Last week I was the grateful recipient of 2 tickets to an "exclusive" Gary Go gig for Wave 105 the local radio station in Southampton. It's not often that I can say I'm a winner but in this case I was - just please don't tell the lovely people at Wave 105 that I live nowhere near Southampton and have never listened to their radio station - I'm sure it's great though, and if you want to listen to it you can click here to visit their website.
So I went down to Southampton from London after work and I can say that they train was very quick but also stupidly expensive - good job the gig tickets were free really!!! The Soul Cellar is only about 10 minutes walk from the station (no one had thought to mention that it was 10 minutes walk up a very steep slope but you live and learn - work shoes and hill climbing is not the best combination) and while it does have a cellar, the gig was actually taking place in a room above ground. The venue was small, which made for a great atmosphere.
After a brief introduction from one of the Wave 105 DJs, Gary and his trusty guitarist Andreas took to the stage and played a stripped down set that lasted over an hour. I'd heard a rumour that they were only going to play for 30 minutes, so I think we (and they!) did pretty well. Gary served up some interesting versions of his songs, including a different take on his current single, Open Arms, which was apparently how the track started life. He played a mixture of tracks from his forthcoming album, include the fantastic 'Black and White Days', which I hadn't heard before and am very excited about, and some older material from his previous EPs. Overall Gary seemed very relaxed (the glass of wine he brought on stage with him probably had something to do with it...)and bantered to great effect with the audience - it was probably one of the funniest gigs I've been to - and I think he bought himself a room full of new fans from the South Coast.
There were a couple of wrong notes here and there, and the odd forgotten line (or as in the case of Twitter-inspired track 'Heart Balloon', a whole forgotten ending) but it really worked on the night. The Take That support slots will require a higher degree of polish to make an impact on a larger stage, but in a smaller gig with excellent support from guitarist Andreas it was a really fun night. Plus it's the first time I've seen him playing an encore, reprising Wonderful in response to popular demand. WONDERFUL indeed.
Gary Go's debut album is out on May 25th
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