Hello everyone! I’ve just returned from London, and as you may imagine, the first ever Tired Pony gig, staged to celebrate the release of their debut album The Place We Ran From, was a hugely successful happening. The beautiful HMV Forum in London was packed; I must admit that a majority of people in the auditorum were Snow Patrol fans, but have no worries, those of us who were Team R.E.M. did our best to represent the fandom.
As for the gig itself, it lasted much longer than I expected, about 90-ish minutes for sure. The band were on stage a few minutes after 9pm, and continued to play well after the supposed curfew at 10:30pm. Since they had only just released the first CD, one would have expected that they would not have enough material to fill the entire evening, and that they would play Snow Patrol songs, or covers, or whatever. But, that’s not the way Messrs. Gary Lightbody, Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey, Iain Archer, Jacknife Lee etc. like to do business. Instead, they simply wrote more songs, so half of the songs they performed were actually world premieres, freshly written just a few days – or hours – before the gig! Almost everyone who played on the record also appeared on stage (except the She And Him duo), so there were at least 10 musicians playing/singing at any moment, plus they had a host of special guests (including Tom Smith, Lisa Hannigan, and even Jacknife Lee’s kids!), so at certain moments it resembled a Live Aid kind of event (but with much better music and much less pathos)!
The musicians were in sublime form and mood: Gary Lightbody is not only a brilliant singer, but also a funny and engaging frontman. As for R.E.M. boys, Peter played at least five different guitars, plus a mandolin and a banjo; he was very relaxed, smiling all the time. Scott was also in charge of guitars, plus he played the role of the piano man in a few songs and sang a majority of back vocals. The band was very well rehearsed, which is a small miracle, considering that after the gig we learned first hand that they only had two days to rehearse! Still there were quite a few spontaneous moments; at one point the sound system let them down, but then they simply grabbed the acoustic guitars and stepped to the front of the stage, sang and played without any sound amplification, except for the audience clapping and cheering! You could say that we had a quintessential country music experience.
(I filmed that bit, I’ll put it on Youtube tonight.) UPDATE: Scroll down, the video clip is a-waitin’!
Below you can see the band in action, and the huge smiles on the faces of your Team R.E.M. in the last few pictures speak more than a thousand words! Btw it is likely that our not-so-Tired Ponies will play a few more gigs in the future, and probably even release more material. Oh, and we also met Peter’s and Scott’s friend and collaborator Robyn Hitchcock, who came to support his buddies; he talked to us briefly after the concert, and announced that he would be playing a benefit gig in October. So yeah, plenty of stuff to look forward to.
Tired Pony at HMV Forum, London, 14 July 2010
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Tired Pony perform “Point Me At Lost Islands”
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UPDATE 2: Here’s a great review of the show, with photos.
Tags: first gig, Gary Lightbody, HMV Forum, Iain Archer, Jacknife Lee, Lisa Hannigan, London, Peter Buck, R.E.M., Robyn Hitchcock, Scott McCaughey, She And Him, Snow Patrol, The Place We Ran From, Tired Pony, Tom Smith, Venus 3
July 15th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
Thanks for the report, Ivana. And what a great R.E.M. team in the last two pics! It seems, I recognize some familiar faces there.
July 15th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
Yep, quite a few R.E.M. addicts! Sabine was there too, but she’s not in the photos.
July 15th, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Aw, that looked like fun! Congrats on getting to go and thanks for returning and reporting. It’s great you got to talk to Robyn Hitchcock! If I’d been there I’d have been too stunned to speak.
July 15th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
Ahh I already met Robyn in April, so this time I wasn’t so dumbfounded. Plus this time I was with a group of die-hard fans, and Robyn had this utterly confused look on his face, like: wait a minute, I know all these people from somewhere.
Anyway when I get starstruck, I can’t stop blabbing.
July 15th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
Darling article Ivana. Robyn looks great. We saw Robyn and Peter here last year. (As well as a slew of Minus 5 shows) We are like you…all things R.E.M. In fact, Shari got us the two latest Hitchcock records. We will be sure to catch Tired Pony here!
xo
July 15th, 2010 at 11:49 pm
[...] Go here to read the review and see photos at mikemillsfan.com [...]
July 16th, 2010 at 3:38 am
Thanks for the report and for the nice photos! We are proud of our R.E.M. team
July 16th, 2010 at 7:12 am
Great pics! I so circus envy you – “Here comes that awful feelin’ again, Make way for monster jealousy…”
July 16th, 2010 at 9:32 am
Hahaha! I’m mean, mean, mean
I tease, tease, tease you.