Friday 26th March 2010
Unfortunately the menacing volcanic ash cloud and a mysterious ankle injury depleted the DoesItRock team by half (and essentially ending another DIR member’s chances of making this year’s England World Cup squad) for this gig. The other downside is that it also means that the gig review duties have fallen to me. After successfully putting it off for a few weeks, RockOSaurus has finally caught up with me and I’ve been locked into an office at DoesItRock Towers with no food until the review has been written. Grim.
So how do you write a review for a gig for which you can neither remember very well or have any photos for? Well, one way is to play with the format a bit to disguise the lack of content with lots of filler, which is why today’s review will be in the style of an awards ceremony – the inaugural March Motion City Soundtrack Electric Ballroom Awards 2010 to be exact.
I can assure you now that the winners of the awards tonight have been judged with hours of deliberation by a panel of expert and professional DoesItRock writers. That were present at the gig. And could be bothered to vote. So, without further ado we go on to our first award…
Best Mosh Pit: Attractive Today
The award for best mosh pit goes to MCS’ performance of Attractive Today. Basically I can’t remember exactly what made it good, but it was probably big.
Best Crowd Sing-along: The Future Freaks Me Out / Everything Is Alright / LGFUAD
MCS’ ability to write great pop songs meant there were plenty of hearty sing-alongs on the night, and this award ended up in a three-way tussle. Due to sheer lazyness, we’ve awarded it to all three songs. They’ll need to share the award, or fight it out to the death at the award ceremony after-party.
Drummer That Looked Most-a-like Sylar from Heroes: Tony Thaxton
The unanimous, hands down winner. Also mainly by virtue of being the only drummer in the band.
Unfortunately, Tony wasn’t available to collect his award since he’s probably busy terrorising Peter Petrelli at the moment, but we’ll make sure he gets his award via Royal Mail.
Best Wrestling Entrance: Justin Pierre
I seem to have written this down in my notes for some reason. I presume he did a wrestling-esque entrance at some point during the gig, either at the start or before the encore. Probably.
Best Support Band: who knows?
Erm, we managed to miss both the support bands (Free Energy and Jenny Owen Youngs). They both look like pleasant bands in their photos on their last.fm pages, though.
Album With The Best Songs: Commit This To Memory
Happily MCS avoided the trap some bands fall into when touring a recent release and didn’t focus too much on the new album, which I admittedly didn’t love when we reviewed it a few months ago. It actually worked pretty well live, especially songs A Worker Bee and A Life Less Ordinary. However, on the night the songs with the best reception were generally from their 2005 effort, Commit This To Memory.
Earliest Finish To A Gig Ever: Motion City Soundtrack
I seem to remember this gig finished at 10pm, or something. Disappointing.
Best Band In The World Ever…
And as is customary in awards ceremonies we’ve also voted on the title of the Best Band In The World Ever. This is a coveted title in the music industry, and given the success of MCS so far – having swept the board with all the major awards this evening – they’ve got to be strong favourites.
The final award; the March Motion City Soundtrack Electric Ballroom Awards 2010 Best Best Band In The World Ever is…
U2
Oh. That was unexpected – that band always seems to win that award, and they weren’t even on the voting list. Oh well, sorry lads – can’t win them all.
That’s all for now, see you at the after party!
(Can I go home now?)
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