I got into the band Frost* about ten years ago after hearing them on a prog rock podcast. Since then I have bought a load of music and last week I saw them live for the third time.
I am pretty sure this is my first time at this venue. I have been to a couple of gigs at the Hope and Anchor pub up the road with my friend @hockney. I caught the train and Tube to get there and it only took about an hour. I had some chips on the way to keep me going before I went in. It is a nice size old theatre with plenty of room to stand downstairs. I popped to the loos in the basement first where they had quaint old big wooden seats on the toilets.
I got an expensive beer from the bar whilst I waited for the music. There was nobody there I knew, but then I do not hang out on their fan forum.
The support band were Quantum Pig who I had not heard of. They had some thoughtful songs about life and science. They are a duo and for practical reasons they used backing tracks on some songs with one of them playing guitar and drums. There was some nice banter and I enjoyed their set.
Here is one of their songs.
At 9pm the main band came on to big cheers. This gig was postponed from April, so we had waited a long time. It was the last of five dates around the country and it seems some people had been to more than one. One lady went to all five. In case you do not know they are a British band consisting of Jem Godfrey on keyboards (has written for Atomic Kitten and performed with Joe Satriani), John Mitchell on guitar (Kino and It Bites), Nathan King on bass (brother of Mark and guitarist in Level 42) and Craig Blundell on drums (played with Steven Wilson). For the original date they were going to have another drummer, but there were scheduling issues and so we got Craig who I had seen with them before. For some reason most of them had shirts with their names and dates of birth. That was never explained, but I noticed they are all a little younger than me. I may have been somewhere around the average age of the audience, but there were a few younger folk there and even some ladies. Prog does have a certain image, but I think more people would enjoy it if they ever heard it.
Their music is fairly complex, but melodic and I find it fun. They are all great musicians. Jem is just a wizard on the keyboards. I notice John tends not to play fancy guitars. He has used Cort before and had some Squier Stratocasters this time, which are not stupidly expensive. He still gets a great sound. A lot of the solos are pre-arranged and sometimes in harmony with the keyboards.
There were some songs from the new album as well as some earlier fan favourites. The sound was not quite right at the start with too much bass and drums, but it seemed to improve as they went on. They had some good lighting and there were even projections onto the auditorium ceiling.
I took a few photos, but they were not great and I did not bother doing video. I want to enjoy the gig rather than holding my phone up. The video below is one I found from the Leeds gig.
There was plenty of chat with the audience and amongst the band. Jem likes to mess around and have a few laughs. After an hour or so he announced it was time for the last song (ahhh), but it was a long song (hooray!). As expected it was their 25 minute epic Milliontown, which was the song that got me hooked on them originally. It is an amazing piece of music. In the photo you can see Jem playing a Casio VL-1 during that song. I think he has quite a collection of instruments. This was silly, but fun.
We had a couple more songs in the encore and then we were done by 10:40pm. I did a brisk walk back to the Tube in hope of getting a train at Finsbury Park. I thought I had just missed one, but it was running late and so I only had to wait a few minutes. It was not too late really when I got home and I even got a lift from the station from my better half.
I had a great evening.