Last weekend I went out to a GIG! An actual gig! "Gosh", you are probably thinking, "I wonder what gig it was? Probably something really underground and obscure that challenged the very boundaries of 'music' and definitely not a band he's seen HUNDREDS of times."
UM.
All right, it was The Just Joans who I went to watch, for their now SURELY TRADITIONAL annual spot at The Winter Sprinter at the Lexington. Spoilers: it was LOVELY.
I'd had quite a busy day ALREADY before arriving, as I'd been to leafy CHARLTON earlier in the day to see the mighty Peterborough United continue their radical new plan of WINNING games, and then to meet Mr S Hewitt for some FINE DINING before heading up the hill to The Lexington. When we went in we IMMEDIATELY bumped into PALS, notably Mr J Osborne and Mr R Kirkham, and there followed some delightful yacking away to people like it was the early 2010s or something when we used to do this sort of thing all the time.
Sadly that meant I didn't go upstairs until the other bands had finished but, after pausing for the DEFIITELY TRADITIONAL quick hello to Mr J Jervis on the merch stand, we settled ourselves in for what turned out to be a FLIPPING BRILLIANT gig. This year "The Joans" as we cool people possibly call them were in full band formation and as such were SURPRISINGLY FUNKY, although I don't know why I say "surprisingly" as they are like that pretty much every time I see them that way. I guess it's that you don't expect people who sing songs of SARDONIC MISERABLISM to ROCK OUT quite so much, and yet they continue to do so.
As ever they played THE HITS, and as ever they did them at the end with everyone singing along which I feel is the CORRECT way to do such things. There were also quite a lot of new songs too which sounded FAB, and it was also noticeable that Katie seems to be a) singing a lot more of them b) BELTING them out rather excellently and c) doing more of the Between Song Chat. It was GRATE!
Afterwards we milled around chatting to yet more chums, some of whom I hadn't seen for YEARS, before heading downstairs to find myself in a SCENE FROM HECK. The Lexington has a club night upstairs straight after the gigs on Saturday, so the downstairs was PACKED with a room full of Indie Types who'd just come out of the gig and also a room full of Other Types who were waiting to go into what I assumed to be a DREADFULNESS-THEMED DISCO upstairs. Mathematicians will note that that is TWO rooms full squashed into one room, so I decided to end on a high note and just go home.
It was a VERY high note though, as the gig has been ACE. I look forward to doing exactly the same next year!
