So the Peter Doherty concert came and went without much excitement to be honest. The venue was interesting to say the least – Proud at Camden which is based in Stables Market, an old horse stables and hospital. The market is a nice place with an interesting selection of shops (read freaky in Mrs H3’s terms) and Proud is an art gallery and bar during the day; bar and music venue at night. The bar itself is interesting enough, playing an eclectic choice of music, the stables having been kept to provide pockets of privacy, each one with a widescreen TV to show the football (Chelsea were playing that night – sorry can’t remember who they were playing as it wasn’t Birmingham and it wasn’t a very inspiring game). We chose to sit in the one with the black leather seats and the big speakers – which I guess would be called the music area. There was also a room with a table football machine, one with a pole and disco floor and several others that I can’t really remember what was in them but you get the idea. Water was £2 a bottle which I guess is pretty standard for these sort of places.
Neither Mrs H3 nor I had bothered to check the venue out until the day when I looked it up on the net just before leaving work and discovered that the concert was scheduled to run until 2.30am. Now obviously that gave us a huge problem as we were parked at the O2 and the last tube leaves at about midnight and it’s a bloody long journey back to Mrs H3’s house on the night bus which would have meant probably getting home at about 6am. We sat in the bar watching the football and hoping that Peter would grace us with an early visit with club music after, but alas it was not to be.
He finally made an appearance at 10.45pm and launched into a similar set to the ones we’ve seen him do before, accompanied by Graham Coxon on a couple of songs and also – new to us – by a pair of ballerinas. Now I’d love to say that the concert was the best we’d ever seen, just Peter and his guitar (plus the guests) in such an intimate venue – and to be fair he was just as good as he’s been every other time we’ve seen him, but the ‘music room’ that the concert was held in was awful and severely depleted our enjoyment of the concert.
Now I’m usually quite happy in the smaller venues, although Mrs H3 tends to get a bit claustrophobic (she wasn’t awfully happy at Camden Underworld and thinks Half Moon is a little on the small side) but even I was having trouble in Proud. First of all the internet says that the capacity is for between 500 and 800 people (depending which site you read) however, I think that’s wildly optimistic. From what we could see (and admittedly being quite short that wasn’t much) the room isn’t much bigger than Half Moon’s 200 capacity space. And that was the problem. So many people were packed into the small area that it was almost impossible to move.
I’ve been to a few of Peter’s concerts now and I know two things – you don’t want to be down at the front or you end up covered in drinks and god knows what else that his mad fans throw at the stage and you don’t want to get caught up in the mosh when that gets going. The first we fortunately had no chance of doing, as crowded as the room was – the second we had no choice, because even pressed against the wall of the bar at the back of the room we were still in the moshing area.
Being somewhat on the short side my view of the stage was pretty much non-existent for most of the set as the stage is pretty low and there were a lot of tall people in front of me. I found this very annoying as I do at least like to get the occasional glimpse of the performer when I go to a concert. Finally I’d managed to secure a place right at the back, squashed up against the bar which afforded me a very occasional glimpse of Peter and his ballerinas (although I never did get to see Graham) when incredibly tall men happened to sway in the right directions (i.e. apart) and leave a sliver of a view.
Of course my position wasn’t the best. I was in the way of anyone trying to buy a drink – and there were many – and Mrs H3’s position was no better than mine. Add to that the lack of air from all those people squashed into such a small place and the whole thing became rather miserable.
To be honest it didn’t take much convincing for us to decide not to bother staying until the end of Peter’s set and instead try to make it back to the Jubilee Line for our last tube as he didn’t do anything different to what we’d seen before. Happily this turned out be the correct choice as he was only on stage for another five songs (which didn’t include Fuck Forever – and disappointingly for us there was no sign of the Wolfman either), which would have seen us stuck on getting the night bus and incredibly pissed off for having missed the tube.
My personal view of Proud is that they shouldn’t allow more than 300 people into the music room and they should raise the stage by a few inches to give us shorties who are stuck at the back at least some possibility of a view ... or better still arrange viewing in height order (with a strict no throwing policy enforced obviously).
The few photos of the evening have been added to the end of the slideshow of Peter's concerts below. They begin with the marvellous carved horse statues that are part of the restoration project that is taking place at Stables Market.
Anyway, tomorrow is the long-anticipated Ultravox reunion at the Roundhouse which I am very much looking forward to, even though I’ve been struck down with some strange summer cold or something (and no it’s not swine flu – just a sore throat, headache and just general miserableness).
We didn’t make it to the Headphone Disco in the end. Mrs H3 was ill – struck down with the same bug that I’ve now got I think – and as it didn’t start until 10.30pm and finished at 3am it gave us a similar problem to the concert with regards to getting home (neither of us wanted to drive to Islington). Having looked at the Facebook photos of the evening it seems I would have been about twenty five years older than every other person there so perhaps it’s a good thing we didn’t go after all.
