Saturday I went to see PYFB, as Riz would say – again?! Yes again. But this was a proper gig, part of a proper tour. Things didn’t start well when we discovered public transport was its usual reliable self and was only running two trains an hour, as it has been doing for the past however many weekends when I’ve actually had to leave my house. And I was late to the station to meet Corinne because I was hanging my washing up. Rock and indeed roll. After a trip to Co-op, some ice cream and the first half of the England match, we realised it might be a good idea to find out where exactly the gig was. As stupid as this sounds, a number of PYFB’s gigs have changed venues; we just needed to find out if it was at the Academy or the Barfly…Or secret option C, which Gilly informed us of: The Sanctuary. Where the hell is the Sanctuary? It appears, relatively near the Barfly. Not too bothered we drew a random map and wandered off towards the station deciding we’d hit the chippy afterwards.

We found the venue alright, took stickers off of* some woman who said if we joined the mailing list we’d get stickers and since we were already on the mailing list, we just signed up again. Stickers are important. Now let’s play a guessing game. Bearing in mind bar prices were hiked up because it was a live gig, how much do you reckon two bottles of Pepsi cost? I’ll give you a clue - it was MORE EXPENSIVE than The Bedford in London.

As usual when I go to gigs, I don’t know who the support bands were but they were very concept and not at all the type of band you’d expect PYFB to have as support. But I did quite like them. Even with the tiny tv screen showing snow, and the flowers wrapped round the mic stands.

Then PYFB came on. Since Corinne and I are all about the lighting, we approved muchly. The venue was pretty cool and not at all what I thought it would be like, it was actually quite intimate and PYFB rocked.

“Farmer Boy’s drinking water!”
“That’s sensible…”

The above observation was made within about five minutes of his set starting. About fifteen minutes later, he made the comment, “I’m on the water, I do stupid things when I drink alcohol”. Corinne and I looked at each other, “like taking his clothes off?” “yep”. So the water meant it wasn’t another Coventry. But that just meant his voice didn’t break in the middle of Million Faces [though Corinne and I are now rendered incapable of not laughing at that bit now anyway] and that he sounded amazing. Particular highlight being Rainbows, which I first heard in HMV** and sounded fantastic in the Sanctuary with the whole band. I am aware that I am writing a bit stream of consciousness, I’m sorry. I’ll try and do better.

Have some photos that demonstrate the funky lighting...


So it was getting towards the end of his set and I started asking Corinne what he finished on. Because guessing encores and end songs is a fun game and I like winning. So, “does he end on Jenny Don’t Be Hasty?”. Corinne pointed at the stage where Farmer Boy had just said he was on his last song and the opening chords of Jenny Don’t Be Hasty started. “Does he do Last Request?” Corinne nodded and then added, “he does three songs as an encore and the last one is a cover that you will never guess.” I shut up and settled back to dancing and jump around to await the cover. He played Last Request and I never fail to feel proud when everyone in the entire venue is singing it back at him. It’s pretty amazing when you think back to Fundee where it felt like it was only Corinne and me that knew the lyrics. One song later and the opening chords blasted out from the speaker we were standing pretty close to. I looked at Corinne trying to guess/recognise what cover he was doing...“Oh noooooo! That’s not even funny!” The stupid boy only went and covered Gnarls Barclay’s Crazy. And everyone who knows of my aversion to this song can guess I wasn’t best impressed. But I reluctantly gave in a danced about anyway because, well the boy was good and so I forgave him for covered a song that Jo Whiley has banned from her live lounge after too many people covered it.

And Corinne and I now have PYFB badges with the Scotland flag on because we are all about the merchandise.


*Before someone picks me up on my grammatical incorrectness regarding the English language, it’s a Scott Mills-ism.
**How rock n roll…