The Return Of My Bloody Valentine

It's 20 years since Isn't Anything. Fucking hell.

And I'm still as sprightly as the day it was released! Uh.

I have a mate who bought tickets for tonight but now cannot go due to last minute interview for a job down South that he can't get back from in time. He's away already so no point in asking for a swap, but if anyone has a spare for tomorrow that would otherwise be going in the bin, let me know please? He would pay, but has already paid for a Wednesday ticket he can't get rid of.

Isn't the surfeit of tickets due to only three gigs being announced to start with before tons more got added due to promoter greed following the quick sale of the first lot, meaning that lots of Londoners have tickets for out-of-town gigs they don't need to go to now?

ailsa, mail me offlist (starsandheroes at your friendly favourite search engine's mail service) - i have two spares for tomorrow which i can't shift - you chum's welcome to them if my "fence" in glasgow hasn't managed to get rid of them today already (the tickets are up there already so your mate will have to pick up tomorrow).

also, your theory re surplus tickets is 100% precisely what happened to me, so yes you're probably right!

Like, as if they were going to miss London out!

Yay, just found out my mate has got a ticket for me for tonight in Glasgow.

nonono mark, they announced like two london dates which sold out in seconds, but i managed to get glasgow tickets before they sold out, and then they announced a load more london dates, one of which i ended up going to, hence no longer need to go all the way to glasgow to see them, hence two spare tickets for glasgow, y'see?

ah.

bump for ailsa - let me know asap, apparently someone's close to buying both of my spares for tomorrow!

No, just go ahead if you can get money for them. I haven't mentioned this to him, and I hope he doesn't lurk on here (sorry Ewan, if you do!), but I'm sure he'll understand that you'd rather take money for them if necessary. Let me know via here if they don't go.

charlie: if you're reading, there's a chance that -- yes! -- malcolm middleton will take one of your tickets. not sure, though. i'll e-mail you too.

my spares have gone now i'm afraid... although surely resident pop luminaries get a free pass?

yeh, i imagine any pop luminaries might.

malcolm won't, though.

<ker-tish, boom>

Erm you guys, does anyone know anyone with any more spares for tonight? SOMEONE WHO SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS has JUST looked at our tickets and OMG they are for YESTERDAY! HELP!! HELP!! HELP!!!!

(this someone is NOT ME, all right?)

I am going to be off the internet in about half an hour - Grimly, since you're around on this thread, please be my ticket co-ordinator while I go and smack people round the head and I will see you in the pub later. I should be contactable by phone for most of the afternoon.

OMG!

Hope you can still make it!

What time were MBV on and offstage last night?

The Pastels are support tonight btw. On at 7.45pm according to the lady on the phone at the barras. She said mbv were on at around 9ish and it will finish by 11.

They were on about 9:20 when I went and I was outside about 11:05, but it did take bloody ages getting out of the venue, so they probably finished about 10:50. I got in at 8.05 and the support band were already onstage, but I heard they'd only played 1 song.

haha there's people over on the DFFD (ex Southern Lord) board complaining they weren't as loud as when they saw them nearly 20 years ago.

no, they're all just old and deaf now.

and the guys on DFFD are probably the same ;)

http://www.extrememortman.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/Rim%20Shot%20Johnny%20Utah.jpg

The gig was actually quite quiet, only when they got to the holocaust bit did it get loud. And it was very loud, but I was standing up the back and there it was not overwhelmingly so and I didn't need to make use of my earplugs. Ringing in my ears has subsided.

I thought the gig as a whole was a bit of a mixed bag. Some great moments but some of the songs I didn't feel were as good in the live setting because of the importance of the production on Loveless to lift the songs above the pedestrian and the inability to recreate that in the live setting was evident at times. Some very sloppy moments with the drumming speeding up and leaving the taped leads trailing behind for quite long spells at times as well. But "You made me realise" was pretty much flawless.

We got in. I loved it. No earplugs for me because I am hard as nails, though my collarbone, teeth, ribcage etc feel slightly more rattly than they did when I went in. Dull roar in ears at the moment (like I'm holding a seashell up to them), but anticipate no long term damage, if they still feel like that tomorrow I'll be very surprised. I stood by the door at the 20 minute noise-fest and laughed at hipsters running out with their hands over their ears, which was more entertaining than listening to shit going nowhere forever. Found myself getting bored at the end of "Soon" when I realised I'd been listening to exactly the same thing for about five minutes and it had stopped having any sort of effect on me, but other than that it was mostly cracking.

Dull roar in ears at the moment (like I'm holding a seashell up to them), but anticipate no long term damage, if they still feel like that tomorrow I'll be very surprised.

Better sorry than safe, of course.

;-)

Ailsa is hard, she refused my spare earplugs!
Great gig, thoroughly enjoyed it as did grimlyfiendish who i was stood with throughout. We were glad of earplugs. No ringing in my ears or anything. I could actually hear as normal outside. Those wax earplugs were awesome! The 20 mins of noise had the floor rattling like at a Sunn o))) gig. Its hard to say who are louder (except a sunn gig at this noise level lasts 90 odd mins. )
Was nice to meet everyone. Sorry i didnt get the chance to speak with anyone at the end, but i had to go find my mate who was hiding up the back somewhere.

