Ok I was always going to love it. As you can see from my previous post about the BJM (over here http://tinyurl.com/p2ew56u) as well as the fact that this blog is named after one of their songs, I'm a dedicated follower. I had been waiting for this gig for a long, long time. Frankly I would wait twice a long just to see them play like that again. Greeted with a hero's welcome from a capacity crowd, the band launched straight into the showering Whoever You Are and the awesome Who? setting a mighty precedent for the rest of the night. The setlist was a healthy mix of old and new with the BJM unafraid to drop What You Isn't into the show early. In general, all the new songs from Revelation got really good reactions, a good indicator of how well the album has been received. Everyone already knew every word to Goodbye (Butterfly) and Food For Clouds, showing that they're not just here for retro value.
In fact, my personal highlight of the set came from Revelation. Frontman of Les Big Bird and featured vocalist in the album Joakim Åhlund was welcomed onto the stage for Vad Hände Med Dem. Anton informed the crowd that this could've been the final performance of this song in Swedish. I really hope for future audiences that it wasn't because it was an absolute belter of a live tune. Joakim sings it so well, commanding the stage with a mean swagger, plus it's got an incredible driving groove. For me it's this song that proves the BJM still keep on putting out incredible music to this day. It was ready-made for the 21st century psychedelic mosh pit, and what a mosh it was.
The crowd at the Roundhouse on this Tuesday night key to the occasion. It was an eclectic mix of young hipster types donning peruvian ponchos and a few middle-aged folks who'd been with Anton since the beginning. All of them had one thing in common: they were members of the greatest musical cult of all time. There were some real characters from the wide-eyed, crowd-surfing crazy girl waving glo-sticks to the prick with the feather in his fedora who stood in front of me for portions of the gig. This made for one of the craziest and coolest mosh pits to grace the Roundhouse in a while. For someone like me who had become obsessed with the music without seeing them live, it was hard for me to imagine just how mental the crowd could get. It turns out that Not If You Were The Last Dandy On Earth is the greatest lose-your-shit song ever composed. It was at that point that my friend and I were swamped in and separated, also making it the point that I lost all my inhibitions and temporarily reached nirvana.
For me, this gig was monumental. It was a total shifting of the goalposts. Until Tuesday night I honestly thought that I was the only person in the world who was properly into them. After all, I don't really know many other BJM fans personally. To be there in a room of 1,700 people, all singing every single word of The Devil May Care (Mom & Dad Don't), all of them having gone on a similar journey as me, discovering the band one day and becoming properly obsessed. To be surrounded by people demanded songs like BSA and Miss June 75 was incredible. I never knew that anyone else knew about them! Personally, it was a breath-taking experience. No-one would ever be able to achieve the same feeling with a mainstream, commercially successful band, there's nothing as special about it.
Frankly, they destroyed it. They absolutely tore down the Roundhouse with their huge sound and unbelievable back-catalogue. They commanded the crowd, even without playing arguably their biggest song Straight Up And Straight Down, known for Boardwalk Empire fame. If you ever get the chance to see this band, grab it with both hands and never let go because it was just awesome.
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