Institute of Contemporary Arts

DAY THIRTY-ONE: Kasabian and The Dead 60s

Date: 31 July 2007

No Need To Magnify: Kasabian's Tom Meighan shares a personal moment with his small audience

Please excuse if this is not the most scintillating way of reading about what was clearly a FABULOUS, AMAZING, BRILLLIANT and SUPERB end to the ITunes festival last night; as you can imagine there was a big party to celebrate what has a been a spectacular (and long) month afterwards, and this little missy aint had much sleep.

Last night was a first class conclusion to what has been a mega month indeed.
Every day for 31 days, Sundays included, lucky lottery winners have been treated to see some of their favourite artists within the intimate space of the ICA’s theatre. You can just about squeeze 350 people in there in total, so you can imagine when huge stars like Paul McCartney, Amy Winehouse or the massive Kasabian take to the stage, it has been extremely exciting; the atmosphere would sell for billions if I could just work out how to stick it in a bottle.

From the publics point of view last night will have been a truly novel experience. As Tom Meighan said himself, the band have not played in such a small space for over two years. They have been touring all over the world (‘we just got back from Japan’) and are put simply, ‘getting bigger and bigger.’ If any of the audience on Tuesday had been lucky enough to see the band before, it will most likely have been in some massive stadium or a festival somewhere where any details will have been viewed from the big screens either side of the stage rather than with natural eyesight. To see the expressions on the bands faces and hear subtleties of expression from Tom, Sergio Chris and Ian, from no more than a few heads away; well, it increased numerous heart rates, that’s for sure. And from Kasabian’s point of view, what a treat to be able to see and feel the vibe of their audience for a change. Just by bending over a foot or two they could reach out to the front row, and with a mere flick of finger and thumb, guitar picks could be sent out to adoring fans, and t-shirts returned with glee. I could tell Tom was being honest when he exclaimed ‘this is intimate’ ‘really nice’, ‘really special’, and for a band compared with Oasis and Stone Roses as much for their musical style as for their swaggering ‘cool’, they were remarkably friendly and involved. Tom wasn’t giving out an ‘am I bovvered’ attitude; he didn’t want the whole thing to end as much as the crowds. He stood and absorbed the moment for as long as he could, grinning all the while before leaving the stage.

So, a special night it was indeed. The crowds didn’t wait for the encore for the obligatory raising of hands and sheepish jump around at this gig. With upbeat, forceful tracks like Shoot the Runner and Reason is Treason as the second and third songs, people started going at it early and the crowd surges began. The ICA felt the coolest it had all festival. Hearing Tom shout out anything enough times in excited repetition makes it sound pretty cool, so the plentiful ‘Come one ICA’s!’ did just the trick. He definitely laid more emphasis on ICA than ITunes, offering words of respect to the venue and getting the audience to raise their hands to it. And when he blurted out less humble chat, showing a bit of the ego for which he has become renowned, ‘This is the last one so just enjoy it yeah?’ everyone loved this too. At the end of the day,  its comforting to see someone sure of what they do in this insecure, lost world (as so aptly described in Empire ‘We’re all wasting away’); and everyone loves a  little roguish charm it seems.

Following Reason is Treason we had Sun Rise Light Flies and Me Plus One, songs reminiscent of The Beatles in their psyhadelic phase but that merge into a heavier Northern monkey indie sound.  These tracks  kept spirits up before hitting us, wham, with Empire. This is my, perhaps predictably, favourite song from their overall collection. It has that certain something to it, that catchy central theme and epic revolutionary vibe that stays with you and gets you humming it or whistling it after hearing it, as I was, for the rest of my night. (And morning; it kept me company on my walk home at dawn…) But saying all this, the night didn’t drop down a notch after hearing it. Processed Beats followed and then a stream of excellent tunes that culminated in Club Foot and Stuntman which as you can imagine saw the whole place going wild.

When it ended, a bubbling audience filed out of the theatre including a few invited guests of Kasabian like the Soho Dolls who came dressed to impress and caused me to drag them into the café where we took some funny pictures (see gallery). Mischa Barton was tipped to come, no doubt the Kasabian boys asked that divinely beautiful creature to come too, but she never showed; her loss, without question. There were probably others there too, it was that kind of event, but I whisked off to after parties elsewhere where some rock history was being made. In one of the taverns in the Doon Bar on Trafalgar Square, on Tuesday the 31st of July, members of the Dead Sixties who had supported with panache earlier with their punk, dub ska sound (see gallery) were sitting with half of Kasabian, putting the world to rights and drinking the night away. Unfortunately an NME journalist had got there first so I can’t reveal what they were all waxing on about, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. If you had seen the concert, you had really seen it all, for where else do two great bands tell you, in the most brilliantly exciting way possible, what’s really on their minds? On stage of course, and this one had been a definite winner.



 Torie Speyer