livid festival

tour info

reviews/comments

from jeff:

originally scheduled for a 45-minute set between machine gun fellatio (crap australian cabaret ensemble) and the dirty 3 (legendary australian instrumentalists), the band was forced to shorten their performance after a late start. no explanation was offered to the grumbling audience, but it appeared that some technical problems with one of the amps may have caused the delay. after playing perfect versions of 'helicon 1' and '2 rights', the band announce to the obviously disappointed crowd that they will be playing one more song. they then launch into a truly punishing rendition of 'my father my king', climaxing with a frenzied stuart tearing most of the strings off his tele and threading the surviors through the mike stand. the crowd cheers wildly and all is forgiven.

from ian potter:

we got to the tent the band were playing in nice and early, and four of us were determined to get as good a postion as possible, which as far as i was concerned had to be central as possible, as i wanted the ringing to be distributed evenly the next day! i was with a friend from new zealand who had come over specifically to see mogwai, and had never seen them before; having seen them at reading in 2001, i had a rough idea of what to expect. however, nothing could prepare me for what ive decided is the best set i have ever seen.

apparently the reason why the set was cut to 40 minutes was partly because an australian guy called dan brodie had overrun earlier, and also the band appeared to be having a few extra difficulties setting up. when stuart announced that 'mfmk' would be the final song, the crowd booed, more in disappointment than anything. he responded to this by holding up a bit of paper he had been handed, which read 'mogwai must finish by 6.10pm'. in the end, they still overran by five minutes. 'mfmk' was absolutely monumentous, and ended with stuart stretching his two remaining guitar stings over his mike, so that the neck was pointing upwards to the sky.

i guess partly the reason i consider this the best set i have ever seen is because i seriously doubt i'll ever see a set like it again; the time restrictions just seemed to make the band ever more focussed, and they put absolutely everything into the performance. i was absolutely blown away and consider myself very lucky to have been there...