Piggyback Home

Not only does L go to the physio on Tuesday, she also has the day off work. So things must be bad. The physio sends her to her GP to request an X-ray saying she might have a stress fracture. I meet her off the bus at the QMC in case she needs a piggyback home.

Despite her current injury woes she’s thinking ahead to a new sporting career in open water swimming. We even have a new ‘Aqua Park’ near us called Spring Lakes that allows open water swimming where she could train. Although it’s a perhaps a bit chilly at the moment.

They even have a dog splash area and I assume, based on the huge amount of splashing when he disappears through the forbidden fence on Wollaton Park, that the Lad can swim. So they could train together.

In the evening I have my second gig of the week. 

I was looking forward to seeing Bryde tonight, who was supposed to be supporting, but Daniel Steer explains that he has been asked to stand in at short notice. So short notice it seems that he’s had to turn up without his band. So it’s just him with a guitar and a piano.

Steer has been around for a while. First as lead singer of The Quails then with These Reigning Days, who are now known simply as Reigning Days and I think are still going, just on a break while Daniel promotes his first solo album. His latest work is produced by Feeder guitarist Tommy Gleeson.

He doesn’t disappoint apart from not being Bryde obviously and apart from not having his band with him, which just makes me want to see his full band show.

The thing about seeing Feeder twice in twelve days is whether anything will be different. The band have a history of playing shorter sets at Rock City due to the earlier curfews at the Nottingham venue, hence my visit to Leeds earlier in the tour.

While Leeds did indeed get the longer set on their previous tour that isn’t the case tonight. Kick off is moved from the 8:45 start it has been at most of the dates to 8:00 tonight to cope with the venue’s club night. That still leaves a full two hours of playing time if the band make use of it and that they do.

They even add two songs to the set from what I saw at Leeds. There’s the return of ‘Universe of Life’ which I am largely ambivalent to, but I know that Grant Nicholas absolutely loves playing it, and slightly annoyed because they place it between ‘Come Back Around’ and ‘Insomnia’ which were such a breathtakingly double act in Leeds. Though as I’ve practically chained myself to the front barrier where I intend staying and not getting sucked in to the mosh this time, it doesn’t matter much to me personally what happens behind me.

Talking of the ‘mosh pit’, which can be a rare beast these days. There was a bit of a disagreement when some folk tried to get the mosh going early to ‘Fear of Flying’ amid heavy resistance from those wanting a more statuesque experience down the front. It caused the band to pause briefly to see what the fuss was about. Those resisting the mosh won that particular battle but not the war, which was over when the aforementioned ‘Come Back Around’ hit a little later causing a major realignment of the troops down the front. I do feel that the bands should set out their stall early and play songs in an order that gets the mosh going as soon as possible to save on these types of squabbles.

The other addition tonight was the return of the always excellent 'Yesterday Went Too Soon' which appeared as a wonderful back-to-back duo with the equally excellent 'Turn'. Hearing those two tracks played together made my night. Given the positive reception received by these two lower profile hits from the past it’s a little frustrating we don’t hear them more often.

The band now seem to have a settled five-piece line up which has enabled more songs to be learnt which will hopefully lead to even further diversity on future tours and the digging up of more forgotten gems.

They have a lot of back catalogue to plunder plus I'm sure Nicholas has plenty more new songs he's going to write too, so it’s good to see that 24 song 2 hour sets now seem to have landed and not before time. They seem to be preserving their stamina and his voice by hitting a nice rhythm of two nights on, one night off.

‘Comfort in Sound’ is one that has been reintroduced this tour apparently due to the influence of guitarist Tommy Gleeson, who is a relative newcomer to the Feeder live show but is now in his third year with the band. Tommy is a session musician extraordinaire also being a producer (see Daniel Steer above), and a songwriter as well as a regular performer. So he knows his stuff and he deserves a big shout out as I think he’s made a real difference to the Feeder sound live. I will just put it out there that he’s the best second guitarist they’ve ever had.

There’s still no ‘My Perfect Day’ though, which I suspect they’re saving for London. I really must get down there for a London date sometime, it usually seems to pay dividends. I’m still not over them playing the epic oldie ‘Shade’ down there on the Generation Freakshow tour and it’s not been seen since.

Overall they play a good strong set tonight pulling in much early material along with a ton of stuff from their new album ‘Tallulah’ including what has fast become my favourite 'Shapes and Sounds'. 

