It’s always nice to have a freebie. Especially an unexpected one. And it’s surprising how many free nights out there are to be had in London if you look in the right places and have the right friends. Anyway, I was the grateful recipient of a spare ticket to the Album Chart Show recording on Monday, which seems to happen every week at KoKo in Camden.
A quick moan before I get started – I know I shouldn’t really as it was a free night out but even so – doors were supposed to open at 6.15pm so we turned up just before 6pm to hear the announcement that doors were pushed back an hour. And did I mention that it was snowing? Brilliant. I mean, they record this show every week, you’d really expect them to have a much better handle on how long things will take and when to tell people to arrive. It meant that when they finally let us in at about 7.30pm to see the first act on the bill, JLS, they had quite a cold and grumpy audience who weren’t particularly excited about all the clapping and cheering they were asked to do for pick up shots and the like. The delays continued all night, with JLS having to do some retakes because of technical difficulties (I felt quite sorry for them). Things were so delayed that I had to leave before final act The Courteeners made it on stage.
Anyway, back to JLS. They are one of my favourite outputs from the X-Factor phenomenon (NB. This isn’t saying very much – we were just grateful that it wasn’t Jedward) and I actually really enjoyed their performance. One of my compatriots was very unimpressed by the amount of miming going on, but they were doing some dancing that would have made singing impossible, and they did sing live for a few of the tracks where the dancing requirement was reduced, including an acoustic number accompanied by a guitar. The boys from the band came over really well – they chatted to the crowd in between songs (and yes it was mostly self promotion about their tour and new single but they didn’t have to bother as they obviously weren’t playing to their home crowd) and they really tried hard to get the audience going. I was pleasantly surprised and I may well be investigating a purchase of their album soon.
Next up was supposed to be The Courteeners, but a man-flu suffering Mika was pushed up the bill as he wasn’t at all well. He looked quite poorly but pulled out another ridiculously high-energy performance out of the bag. The man bounces round like he’s made of rubber, and you couldn’t hear anything wrong with his voice. You could see his extremely excellent band were making an extra effort to support him, and they managed 5 out of the planned 6 song set, including Relax, Blame it on the Girls, Grace Kelly, rain and Big Girls (the finale was due to be We Are Golden, but I guess that was a step too far). The crowd went mental for the guy – he had the benefit of a sympathy vote as well as being amazingly good. There was silver and gold confetti released from the ceiling during Big Girls (they seemed to like that at the Album Chart Show – JLS had the multi-coloured version at the end of their set. I can only assume it looks good on TV) which got EVERYWHERE, to the point that the last bit didn’t come off me until I had a shower the following morning. Nice.
As I already mentioned, I made a swift retreat once Mika was finished and missed The Courteeners. Having seen them support the Stereophonics back in 2008 I hadn’t been particularly struck by them but I understand from my friends who stayed to the end of the evening that they were rather good. I guess I’ll have to watch the show on Friday to find out!
This episode of Album Chart Show will be shown on Channel 4 on Friday 12th February at 11.20pm
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