til the end and seriously destroying any belief you had in live music.

As I left, I heard someone shout my name. It was one of my fairly massacred cohort. Far from expelling foul liquids, she seemed somewhat chirpy and asked if she could sleep on my floor. I obliged and we walked the long walk back to my humble abode.