Blog

Friday May 02 2008

Kooks tour - Brixton Academy - May 1st

Our interview and acoustic session on George & Jim's breakfast show was broadcast this morning on WCRFM but we were out of radio range for that one so missed it but we'll try and bring you a few tracks from it online.
For those of you who've never been, Brixton is a colourful place and full of "characters". You'll get accosted with every step and a late night food run at McDonalds feels like you've walked into a scene from Star Wars' cantina. Tonight's gig was always intended to be like any other for us - just a bigger venue. Brixton is notoriously poor sound-wise for support bands because unless the room is full, the sound bangs and echoes around that big old ceiling like a pinball. To add to our concerns, tonight we had a new sound guy so we took a longer soundcheck than normal.
The gig was tight but we didn't fire on all cylinders. As expected the crowd was smaller for us in London than the rest of the tour and this was compounded by a fault on the tube. But to those of you who sang, applauded and danced, thank you.
Aftershow Andy Gill from the legendary Gang Of Four came backstage for a chat and we then spilled from the VIP area and back to our place with old friends and some of the Kooks crew for a messy night at the hands of a reggae party on a rooftop. All bedouin tents, pipes and cushions. Most of us woke up with strangers crashed in the rooms.