Metz at Birthdays

I spent twice as long getting to this gig as Metz spent playing. 

We'd intended to catch the support too, but there were six of us and you know how that goes. We tried going to Jan's Bar for some Belgian beers early on, but the place appears to have shut down without bothering to say anything on its website. Which is helpful.

So then we went to the Jolly Butchers, which Gig Buddy had previously seen listed as one of the top ten pubs in the UK. And rightfully so. They have a selection of beers the likes of which I've never seen, and decent seating to boot. It's a hell of a pub.

Which might go some way to explaining why we were about an hour later than planned for our curry at Rasa, which in turn explains why we were late for Birthdays. Damn you excellent beers and superb food!

So we arrived at Birthdays about five minutes before Metz began. I'd never heard of the place before, and neither had GB. And no wonder, frankly. Having made straight for the bar on arrival, I turned around once I'd been served, only to discover that where I was already at was as close to the stage as I would be getting, given the layout.

Now, the blame is no doubt ours, for dwelling on our pre-gig beers and south-Indian food for far too long, but Birthdays as a venue is nothing more than an oblong hole in the ground. It's like a shoebox with the band as the toes and you as the scrunched up paper stuffing the holes before the feet come in. It's a tunnel, in other words.

I may be partisan. Birthdays could be to a Stokey resident as my beloved Brixton Windmill is to me - a place that exceeds its immediate charms by virtue of delivering a certain standard of music night after night after night. But it's hard to guess at that. For me, Birthdays was just a long hole where, after traveling 80 minutes, I then stared at the back of people's heads while a band played for half that time.

In fairness to Metz themselves, they were pretty damn good. If you like reverb-heaviness - and who doesn't - then you'd certainly have dug them. They were a bit noisy and had a bit of attitude and got things a bit rowdy - from what I could tell way back by the bar.

And alright, I may actually even be doing the venue a disservice. My mate and I ordered some thing called Briska initially, which turned out to be a cider rather than a beer, and that soured things right off. But the place allowed us to rectify that mishap and then some by stocking some SF Liberty Ale, and where else sells that? No other venue I could name.

But then I'd hoped to at least be able to pick up some music by the support bands from the merch station afterwards, and that was another disappointment, by then at least if not earlier too, as it offered nothing but Metz stuff. The support were apparently Fair Ohs and The Wytches, and I will check them out  tomorrow when I sober up a bit. And maybe I'll try listen to Metz's album again too, given that in this environ I'll actually have a clue what's going on....