Cinema...
On Friday evening we’re heading to the cinema to watch X Men Origins: Wolverine, the first of several films that we’ll be going to see in the near future. We’ve already booked our tickets for the Imax showing of Star Trek on the 27th May and of course I’m still on countdown for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Neither Mrs H3 nor I had bothered to check the venue out until the day when I looked it up on the net just before leaving work and discovered that the concert was scheduled to run until 2.30am. Now obviously that gave us a huge problem as we were parked at the O2 and the last tube leaves at about midnight and it’s a bloody long journey back to Mrs H3’s house on the night bus which would have meant probably getting home at about 6am. We sat in the bar watching the football and hoping that Peter would grace us with an early visit with club music after, but alas it was not to be.
He finally made an appearance at 10.45pm and launched into a similar set to the ones we’ve seen him do before, accompanied by Graham Coxon on a couple of songs and also – new to us – by a pair of ballerinas. Now I’d love to say that the concert was the best we’d ever seen, just Peter and his guitar (plus the guests) in such an intimate venue – and to be fair he was just as good as he’s been every other time we’ve seen him, but the ‘music room’ that the concert was held in was awful and severely depleted our enjoyment of the concert.
Now I’m usually quite happy in the smaller venues, although Mrs H3 tends to get a bit claustrophobic (she wasn’t awfully happy at Camden Underworld and thinks Half Moon is a little on the small side) but even I was having trouble in Proud. First of all the internet says that the capacity is for between 500 and 800 people (depending which site you read) however, I think that’s wildly optimistic. From what we could see (and admittedly being quite short that wasn’t much) the room isn’t much bigger than Half Moon’s 200 capacity space. And that was the problem. So many people were packed into the small area that it was almost impossible to move.
I’ve been to a few of Peter’s concerts now and I know two things – you don’t want to be down at the front or you end up covered in drinks and god knows what else that his mad fans throw at the stage and you don’t want to get caught up in the mosh when that gets going. The first we fortunately had no chance of doing, as crowded as the room was – the second we had no choice, because even pressed against the wall of the bar at the back of the room we were still in the moshing area.
Being somewhat on the short side my view of the stage was pretty much non-existent for most of the set as the stage is pretty low and there were a lot of tall people in front of me. I found this very annoying as I do at least like to get the occasional glimpse of the performer when I go to a concert. Finally I’d managed to secure a place right at the back, squashed up against the bar which afforded me a very occasional glimpse of Peter and his ballerinas (although I never did get to see Graham) when incredibly tall men happened to sway in the right directions (i.e. apart) and leave a sliver of a view.
Of course my position wasn’t the best. I was in the way of anyone trying to buy a drink – and there were many – and Mrs H3’s position was no better than mine. Add to that the lack of air from all those people squashed into such a small place and the whole thing became rather miserable.
To be honest it didn’t take much convincing for us to decide not to bother staying until the end of Peter’s set and instead try to make it back to the Jubilee Line for our last tube as he didn’t do anything different to what we’d seen before. Happily this turned out be the correct choice as he was only on stage for another five songs (which didn’t include Fuck Forever – and disappointingly for us there was no sign of the Wolfman either), which would have seen us stuck on getting the night bus and incredibly pissed off for having missed the tube.
My personal view of Proud is that they shouldn’t allow more than 300 people into the music room and they should raise the stage by a few inches to give us shorties who are stuck at the back at least some possibility of a view ... or better still arrange viewing in height order (with a strict no throwing policy enforced obviously).
The few photos of the evening have been added to the end of the slideshow of Peter's concerts below. They begin with the marvellous carved horse statues that are part of the restoration project that is taking place at Stables Market.
Anyway, tomorrow is the long-anticipated Ultravox reunion at the Roundhouse which I am very much looking forward to, even though I’ve been struck down with some strange summer cold or something (and no it’s not swine flu – just a sore throat, headache and just general miserableness).
We didn’t make it to the Headphone Disco in the end. Mrs H3 was ill – struck down with the same bug that I’ve now got I think – and as it didn’t start until 10.30pm and finished at 3am it gave us a similar problem to the concert with regards to getting home (neither of us wanted to drive to Islington). Having looked at the Facebook photos of the evening it seems I would have been about twenty five years older than every other person there so perhaps it’s a good thing we didn’t go after all.
Cinema...
On Friday evening we’re heading to the cinema to watch X Men Origins: Wolverine, the first of several films that we’ll be going to see in the near future. We’ve already booked our tickets for the Imax showing of Star Trek on the 27th May and of course I’m still on countdown for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
