So after having no particularly exciting offers for my Saturday evening I elected to tag along with my younger brother and a few of his friends to the NME awards tour at Brixton. Being that it was quite the last minute arrangement we were unable to buy tickets legally so decided to hedge our bets and try and wangle a few out of the charming touts.
I headed straight from work in the leafy suburbia of Blackheath to Brixton by a bus and then a train and then a tube with many thanks to the 'planned engineering works' that seemed to be affecting just about every journey we attempted to take. We arrived at the station and approached the nearest looking shifty character that we could see and were quoted £50.00. Having already agreed not to pay more than £30.00 we chose to try our luck else where. This seemed quite a difficult task, tickets seemed thin on the ground and prices remained high. After traipsing along Brixton high street for about half an hour I was feeling pretty frazzled. I noticed a man leaning against a nearby shop doorway clutching three cans of K cider and sniffing an unknown substance off his hand. I was pretty close to joining him, when a wonderful unknown member of the public offered us one ticket for free! Sweet joy.
We set off for the nearest tout with a renewed sense of passion. However ticket prices remained the same. We decided to accept defeat reasoning that after having one free ticket, it balanced things out a little.
The rest of the gig was extremely enjoyable; The drums were passable, The Big Pink loud, Bombay Bicycle Club haunting and The Maccabees beautiful (as is their lead singer)
Became slightly bitter on later finding out some friends who we met up with had paid £15.00 each for their tickets but this was later forgotten after several million pints and a few jagerbombs at the delightful 'The rest is noise'. Somewhere I would definitely visit again, anywhere that plays the Maccabees alongside Beenie man is alright by me.