I've never seen Motorhead but i bet they're still louder.

I figured since I managed Envy being so loud at ATP that Battles had to turn up the volume in the venue next door to be heard properly (and I'd seen Battles the night before, they were pretty loud themselves) without earplugs and no damage, that this would be a skoosh. And it was. It was the jangling to the body that affected me more than the actual effect on my ears, which are absolutely fine this morning.

Haha, I was wondering whether you'd use Envy as a comparison at some point.

Obvious one though, innit?

MBV were actually louder than Motorhead. OK, I was a lot younger then, and my ears may have lost sensation, but that would make me think MBV were quieter, wouldn't it?

It may have been the room as much as the sound system. My previous loudest gig ever was actually Harmony Rockets at the Brooklyn Anchorage - it's those boomy hollow round spaces that really do your ears in. While Motorhead were an open air gig.

they totally kicked my arse in glasgow. just stunning.

was relatively ambivalent but curious beforehand, and now I have the irritating evangelical zeal of a new convert.

Loudest gig I've been to is still JAMC in '98, but that was at a small venue, the actual volume was likely lower than MBV at Roundhouse but it deafened me for days. I couldn't hear my own voice after the gig. Hardly had any ringing in my ears the day after MBV, and I didn't use the earplugs.

I've never seen Motorhead but i bet they're still louder

i saw motorhead at the barras some years ago and they were nowhere near as loud (although kate's caveat, above, also applies, i guess!)

anyway: that was astonishing. just ... mesmerising. i actually took my earplugs out for the majority of it (thought you'd noticed that, herman!) but shoved them back in a couple of songs before the end, when there seemed to be a noticeable increase in intensity. we were roughly in the middle of the floor, a little towards the back: there is NO WAY i could have listened to the holocaust bit without plugs. as kate said upthread: you feel the thing. you don't need to hear every bit of it. i took the plugs out briefly at a couple of points to see what it sounded like; and i took them out again right for the very last bit (when they blast back into the YMMR beat etc), which was maybe a minute: that was pulverising enough.

maybe a slight ringing in my ears today if i'm honest, but nowhere near as bad as i've had before. then again: maybe that's just because the damage is already done :(

it was superb to finally meet herman (phil was very impressed/awestruck by your jacket), and top to see ailsa and her distinguished guests. (where did you actually end up for the gig, after we hoyed in to the crowd? i thought you lot were following us.) i ended up going to mono with john from mogwai on the way home -- he's mates with big chris. he was in raptures about the gig, which has to be a good sign for all us mogwai-lovers. luckily, the bar closed at midnight otherwise i'm not sure when we'd have stopped: there was a certain degree of post-gig euphoria -- although both john and chris did say they were surprised by how raggedy some of kevin's playing was. can't say i noticed/was bothered.

(big chris is also friendly with the dude who does the monitor setup at the barras: i'm absolutely fascinated as to how that works for MBV -- ie what the band can hear during you made me realise! -- and will try to find out.)

highlights for me: obviously YMMR. "soon" was something approaching a spiritual experience; but it was "to here knows when" that really transported me to some other magical dimension, with guitar-playing angels speeding my way.

so yeh, i kinda liked it.

I saw you taking them out at times but you always put them back in I thought.
Ahh, he did say he liked my Khanate hoodie.

Sorry, grimly, didn't see where you'd gone when you went, I turned to talk to T & K and when I looked round again, you'd vanished and you're not very easy to spot in a crowd full of tall people :-) We were to the right of the stage quite near the front, though I went wandering back for a while to go and look at at wibbly projections and lights and stuff because the full effect wasn't in full effect where we were standing.

I saw grimly move and just followed him. I assumed everyone else was following. We pretty much moved in a straight line from where we were standing into near enough the middle. Just to the left of Kevin Shields.
Then after some big guy almost got in a fight with a wee guy and his girl, they moved away, and we took their spaces and at last we could see!

ha! yes, that was damned lucky. in fairness: the wee bloke did seem to have been unnecessarily antagonistic, in a slightly foolish way. but yeh, result: the little dude nashed off with his lass, and we got a much better place to stand :)

Naw, the big guy shoved his way by pushing loads out the road. He was understandably pissed off. But the big guy saw him and confronted him while the wee guys girl tried to calm big dude down.

hmm. maybe i'm being unfair on the wee dude. even so: it's just not worth rising to these things.

I noticed the guys standing behind us are regulars at Sunn o))) gigs. No holding their ears in pain from them.

I'm predicting, in future shows, a new game will be created

You Made Me Realise Chicken

Whoever removes the earplugs for the shortest time is the loser, lol.

