whelan's is a nice, small dublin venue. it's split between two levels,
the normal ground floor (with bar at the back) and a balcony. the
ground floor holds about 350 i'd say, possibly a bit more. the stage
is about 3/4 feet off the ground. perfect place to see the gwai, so.
it seems mogwai had a bit of trouble getting over, as they only
arrived at the venue a short while before doors were due to open. i
overheard snippets of a drugs story - must have been the problem at
the border. anyway, luckily only myself and my friend were waiting
outside so there wasn't too much of a problem. they unloaded and set
up quite quickly, soundchecked with 'summer' and that was that. doors
opened about an hour late still, and we secured places at the front.
the wormholes soon hit the stage, having discarded their previous
slack-rock tendencies for a more krautrock-influenced approach. they
played a one song, half hour set, the bassist and drummer keeping a
steady slightly groovy & dubby rythym, with the guitarist eventually
going crazy and fucking some sounds up with manipulations of his
guitar neck and a primitive delay device; cool.
soon after, mogwai strolled nonchalantly onstage, john being the neat
one, dominic the skate one, martin the band t-shirt wearing one, and
stuart the crazy one : safety pinned tracksuit bottoms and a cardigan
any belle and seb fan would be proud of. these were the impressions
my first real live sight of mogwai on stage left me with.
summer came first, attempting (in vain, it must be said), to let the
chattering hordes know that there was, in fact, a band on stage.
afterwards stuart asked the crowd politely to keep it down a bit, as the bass
notes to herod brought coy smiles onto the faces of myself and my
surrounding gig goers : we knew what was coming.
you know what comes next : almost tribal unison pedal stomping and
ear shattering noise : lovely. two people behind me attempted to
mosh. why is it always me who gets these idiots in the back?
angels vs aliens was v. nice, providing the only vocals in the set
and stuart getting down on his knees at the end to play a
pre-positioned snare on the floor. afterwards i got one of the sticks
he was using, and it was wrecked!
a new songs greeted us next, it turned out to be christmas steps. the
bit (you know *the bit* - drums come in, guitars go 'ching' and
'chang') still remains the most shocking moment of my gig going
career. this was followed by another newbie - ex-cowboy.
katrien was remarkable for martin's drumming, but it became more and
more clear that the boys were not happy. there was constant talking
from the crowd, and i think they were having some problems with their
gear. stuart took the bass and sat on the floor for helicon 1 and
that and its counterpart were both, as expected, brilliant. mogwai
fear satan was down as the last song on the setlist, but it seems
they wanted to make a bit more noise (and i discovered from martin
over a year later, they were also having problems with the bass amp),
so they launched into stereodee instead. this i was not expecting, as
i had some doubts that they could recreate the cacophany of sound
onstage. i was wrong. blistering, perfect destruction. despite the
aural terrorism of all the guitars at this point, i think the most
incredible feat in this part of the set is performed by martin on
the drums, as i'm sure most of you who have seen it will agree. they
all left the stage seperately, and despite a few calls for an encore,
didn't return.
afterwards martin's mam started talking to me, and thankfully martin
soon arrived to save me. he was soon harassed by a young drunkard who
argued ferociously that they haven't got enough time changes (doesn't
he have *ears*?). it was clear that the time to exit had arrived, so
we did.
mogwai: kings among men