#gazbrookfield

Last Friday I saw Gaz Beookfield in Southampton at the Talking Heads. When I was walking there, the venue was among a load of houses and I thought this is strange? Am I in the right place? But yeah i was... we arrived fashionably late (of course) and the place was PACKED. We managed to push our way through to the bar and order the first round.

The first support act was playing and he seemed jolly, not the kind of bloke you would look at and call a musician but he was good. The second support act and second pint had begun and, again, not the kind of guy you would look at and say ‘musician’. He had handed out a lyrics sheet to the audience so we could join in. We also had to do this weird thing with our phones where we would call someone stood next to us and put them together to create a whistling sound, weird but it was actually quite cool. 

We were fed up of going to the bar now, so on our next trip we bought several pints at once. It worked until the alcohol began to kick in and we were slopping them everywhere. And your typical ‘small music venue loving, cider drinking, long haired, drunk man’ was dancing like Jack and Rose from titanic when they go to the working class bar, and was not aware of the people around him.

Anyway, Gaz Brookfield was here. He was a good looking chap and had had a haircut since the video I posted lat week was filmed. He brought out his whole band, so I knew I had to drink up these drinks because things were going to get loud and people were going to be dancing like crazy. His music was great, upbeat, folky and perfect for the kind of venue we were in. It was my boyfriends birthday and we were there with some friends. Gaz was told about this and started singing happy birthday and I swear, it was the happiest moment of my boyfriends life! (as well as him being very drunk at this point).

He played for roughly an hour and for my favourite song of his, The Diabetes Blues, he explained the story behind this. Logan, the son of one of the guitarists, was brought up on stage and Gaz explained that he was diagnosed with diabetes and the song was written from the boys perspective. The lyrics in the chorus read ‘I cant drink cider now it true, what is a west country boy to do’... Logan was about 9. 

The band had a good stage presence and actually spoke and kept the audience going between songs. That is one thing that I can’t stand about some of these big artists, they believe they have so much authority that they forget their fans are also humans and enjoy conversation to. Gaz’ repertoire continued and so did the pints, and you could tell everyone was having a great time, we were all dancing and laughing and just enjoying the music.