This does mean that several more recent songs that have been set regulars have gone but it is no bad thing to diversify a bit. Although with nothing played tonight from the three albums that span the period between 2005’s Pushing The Senses and 2016's 'All Bright Electric', Nicholas will have campaigns on his hands for three missing albums if he’s not careful rather than the just the one for regularly ignoring the ‘Silent Cry’ album from 2008 that he keeps saying he’s going to rectify... Who’d be lead singer of a band with such a big and impressive back catalogue?

(Wednesday 20^th November)

Finally In Cement

This morning I take the Lad for his first morning stroll. He didn’t want to go at first but he quickly got the hang of it. This is on the old ‘Doggo’ route, so in some ways it’s a bit of a tear jerker and like Doggo, I think he’s going to be a sniffer.

L takes him for a walk first walk with her in the evening. I remind her to open the wine to breathe before she goes out.

Tonight, I make the long-ish drive up to Leeds because Feeder are out on a big tour to celebrate the 21st anniversary of their first release, 25 years of existence and last year’s ‘Best Of’ collection. They have promised to dig deep into the ‘Best Of’ to dust down some of the classics they haven’t played for many a year.

I’d booked tickets for the ‘warm up’ show in Lincoln last week to see if they were going to make good on that promise but sadly that show was snowed off. So instead, with tickets already for Nottingham's Rock City on Friday, I thought an extra trip to Leeds was in order and because I also suspect the Academy in Leeds will get a longer set than curfew crazy Rock City.

The support bands are Sweet Little Machine and Team Picture. Feeder have been offering their support slot up to local bands and tonight they have teamed up with Kerrang! Radio to offer two of them.

I miss the former but the latter, dressed as some sort of toy soldiers, are eclectic knob twiddlers and guitar pedal geeks if you like creating an almost psychedelic sound. It’s a slightly obscure mix of sounds that might take them somewhere but might not. Good luck to them.

Feeder meanwhile don’t disappoint, playing 24 songs and clocking five minutes over two hours on stage. This was the biggest Feeder show I've ever seen. Of course they played all their big hits as usual and opened with ‘Feeling A Moment’. Never a great favourite of mine and I’ve never been too sure about it as an opener either but I guess it gets it out the way. From there onwards they really rocked.

The crowd took a while to get going but they got there eventually. The big question though was what were the band going to dig deep for. Sadly there isn’t time in the set to give new mini album ‘Arrow’ a fair hearing and only ‘Figure You Out’ features but you can’t have everything.

The first nugget of gold was ‘Piece by Piece’ which is so rare that despite being a serial Feeder gig goer I’ve never heard them play it live before. Criminally it wasn't even played on the Echo Park tour despite coming from that particular album, so it has been a very long time coming. It was just WOW.

However the main meat of their back catalogue digging came towards the end of the main set, after the band had done another first and taken a mid-set siesta after playing ‘Tender’ or was this just to get Grant Nicholas’s cat Bamboo up on the big screen. Don’t ask.

The meaty highlight was a trio of tracks back-to-back from the bands début full LP ‘Polythene’ from 1996. First was punchy début single ‘Stereo World’, then the illusive legend that is ‘My Perfect Day’ which was dedicated to Jon Lee and then my beloved ‘Cement’. ‘Cement’ being the track that got me into Feeder all those years ago and unheard live by my ears since 2001 (that 'Echo Park' tour again) where incidentally they also played ‘Stereo World’ before retiring it. It was so terrific to hear both live again after 17 years.

The Polythene pair were included in an audience vote for which only hard core fans need apply along with Silent Cry’s 'Who’s The Enemy' from 2008. A rather unfair choice as the excellent but not well known ‘Who’s The Enemy’ could do with the exposure.

After the usual jump around to ‘Buck Rogers’ the band return to play a five song encore that really wound the 'casuals' up who had been shouting for the closing ‘Just A Day’ since about the third song of the evening. We all love a bit of ‘Just A Day’ of course but sometimes you wish they're throw it in early so then the rest of us can then enjoy the rest of the set in peace.

First Nicholas aided by Tom Gleeson on guitar played an acoustic ‘Silent Cry’ before Dean Deavall joined them to add keyboards to ‘Children of the Sun’. The pace is gradually being ramped back up and next is the always epic but not always present ‘Yesterday Went Too Soon’. It is immense, as ever.

Now guys you can go mental to ‘Seven Days in the Sun’ and ‘Just a Day’.

It was possibly the best set I've seen Feeder do for 15 years and well worth the long drive. Now to Nottingham, where sadly they may have to trim the set a little due to the strongly enforced early curfew there.

(Tuesday 13^th March)