I was somewhat apprehensive as I walked towards Le Zenith on Saturday night. Europe has recently become an honorary member of the Arctic Circle and so I wasn’t terribly excited about the prospect of spending the next few hours in such a large, drafty-looking venue. However, having bought these gig tickets as presents for my Mum and flat mate’s birthdays, I was in no position to be complaining.
Le Zenith itself is an odd venue. As you enter, you’re herded like cattle through metal gates before having your bags unenthusiastically checked by unhappy looking staff and walking through a turnstile. It’s not only concert hall, it’s a cinema too. The beer is about the price of your average bar, which meant it was wallet-rape to drink there but nonetheless we loaded up on beer and merchandise and shuffled upstairs, happily taking some seats near the back. We weren’t too fussed about joining the pit.
The stage was a very, very long way away from us, but as soon as Miles Kane (the support act) came onstage we realised that this was not going to be a problem. The sound quality in Le Zenith is amazing. The combination of the acoustics, the mixing and the bands playing made it feel as though we were watching a studio recording whilst the bands pranced around in front of us. Except we weren’t.
Before this concert, I hadn’t heard any of Miles Kane’s work outside of The Last of the Shadow Puppets. My flat mate described it to me as ‘jolly’, which to start with made me smile, because it’s not a word that we use often anymore in England, but as I thought about it, I realised she was right. Miles Kane was exactly that, jolly. As he leapt around the stage singing about his loves lost and won you couldn’t help tapping your feet and bobbing your head.
The Arctic Monkey’s entrance was unceremonious. Unlike most of bands with their stature, they didn’t make a big fuss about themselves, which is somehow how I’d imagined they’d be. One minute the stage was empty and then suddenly there they were, doing their job. Playing music and playing it well. They effortlessly mixed tracks from their more recent albums with the songs that got them famous as teenagers. As they began to play I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor, I laughed quietly to myself. Around 2004, before they were famous, I was watching TV with my Dad and this song came on. I told him, quite confidently, that this band were going to be big. He laughed and said that they were mediocre indie. A year later, he loved them. Eight years later, I was watching them play in a venue that comfortably holds 6,300 people. How far these young lads from Sheffield have come.
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