crazybobbles

Dear Mr / Ms Seat C42,
You probably don’t know me but I know a little bit about you, you had purchased a lovely ticket to see Guillemots play at the lovely Barbican Hall on Wednesday 26th November, you had booked seat number C42, it was the second row of the hall and had an amazing view of the band, the problem was that you weren’t able to attend the gig, which is a pity because the gig was amazing. Hopefully this letter will fill you in a bit more about the gig which I happened to attend coincidently.

I booked the ticket a few weeks ago, trying to ensure that I avoid buying the premium £22.50 tickets and sticking to just the cheap £13 tickets with restricted view, I deliberately chose the left side of the stage and hoped that I’d get an awesome view of the band. Turns out that wasn’t the case, I sat on G70, the extreme left hand side of the stage and the view was definitely restricted (more on that later). You’re lucky that you were able to fork out the full on price for an amazing seat near the front middle of the stage, pity you didn’t go though.

When I arrived at the venue I noticed a huge screen in the front of the stage, the programme listed two short films that were going to be played with the Guillemots performing behind the screen. It was sort of an experimentation thing with music and short films merging together. I don’t know if you knew that or not, I know I didn’t, I just turned up thinking they were just going to play a gig. It got me worried a bit that all they were going to do was perform behind a screen and then just leave. I couldn’t see the first film because my seat was so horrifically far and the screen was at an extreme angle, hopefully this diagram explains it a bit more:

So yeah, the first film was apparently an animated love film which they played backing for, I didn’t understand it at all due to the view I had, the only pro to it was that I was able to see the band behind the screen perform during the film (wasn’t that interesting but whatever). It was frustrating watching the film and my eyes got sore from struggling to see the screen. I eventually opted to sit in seat C48 to get a nicer view of the screen for the second film. The second film was about two guys who were trying to rob a bank in lrollerskates, you listen to their reasoning as to why they want to rob a bank and you follow them in their journey of escaping the police, there’s a twist in the end but you know, don’t think I’ll mention it.

The whole film performance was fun, everything was improvised on the spot and the music did fit with the short films. However I was too worried that I paid my £13 to just see two short films with Guillemots not actually playing their own songs but just improvise behind a screen. The programme only said  these two films and mentioned nothing about the band playing. It got me worried during the interval (which felt like the end of the entire show) but soon me and everyone else in the front area were booted out because they were taking down the screen, phew.

After demolishing the screen from the stage, I found a nice play to sit, I had in mind of buying crappy tickets and actually sitting in a fancier seat if someone doesn’t turn up (slowly you can see why you play an important role in this whole story). Anyway, I initially found seat C43 to be empty, I sat there for a bit and was later on confronted by a lady and her daughter who said I was on their seat, I apologised and struggled just a wee bit in explaining myself. The old lady said “are you supposed to be on seat C42″, she then explained that nobody was sitting there originally and I immediately answered “yes”. I quickly made up a lie and said I actually missed the entire film section despite sitting a few rows next to them during the movies.

It was nerve wrecking hijacking someone’s seat, you never know when a fan walks around your row with a member of staff, flashing their weak torch light on your seat number and then asking you to leave (it actually happened to me when I accidentally sat on seat G69, not G70), they’d probably give you a telling off if you were found sitting in a better seat. Fortunately all of them were false alarms, noone approached me. Eventually when the show started I assumed that you weren’t there anymore. I spoke to the people sitting next to me and gave them a stronger impression that seat c42 was mine when it wasn’t. I thought since everyone on the left knew each other as well as everyone from the right, I was safe to believe that this seat was reserved by someone who didn’t know either of the parties (otherwise they’d be going “where’s x?” “why’s he sitting on x’s seat?”

