the corner office

Last night was the New Model Army concert. Their first visit to South Africa. God bless the Alter Ego crowd (mind the sound clips). What a magical experience.

The gig was at the Newtown Music Warehouse. P's oversees, so L joined R & I. The venue was hot, busy but not too packed, and an excellent atmosphere. The crowd was a mix of youngsters, 30-somethings and even older. Barney Simon was the MC (he'll be 95 and they'll still wheel him out to announce any remotely alternative band, but he reminisced about the old Shadow Show and he hauled out his old NMA 7 singles for effect so I spose he does have some cred). The opening band were a local act called the Parlotones (?), first I'd heard of 'em. Not bad, but not what we'd come for.

After a long wait of setting up and soundchecking by their roadie, on came NMA. Brilliant. I can't begin to remember the full set list, but many, many classics. In the main set, two songs stood out as really blowing me away: the acoustic A Liberal Education, and the rocker Here Comes the War had the crowd going ballistic.

The set ended and the band did an exit left, the crowd kept screaming, and they eventually came on for an encore. I can't even remember what they played but they did another 3 songs or so. Off they went again, and the crowd started chanting 'Vagabonds!'. On came Justin Sullivan. "You'll have noticed we don't have a violinist" says he, and offered to do the song if the crowd sang the violin riff. Which we did, with Justin singing and playing guitar. The band made their way back onto stage, and joined in for the last verse. They ended off with I love the world. What an end.

Couple of other songs off the top of my head were 51st State, Purity, Green and Grey, Stupid Questions, No Rest, Poison Street, and Get Me Out.

It took over 20 years for NMA to make it to South Africa. It's a little sad that we get so worked up over something that many people in Europe could go out and do every other month - but at the same time, I think it added to the mood because for everyone, this was special. The atmosphere was brilliant, and least of all because the band seemed to feed off of the excitement and got into it as much as we did. They were professional, loud and passionate, and their music was even more powerful and beautiful live, than recorded. An incredible night.