Holy friggin' Christ - She Bangs the Drums!

Unbelievable. I have never experienced a show like this. Ian Brown at Webster Hall. Men were screaming like little girls. Little girls were screaming like...well, little girls. It was quite a scene. I have never seen a New York crowd get into a show like that - singing along, dancing, jumping up and down in unison. Unreal. And I was right upfront, at the rail.

This would have been the greatest show ever, but there were numerous technical problems. First, Ian's monitors weren't working, then the guitar amp wasn't working, then the Apple laptop wasn't working, then the bass stopped working. I've never seen a show with so many technical problems. You could see that Ian was pissed. He spent the first 10 minutes of the show at the side of the stage yelling at the sound guy. When the guitar amp stopped working during "Made of Stone," Ian hummed the guitar parts into his mic. And when "Dolphins Were Monkeys" was cut short the first time, the crowd finished up the vocals.



The set started off slowly with "Destiny of Circumstances" - not the best opener because it's pretty slow. Then he launched into 4 straight Roses songs - "Made of Stone," "She Bangs the Drums," "Sally Cinnamon," and "Waterfall." Are you kidding me? This was the greatest thing I've heard since Moz sang "Headmaster Ritual" at the Apollo. Ian then went into some solo stuff - hitting his better songs and stuff off Solarized. "Golden Gaze" was really good and "F.E.A.R." was spectacular.



He closed with "I Wanna Be Adored" and the crowd was going crazy - I mean absolute batshit. Everyone was singing along. One of the most impressive things I've ever seen. Sadly, there was no encore.



Oh, and Radio 4 opened. They were really good, and although I've seen them a couple of times already, I'd like to see them again at their own show. "Dance to the Underground" and "Party Crashers" were particularly good.