Anyway, on with the show. When they started setting up the stage I pretty much assumed that this is where they’ll be playing their proper show (with songs from their album and everything and not improvised short film music (it wasn’t bad, just everything was all instrumental and improvised). I saw a photographer wondering around the place taking pictors of the venue, she seemed a bit lost in what to do and was talking to the security folks and other bits and bobs. Luckily your seat was an amazing view for pictorising. Though there were people in front that would block the view, it wasn’t something a bit of cropping won’t fix (Sorry, I sound so ungrateful about your seat, it was an amazing seat!!!)

Oh pardon me for not mentioning this already, I like taking photos during gigs (if you haven’t already noticed from the photos I’ve attached on this letter). Lately I’ve been immersing myself in an abundance of gigs and have been smuggling my camera to every one of them to take photos and whatnot. I do feel silly not actually taking gig photography up officially (passes and whatnot) but I kinda like the thrill of smuggling cameras, it’s hard to explain. My camera has been through many venues the past few weeks, ranging from ickle venues like Metro, Borderline, and Brixton Windmill, to proper strict and huge venues like Shepherds Bush Empire, Brixton Academy, Royal Albert Hall and even Wembley Stadium. You can kinda say smuggling is my forté hehe.

On with the story, Guillemots came up on stage for the second time. They started off with Little Bear. The audience were quite tame but most likely due to the venue being quite a posh place, I even made sure I wore a nice fancy turtle neck to gig to play up as one of those posh people who go out to see random Ballets and Phillip Glass operas. They played quite a lot of new songs, sadly they didn’t play Annie, Lets Not Wait even though it was requested from the crowd (they considered it but said they wouldn’t do it, meanies). The music was relaxing and soothing (especially after my crazy gig the previous night seeing I’m From Barcelona), you could sit there for years The Barbican had amazing acoustics and the sound was more amazing when they made use of the grand piano on stage (they usually tour with keyboards).

Unfortunately the stage was set up in a way that you really couldn’t take photos of the band properly, Fyfe always had his back turned on you when he was playing the piano and there were quite a lot of monitors on the floor (the heads from the front row was another issue but whatever).

Another thing I only noticed later during the gig, Fyfe is left handed! Something felt wrong everytime I took a pictor of him, it only clicked halfway through. This was probably the first gig I’ve been to where I think taking photos from the right gave brownie points. Twas nice seeing a fellow left handed musician play on stage (granted I’m used to playing right handed guitars even though I’m left handed, probably easier).

Anyway more about the song, I’m probably boring you about photography, they played Get Over It which was nice and upbeat, We’re here, Made Up Lovesong#43, Red Wings and a host of other new songs. My favorite was more likely Trains to Brazil and the finale Sao Paulo. Here’s a video of Trains to Brazil:

I do apologise for the quality of the video, i held the camera right up against me meaning I wasn’t aiming properly, the camera policy is pretty strict (even though they don’t check your bags) so things had to be done very discretely and at a minimum (otherwise they’d tell you off silly). When they played Kriss Kross, the bassist and guitarist all sat with Fyfe to play the song on the piano, it was pretty hilarious, they got the timing wrong the first time and then asked the crowd to count them off (and to do that they had to count us off to count them off).

During Sao Paulo, they got an old man up on stage to do some crazy assed bin lid drumming which was fun, Fyfe would then exit the stage and drum around the entire hall. They even had a wind machine going on (you had to turn it round and round to get it to make crazy assed sounds which was cool). After vacating the stage, Fyfe came back once more and played Blue would be Blue on an ickle portable keyboard. It was heard warming as the studio version which was nice :). After the end of the show I quickly spoke to the guitarist and asked him to get me the setlist, he kindly did so and I shook his hand for a good show and thanked him for the setlist (nom).

So yeah, it was an amazing show, all thanks to you! If you were here I’d give you a proper man or lady hug for such an amazing seat. I felt cheeky at not only being able to smuggle cameras on stage, but to also ninja myself into pretty neat seats (done this during a Regina Spektor gig too where I bought awful seats and went to the front anyway).

Anyway, this letter is getting too long so I shall end it. Hope you had a lovely evening that night. Thanks again for the seat

Yours Sincerely
crazybobbles