When writing this blog I've been struck by how many times I went to see a band because I'd heard songs by them on the radio, mostly Mark & Lard's afternoon show or Steve Lamacq's Evening Session. Nowadays I hardly ever listen to music radio, let alone use it as my main means of finding new bands, but Elbow were yet another group I discovered thanks to Radio 1. Mark & Lard were huge fans and had played "Newborn" to death when it was released the previous summer. After signing with V2 Records, Elbow released "Red" as the first single from their forthcoming début album the week before they played the Cockpit and I fell in love with the track. It had touches of the classic, grey, Manchester sound, of The Smiths and Joy Division, as well as 'OK Computer' era Radiohead, but it also sounded unique, with the cello line matching the mournful melody, tear for tear.
Tour support were Mull Historical Society, who'd failed to impress me when I saw them with Starsailor at the Cockpit a month earlier. They were much better the second time round but I still found the nagging, saccharine sweet Divine Comedy-esque, elements to many of their songs extremely annoying. When they weren't being irritating, they reminded me a bit of ELO, but I wasn't exactly rushing to buy their album from the merchandise stall after their performance.
My mate Spenner, who'd started accompanying me to gigs on a regular basis, felt the same way about Elbow as I did about Mull Historical Society and jokes about the fact I "dragged him" to see them to this BALLY day. I suppose I can see why he didn't like the band - their songs were pretty slow and some of them were incredibly long, also the atmosphere was a bit strange, with only polite applause greeting each song and the band looking a bit perturbed as a result. I really enjoyed their set though. They were great musicians and, strangely for a guitar band at the time, their lyrics were really interesting.
After suffering some minor problems with their equipment, the band thanked their soundman, Dave, who'd fixed whatever issues they had. As this was 2001 and the League of Gentlemen was really taking off, this sparked the audience into frenzied chants of "hello Dave" and "you're my wife now Dave", to puzzled looks from the band, who evidentially hadn't seen the programme.
"Red" was played towards the end of the set and even Spen thought it worthy of a brief clap. The gig rather drifted towards its conclusion afterwards though and Elbow failed to respond to the half-hearted chants for an encore after they left the stage.
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