Just to watch him die...

(this really should have been posted in the first week of October...)



Ladies and gentlemen, welcome, to the loudest acoustic evening of your lives...

The Airborne Toxic Event's Mikel Jollett didn't actually say this in Edinburgh last week but he might just as well have...I think the acoustic guitars maybe lasted until about midway through the second song when they were ditched in favour of the full on post-punk-Jam-Clash-U2-if-they-were-any-good wig-out.

My god (that'll be Billy Connolly or Chic Charnley then) this lot are good. That perhaps drags understatement into a whole new sphere. The Airborne Toxic event are fantastic: energetic, tuneful, melodic, exciting, inspiring, grinning, bouncing, anthemic, clever, funny, mesmerising, throbbing and loud. In short, absolutely everything you could ever want in a band.

Any band, yes, any band who have the sheer cajones to segue from their own "Missy" into Springsteen's "I'm on Fire" then into a rockabilly/punk version of "Folsom Prison Blues" has got to be worth seeing. The energy of the Cash cover in particular reminded us all where Johhny Rotten and co. got their ideas from. In my mind's eye, as I watched Mikel and the gang, all I could see was this:
















Really. That good.

Obviously I could go on and on and do a full gig-review and all that kind of thing but really, for a flavour of just how fantastic they were (and are) the other fans who've seen them over the last year or so provide a great variety of positivity here.

One reviewer, though, reminded me of part of the evening which should be adopted by other frontmen at gigs: one particularly talkative punter near the front was chatting all the way through the opening couple of numbers and clearly, in such an intimate setting, was making himself heard by everyone from the drummer to the stewards at the back of the hall. Mr. Jollet proceeded to lob a plectrum and a volley of abuse in his face much to the delight of the crowd - "that's the great thing about Scotland, you either wanna love someone or beat their f***in heads in!"

Yup. The Man In Black would be proud, after all, Johnny shot a man in Reno for less...