Ian Hunter - Pigalle Club - Tuesday 15th May

The Pigalle Club - officially the worst venue I can remember going too. Unless you'd paid the £60+ for dinner and a table, you couldn't see a thing from the bar (where you were kept) or upstairs where you could attempt to peer over the diners and balcony. What a rip-off (as was the £4 small bottles of beer). 

The conversation from everyone around us was how awful the whole place was. Oh.. the performance. Well it was semi-acoustic with a lot of new stuff. Sounded OK, but for what we could see we might as well have been in a pub listening to the CD. 

I'm loathe to keep going on about it, but I can't describe how poor the whole experience of visiting this venue was.

[Footnote: I generally don't like celebrating any venue closing down, but I am delighted to see the back of this one in 2012 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigalle_Club]

Bryan Adams - Wembley Arena - Thursday 10th May

First time seeing Mr Adams for a while. Had a decent seat overlooking the stage. A solid performance, but the set was a bit too "ballad heavy" for me. Tempted to go Friday night as well, but cash a bit tight, so will give it a miss.

Ataris - Mean Fiddler (Astoria 2) - Friday 4th May

Not just a bad photo - this was the actual
lighting and "view"

New band for me in a familiar venue. I've got a few of the Ataris CDs, including the excellent "So Long, Astoria" and recognised a fair few of the songs. The predictably young audience was fairly boisterous, so we didn't get too near the front. This meant barely seeing the band - not because of the distance, but because the lighting was the worst I've ever seen at a gig - the band were in almost darkness throughout! 

Note sure what the point of that was, but Richard tells me that is normal for bands of that ilk. Anyway, pretty good except for the visuals!