Super Furry Animals / Town And Country Club, Leeds

I knew NEXT TO NOTHING about the Super Furries when I agreed to go this gig. By the time it had finished I was a FAN4LIFE.

When he joined Novacain in February, Suggy brought a RAFT of varied musical influences with him, along with his bass playing OAR. Among other things, the raft was loaded with Welsh bands like Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, early Catatonia and the Super Furry Animals. "Something For The Weekend" had received a reasonable amount of airplay during the mid-nineties Britpop era, but that was pretty much the extent of my SFA knowledge before I met Sug. He put "Hometown Unicorn" on a mix tape he made me and was always banging on about the Furries, so when he mentioned going to see them at the Town & Country with Mike, I thought I'd tag along. I told my friend Beav that I was going and she decided to come too. We got tickets and met up with Mike and Sug in the Dry Dock before the show.

We had a few drinks and ended up getting to the T&C quite late, completely missing the support band. The gig wasn't sold out, so we got a really good spot right in the middle of the venue behind the sound desk and waited for the Super Furries to begin their set. 

They opened with "Wherever I Lay My Phone (That's My Home)", which I wasn't too keen on (and still aren't). From the second track on though, I was hooked... I'd heard the likes of "Fire In My Heart" and "If You Don't Want Me To Destroy You" on the radio and thought they were great, without realising who they were by. The three singles from 'Radiator' that the band played that night, "Demons", "Play It Cool" and "The International Language Of Screaming", blew me away. Again, I'd heard them before and not realised they were Super Furries songs. "Ice Hockey Hair" was stunning, and some of the newer songs from Guerilla were equally good; in particular "Night Vision" and "The Turning Tide". I had no idea the Furries were so inventive, both musically and melodically. A massively elongated version of "The Man Don't Give A Fuck" closed the set. I remember BEAMING, as all sorts of blips and bleeps bounced around the venue, along with chopped up samples of the title phrase. The sound was phenom, and the atmosphere in the crowd was great, with everyone joining in on a final chant of "they don't give a fuck about anybody else".

The show was so good that I felt kind of dazed when we left the venue. I bought a crap, oversized t-shirt from one of the guys outside in my state of rapture. After Mike and Sug left I dragged Beav to Joseph's Well and proceeded to bore her to death by reliving the events of the last few hours. It's nearly thirteen years since this show and it's still one of the best gigs I've ever seen.