Secret Alexisonfire Gig
August 24th, 2006 at 20:09
Yesterday was the most incredible of days. It was completely unexpected, yet had the most amazing turn of events.
The day before yesterday, I was at the pub with Bouff, JD, Matt and Beth (this all sounds very normal so far), when Matt recieved a phone call from Radio 1’s The Lock Up, telling him that’d he’d won tickets to a SECRET GIG of emocore band ALEXISONFIRE, that was an ALBUM LAUNCH and was taking place ON A BOAT IN THE THAMES. Seriously.
“Unfortunately”, Beth couldn’t go with him, so it was up to me to fill her small feminine shoes. No! Not in that way, sicko.
The plan was simple: drive to London, catch the tube, then catch a boat full of celebrities and party harder than Andrew WK on his birthday.
We started out at about half two in the afternoon, and we just had to head straight down the M1. After a small hitch that involved, erm, going northbound, we eventually got going towards London. The most exciting part of the motorway leg of the journey was Matt’s car going over the 89,000 miles mark, and a woman who kept going slowly and moving lanes erratically just to piss us off.
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We didn’t have a satnav, as Matt’s car doesn’t have a cigarette lighter to provide power, nor did we have a paper map of the Mill Hill area of London close up. Matt claimed it was alright as he “used to live there”. I asked the 19 and a half year old how long ago he lived there… “about 19 years ago”. Great.
Against all odds, we found the station.
Next, we got the tube from Mill Hill East on the Northern Line. For a while, we sat opposite a man.. or at least I think he was a man. Assume ‘he’ to be the neutral gender ‘he’, as opposed to an endorsement of the opinion that he was of that gender. He was wearing earrings. Like proper women’s earrings, not just pirates or homosexual’s earrings. He had one of those faces where the gender is completely impossible to distinguish too. Having been in the area for literally only a few minutes though, and having already encountered a nutter, we knew we were in London.
We took the Nothern line to Embankment, which is right next to the Thames, only down a bit from Parliament and the London Eye. It was here I bought a bottle of Coke- central London is that exciting. We (figuratively) hopped back on to the Tube and took the circle line to Monument.
The boat was moored up nearby, and after waiting about half an hour, we were finally allowed on board.
The bar on the boat had a tab, meaning that we got free drinks… at least for the first few minutes until it ran out. Then we had to pay. The boat set sail and went east along the Thames- past all of the famous landmarks…. St Paul’s, The London Assembly, some sort of warship, the Tower of London, and Canary Wharf. It even went under Tower Bridge. I thought it was incredible- and I took hundreds of pictures like some sort of awful tourist. Matt meanwhile was less impressed. “LOOK!“, I’d cry, “it’s the London Assembly! That’s where they present the London opt-out on the Politics Show from!”, “so?”, he said with a look of disdain.
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At the back of the stage there was a pile of guitar cases and other musical things- it was so tempting to throw them overboard, as it would muck up their excellent plans.
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Just after we passed Canary Wharf, Alexisonfire took the makeshift stage. “This will either be one of the best things we’ve ever done, or one of the worst mistakes we’ve ever made”, the lead singer said.
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24 hours earlier I never thought that I would be rocking out on a boat in central London to some excellent hardcore. It was very excellent. Because of the smallness of the “venue”, there was no barrier or anything, and the band were quite couped up, but incredibly close to the audience. I was only the other side of quite a modest speaker (by gig standards) to the lead guitarist. During the last song, one of the members in the approximately 50-strong audience started crowd surfing. It was pretty incredible given the confines of the boat. This means that I’ve seen both Snakes on a Plane and Crowdsurfing on a Boat within a week of each other.
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They only played a relatively short set, but it was damn good. And it was on a boat. On the The Thames. I feel the need to repeat it: I was at a celebrity boat party. Dashboard Confessional was also there, apparently.
The funniest thing was, that despite me never having met any of the people on the boat before, all of the emokids there still looked familiar, because they all look the same. It was very odd- a bit like the football cunts phenomenon, I think.
It was amazing. Have I said that yet?
On the way home, there was a man on the tube who it was unclear whether he was a proper nutter, or whether he worked at some sort of tourist attraction. He was dressed up like an old-timey man, from perhaps the 16th century, and had feathers in his hat. Excellently, he paid careful attention to detail, and kept his money and mobile phone in a old-fashioned pouch rather than a wallet. The only hints of modernity about him were the Haribo he was eating, and the magazine he was reading.
We had quite a scare on the way back. The Northern Line, for some insane reason, has several branches. We discovered that the Northern Line can be caught from Bank station… which is actually connected to Monument station. All of the trains coming through were destined for Edgware, but we needed ones heading to Mill Hill East. In the end, we got on anyway and decided to change later, when we’d be at least nearer our destination. We got out at Euston and caught the next train along, which was going to High Barnet. We’d still have to change at Finchley Central, just one stop away from where we wanted to be.
When we reached Finchley central, none of the trains coming through seemed to be heading for Mill Hill East, and we (I) started to panic. I thought Mill Hill East would be closed. It’s not just that we were in the wrong part of London, but even if we got back to Mill Hill, because it was closed, the car park would be closed and we’d be stranded in London overnight. After a few scary minutes of me saying “fuck” a lot, and Matt explaining that he knew people in the area who could “put us up”, I began to worry more. Matt was remaining much more levelheaded and rational.
Thankfully, minutes later a Mill Hill train pulled up, and we got on as fast as possible. It had been a panic over nothing.
It was a pretty incredible day, all in all. Thanks for taking me as your bonus person, Matt!
Here’s a video I filmed of the first song. The one thing you want to hear in a musical performance, the sound, is buggered, because my camera has a rubbish microphone:
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