Sunday-style (i.e. Bank Holidays - days of enjoyment which everyone cheers) gigs rock ass. Especially if you make good use of the day. We got to Birmingham around half past four, with doors opening at 7ish. This allowed us to attempt to find unshit bars and swanky restaurants (failure: Hogshead, Pizza Hut) to get pissed and have some decent scran (Success: Beer, Guinness, Turbo Shandy, er..Pepsi Max, and Pizza, Potato Wedges, Salad) and generally become highly relaxed. Top banana.

We eventually headed off to the 'Birmingham Carling Academy', sexily placed just below Argos Extra, but in it's favour it did have a cinema style 'MON: YEAH YEAH YEAHS' classic old-school thingy on the front, so props restored.

We got a) in, b) drinks, and c) in position without knowledge of who the support band(s) were going to be. First up was a hairy fellow with a lab coat, a guitar, some crayzee fx pedal malarkey and a penchant for dem blooz. I didn't realise at the time, but it was in fact Devendra Banhart, who I'm only fleetingly aware of via a few compilations and stuff. He was quite interesting, hardcore blooz inflooences, but his voice was interesting and the fx use was very creative, nice use of delay etc..hmm...grreat.

Next up were The Locust, who played their classic hits 'High Maintenance Libido, Bring the Whle Family', 'Skin Graft at Seventy-Five Miles Per Hour', 'Fixed Companionship, Ghost Town Irrationality', 'Well I'll be a Monkey's Uncle', 'Halo of pubic hair and earwax manufactured for the champion in all of us', '23 lubed up schizophrenics with delusions of grandeur' and 'psst is that a halfie in your pants?'. All of which sludge/grind/death/speed/roar-core malarkey aggrieved da kidz somewhat, who decided to boo 'em heartily. As you might expect from the song titles, there is an element of humour in them, which was revealed when they barracked the crowd with such heckles as 'you'll catch up with our shit in a couple of years, douchebags!' and 'you fucken cahntz!', before the drummer proceeded to vomit into a pint glass and threaten to throw it into the audience, before throwing it over his own head and proceeding to plough into their encore. Classic.

And then, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs...

I've not had such high expectations for a gig for a while. I hadn't seem 'em before, and the album was one of my faves of 2003. The venue was good, great sound and very full. I didn't hear many brummie accents ('Oy rilly loike Kazoo I fink shays love loy'), and due to the appearance of the venue, I constantly thought I was at the old De Monfort Uni Student Union Arena place. Eeeh by gum.

We (me, Pablo, Ted and Chris) positioned ourselves slightly in front of halfway back and slightly left of centre of the floor. It was a decent view (certainly near enough when The Locust were on), but as the set unfolded I couldn't resist the urge to slink forwards a bit, you know, just on the offchance of 'Art Star' turning up somewhere.

As it happened the opener was a newie (I think), and a good'un at that. They then clunked into 'Rich' which rocked ass. Miss Orzalek was in full dynamic feisty stage prowler mode, although she did hide her gusset with a vaguely ladybirdesque catsuit with red accoutrements style outfit in the second half of the show. Nick Guitar Dude was quite transfixing too - it's good to see someone (well, someone other than The Locust) giving their guitar a sound seeing to on stage for a change.

Other highlights were a storming 'Man', a wonderful 'Our Time' (with comedy northern 'It's ow-er taime sherweet beh-beh' bloke-in-the-crowd assistance) a pant-wettingly good 'Art Star' (yay!) and an absolutely gobsmacking so-good-i-nearly-cried-coz-i-was-finkin-baht-me-beyatch 'Maps'. Beautiful.

At the end I was sweaty as fook but happy as Larry, despite the lack of 'Pin', the only 'oh well' of the night really. Superfantastique! Oh, hang on, that's next Sunday intit?...

But then I prolly wouldn't recognised ya without yer pulling yer top down at the front in that coquettish manner of yours. My review of gig is here (does HTML work on this thing?).