Shed Seven @ Birmingham Academy – 12th December 2009

On a very cold December evening, and still nursing the hangover from the night before, I headed to the Birmingham O2 Academy to see one of the iconic indie bands of my youth – Shed Seven. There aren’t many bands still around that I was really into when I was young but these guys keep their loyal fans happy with their fairly regular Yule-tide appearances!

I arrived at 6:45 to be greeted with a queue, which I thought was a good sign as doors were supposed to be at 6. However, it just turned out that they were late opening the doors!! I don’t think I have queued at a gig since I was teenager eager to be the first into the venue! Although I loved them when I was younger this was to be the first time that I had seen them live and I was actually really excited. Sitting on the balcony it was really funny hearing conversations along the lines of “When did you last see them?” and “How old were you back then?” as well as “God don’t you feel old?” and “Wasn’t 1997 a great year?”

The Academy started to fill up quite nicely when support act The Holloways came on. They introduced themselves as “pre shed seven entertainment for the evening” and launched into their opening track! The band delivered their usual punchy indie pop sound, and as they moved through the set you could see them adding an older generation of person to their fan base!! They gave the crowd some sound medical advice (judging by the age of many in the venue) of warming up so that they “didn’t get an injury when dancing to Shed 7” and this seemed to motivate some people to start dancing. The biggest cheers and crowd motivation came for two tracks from their debut LP “Generator” and “Dancefloor”; and their final track “Jukebox Sunshine” got the crowd nicely warmed up! To be honest I think that the Holloways could be seen as a Shed Seven for the noughties and their music seemed to go down really well with the crowd.

At 8:15 (how early!) the lights went out and on came the Sheds to a funky bongo beat and every time the bass hit we were given a blast of totally blinding white strobe light. The bongos gradually got louder, Rick Witter came on the stage and it could only be one tune – “Dolphin”.

The evening was a completely eclectic mix of their greatest hits together with a few album tracks thrown in for good measure. It was very clear to see that Rick Witter has a great sense of humor and likes his banter with the crowd. Following “She Left Me On Friday” was the first time that he spoke remarking on the new O2 Academy as being “alright innit” and asking if anyone knew the score in the snooker. A group of people near the front didn’t like this very much and several hand gestures were given to which he remarked, “What’s that? You want to come in my face?”

The great thing about the night was that everyone knew every single word to every single song; Rick even commented that the crowd was “truly in fine voice” and that they “fuckin’ love coming here”. I also knew a lot of the tracks however there was one track that I couldn’t pinpoint, it followed the Sheds’ debut single “Mark” and it was class how they ended it with The Stone Roses’ “I Am The Resurrection”‘s lengthy instrumental. Throughout the whole of the night you could see how much the band was admired by their very loyal fan-base, but the admiration was definitely not one sided with Rick very much interacting with the crowd; even giving away his maracas during the encore.

One of the standout tracks of the night had to be “the song which starts with a capo”, “On Standby” where the crowd virtually sang the whole of the song rather than Rick. “High Hopes” and “The Heroes” were done acoustically which was really nice but with the latter going into a very funky breakdown after which Rick commented whilst pointing up at the balcony “That was a nice breakdown wasn’t it? If we were U2 or Coldplay we would have done that over there, but we did it here, much more economical!”

The biggest floor tracks of the night were “Disco Down” to which the crowd was described as “mental” and the classic “Getting Better” which created a mosh pit frenzy, after which the crowd could not stop cheering, leading to the band’s encore. It was interesting to see that during the encore they threw in a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Jumping Jack Flash” as if they didn’t have enough tracks of their own to play out but the reason seemed to be the fact that they did it on the Channel 4 show “TFI Friday”

The night for me was in some ways a case of revisiting my youth, but in all honesty what it showed me was that great music just never dies. The 1990s Britpop scene was full of bands like Shed Seven and not all of them (in fact very few) saw the same success. Shed Seven released 3 albums and probably had their peak in 1996 with the album “A Maximum High” some 13 years ago, yet the venue was absolutely buzzing and to finally quote Rick Witter “Tonight was absolutely mint!”

Set List:

Dolphin

Where Have You Been Tonight

She Left Me On Friday

Devil In My Shoes

This Day Was Ours

Going For Gold

Mark

??? (which went into the I Am The Resurrection Instrumental)

Bully Boy

Speakeasy

Feathers

On Standby

Ocean Pie

High Hopes

The Heroes

Disco Down

Getting Better

Encore

Out By My Side

Jumping Jack Flash

Chasing Rainbows

Review – Imran Khan

Photos – Katja Ogrin

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