I stood by the door at the 20 minute noise-fest and laughed at hipsters running out with their hands over their ears

Apparently (according to some review on the interweb, possibly The Guardian?) loads of people were walking out in a daze at the first night at the Roundhouse too (I didn't notice this because I'd forced my way to right up the front, but was regreting it and suffering). The thing is, what struck me before the gig was that looking around beforehand the vast majority of people seemed to be my age (mid-thirties) or older, i.e. people who were into MBV at the time and had probably seen them back in the day. So surely they knew exactly what to expect?

Maybe not, I don't know. This whole thing about the volume during YMMR seems to have passed me by first time around. I saw them a couple of times on the Loveless tour at the end of 91 and then again on the Rollercoaster thing in the spring of 92. I remember them doing YMMR, and I remember the white noise breakdown bit going on for what seemed like ages (but was probably only about 7 or 8 minutes, so nothing like it's since become), but what I found impressive at the time was that someone could be so noisy (in the sense of willfully making a tuneless noise for ages) rather than noisy (in the sense of being unbearably loud). It was only from reading ILM threads more than a decade later that I was even aware that it was supposed to have been legendarily loud, and that the noise itself had a name.

So when I saw them a couple of weeks ago it didn't even cross my mind to take up the offer of ear plugs as I just thought 'well, I've seen them several times before without any problems, how bad can it be?'. When the gig started they weren't particularly loud, but they seemed to be cranking it up more and more as the evening went on. YMMR was definitely the loudest thing I've ever heard. It was painful, it felt like being trapped inside a jet engine or something. I was staying at the front because I wanted to be there when the noise stopped so I could 'dance' around to the rest of the 'song', but after ten minutes or so I had to put my hands over my ears and hope it would end soon.

I can't believe it was that loud back in 91/92 otherwise surely I would remember it being loud? (Or noticeably louder than the other gigs I went to in those days).

Just got back from a trip to Paris, seeing MBV on wednesday night.

Thanks to all the comments here we got ourselfs a good pair of earplugs, and they proved to be an absolute necessity. We unfortunately missed the first three songs due to heavy traffic, so I don't know whether they handed out plugs or the French are just well equiped concert go-ers. But the 'holocaust'-bit pained those who didn't wear them, for sure. I smiled at one guy putting on his motor helmet when You Made Me Realise dived into the excruciating noise hell it.

The whole concert was like a euphoric dream coming true. It was angelic. Highlights for me were hearing the drumloop of Soon kick in - at which point the whole crowd became one vibrant organism. Feed Me With Your Kiss was particularly beautiful as well, but it was all very majestic really.

It was funny to see how Colm and Debbie moved about constantly (esp. Debbie handled her bass like it was a posessed beast), and Kevin and especially Bilinda stood up front like statues. I hope a crew member lifted Bilinda in the bus afterwards, otherwise she'd still be standing there.

There was a problem during the 'holocaust' bit in You Made Me Realise though. Four or five minutes in, the sound suddenly dropped, and all I could hear was some fuzz, like white noise. The band continued playing though like nothing had happened. I first feared I had somehow lost my hearing completely at this point. It was a harrowing spectacle: seeing the band axe away on stage, but hearing only this white noise like buzz. I thought I'd lost it. But it turned out the amps had suddenly dropped dead.
I read somewhere that French law prohibits any concert to go above 105db, whereas MBV play their closer at a rattling 120db. After a couple of minutes the amps went back up, and the band continued blistering through their feedback assault, but soon after the amps again stopped working. At that point, the band let the sound ring out and walked off.

Apparantly French newspaper Le Monde reported afterwards that the amps didn't simply break, but that it was the engineers of the venue who pulled the plug on the band a couple of times... because of the violation of the French law. Crazy. Kevin was pretty pissed off, and as the rest of the band looked a bit bemused, he apparantly brought his copy of the contract to show the engineers that playing at the harsh level they wanted to was in the contract.

These ongoings lasted about five minutes or so, upon which they did return to finish the song - which I though was brilliant (it included a - perhaps somewhat cynical? - deadly silent, a capella whispering of the "You made me realise" lyric by Kevin).

I've read some reviews online today, and more than a few people seem to be either pissed off by the venue, by MBV being 'too loud' (wtf), and have left the place with an ambigious feeling because of the antics at the end.
Me, I really couldn't be bothered by all this. Ofcourse it was loud, and I'm glad it was. Like Kate said up thread, YMMR was a full body and mind experience. I would curse myself if I'd missed out on this, for it was glorious in every way.

Debbie handled her bass like it was a posessed beast

That's probably what I still remember the most about the 1992 shows, the way she played. If I had ever learned bass I would have wanted to play it like she did (and does).

Are Craigslist and Ebay the best places to find Chicago tickets? If so, ;_;

What happened to the remastered cd's ??

they'll be along shortly after the new album

ha ha. september. you can find the lamo, soon to be redundant plain vinyl reissue of loveless at ridiculously jacked up prices internet-wide while you wait, though. kevin was re-doing some liner notes. there are promos out and stuff (the slightly different tints on the sleeves of which are subject to massive fan debate).

also, to further fill the criterion of naive ever-burning-flame-of-hope mbv fan, i kinda think the next lp will be out sometime soon. they're recording in october and november. recording never took them so long, it was just the months in between doing it ...