A few of you may remember I had a spare ticket for sale for this gig a while back...so I thought I'd post a quick trip report/review. (apologies in advance....it's not so quick) 
My best friend is a huge Arctic Monkeys fan, and I really like their music, so when we saw that they were playing the Albert Hall we jumped at the chance to buy tickets...although initially they were sold out, we got some when they released more of the cheap seats about a month later.
The plan was to head up in the afternoon, have a couple of hours sightseeing in London, before heading to the gig, and catching the last train back to Bristol...
Finally the day arrived, and after checking and triple checking the tickets, I got the train to Bristol to meet my friend in plenty of time to catch our train to London...
Five minutes before the train was due to leave she rang me to say that she was still 3 miles away. We missed the train. I was not happy. But she arrived, and she had cookies. It is impossible to hate someone who gives you cookies...
Being skint students, we booked tickets that are only valid for one seat, on one train. After much um-ing and ahh-ing we decided to board the next train to London without tickets...which turned out to be fine as they weren't inspected, and we arrived in London just over an hour and a half later.
As it was now about two 'o clock, we decided to head to Oxford street to find something to eat, and had a lovely meal in Garfunkels, which was very reasonable for London, being about £7 each for a meal. I also got served a pint of beer on my student card (which doesn't have a date of birth on it!!!) which was epic win!!
(I seriously think that drinking is gonna be boring when it's legal, half the fun is getting served underage)
anyway, she payed for the meal to make up for missing the train (she insisted) and they also forgot to charge us for the alcohol....result.
We then headed to selfridges for something to do for an hour or two, and I tried out a lovely Dean Guitar in the music section (and even played a few AM songs)
Once we had done selfridges we decided to head for Covent Garden which is on the way to the Albert Hall by tube (the circle and District lines were shut so we had to go around the Piccadilly line and walk)
we watched the street performers for half an hour, before deciding to head for the Albert Hall so we could see the support acts (Mystery Jets blew us both away and we are planing to see them again on the summer UK tour) -- and I got served again on my college student card
The gig was fantastic...I'll copy and paste the set list below:
1. Dance Little Liar
2. Brianstorm
3. This House Is A Circus
4. Still Take You Home
5. Potion Approaching
6. Red Right Hand (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds cover)
7. My Propeller
8. Crying Lightning
9. Catapult
10. The View From The Afternoon
11. I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor
12. Secret Door
13. Cornerstone
14. If You Were There, Beware
15. Pretty Visitors
16. Do Me A Favour
17. When The Sun Goes Down
Encore:
18. Fluorescent Adolescent
19. 505 Play Video
We both thoroughly enjoyed the gig...the energy was fantastic, with barely a pause between songs. Alex Turner only spoke to the crowd three or four times during the whole gig, and some of the songs were extended with additional guitar solos. When the sun goes down was an amazing performance, alex held the chord before the "metal" riff for about two minutes and the atmosphere was incredible.
Only possible criticism would be that I would have like to have heard a few more songs from WPSIATWIN, Mardy Bum, a certain romance and fake tales were noticeably absent, and in my opinion too much new material was played. I do like Humbug as an album, but live the songs lack the energy of their earlier efforts, which really showed in the seated section (standing sold out) with people sitting and foot tapping through the new songs, and standing and dancing for songs from the first two albums. Being a guitar nerd, I would also like to see Alex's strat return, but I guess that very few people even noticed him changing to a jaguar (for me the tone and the look of the stratocaster suited the band better). The sound Quality also wasn't fantastic, with too much treble for the volume levels, but I think this could have been the hall's acoustics as much as anything....
But the report doesn't end there.
We left the hall quickly after 505, and waited outside for a taxi...there were none to be seen. At this point we had 45 minutes to get to Paddington, which is perfectly doable by taxi...
If you can find one. Which we couldn't.
by 11:15, fifteen minutes before the train was due to leave we decided to give up and come up with a new plan. We decided we had four options:
(1) Come clean with our parents and ask them very nicely to collect us
(2) Get very very very drunk and catch the first train the next morning
(3) Sleep rough
(4) Find a cheap Hotel in Kensington
None of these seemed like good ideas...so we walked to a very posh hotel by the park to try and blag a room...
The cheapest they could offer us was £150 for a single bed for the night. We decided to pass, and the helpful man on the front desk pointed us towards some B&Bs and hostels about a mile away on a map he gave us....so we started to walk. Predictably, they were all full.
My friend phoned her mum, who did a quick google search and found one hotel in the area with a single vacancy, and directed us there via google maps. We arrived an hour later, at two in the morning. The Hotel did indeed have one room, and the charged us £70 for the privalage....and I can hand on heart say it was the worst hotel I have EVER stayed in....I seriously thought the bed was a single at first. It was that small. There was no toilet in the room, you had to go down a flight of stairs and past reception, and the bed sloped, so it was impossible to lie at separate ends...oh and we were awoken in the night by the man in the next room having VERY violent sex with a hooker....which had us both in fits of laughter. Sounded like he enjoyed it so much, he wanted to know who her father was.
So the next morning we headed dreary eyed back to paddingtion (we stayed near Victoria station) and had JUST enough money left between us for two child tickets back on the train...literally with 10p spare. We were back in Bristol by three pm.
So the trip was a bit of a disaster....but 100% worth it! It was one of those real stories to tell people, and despite the situation we still had a laugh...so all in all it was a good trip....and it helps that the gig wasn't bad either!
but my advice to anyone reading this is not to try and get to a gig and back by public transport in one day!!!
My best friend is a huge Arctic Monkeys fan, and I really like their music, so when we saw that they were playing the Albert Hall we jumped at the chance to buy tickets...although initially they were sold out, we got some when they released more of the cheap seats about a month later.
The plan was to head up in the afternoon, have a couple of hours sightseeing in London, before heading to the gig, and catching the last train back to Bristol...
Finally the day arrived, and after checking and triple checking the tickets, I got the train to Bristol to meet my friend in plenty of time to catch our train to London...
Five minutes before the train was due to leave she rang me to say that she was still 3 miles away. We missed the train. I was not happy. But she arrived, and she had cookies. It is impossible to hate someone who gives you cookies...
Being skint students, we booked tickets that are only valid for one seat, on one train. After much um-ing and ahh-ing we decided to board the next train to London without tickets...which turned out to be fine as they weren't inspected, and we arrived in London just over an hour and a half later.
As it was now about two 'o clock, we decided to head to Oxford street to find something to eat, and had a lovely meal in Garfunkels, which was very reasonable for London, being about £7 each for a meal. I also got served a pint of beer on my student card (which doesn't have a date of birth on it!!!) which was epic win!!
(I seriously think that drinking is gonna be boring when it's legal, half the fun is getting served underage)
anyway, she payed for the meal to make up for missing the train (she insisted) and they also forgot to charge us for the alcohol....result.
We then headed to selfridges for something to do for an hour or two, and I tried out a lovely Dean Guitar in the music section (and even played a few AM songs)
Once we had done selfridges we decided to head for Covent Garden which is on the way to the Albert Hall by tube (the circle and District lines were shut so we had to go around the Piccadilly line and walk)
we watched the street performers for half an hour, before deciding to head for the Albert Hall so we could see the support acts (Mystery Jets blew us both away and we are planing to see them again on the summer UK tour) -- and I got served again on my college student card
The gig was fantastic...I'll copy and paste the set list below:
1. Dance Little Liar
2. Brianstorm
3. This House Is A Circus
4. Still Take You Home
5. Potion Approaching
6. Red Right Hand (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds cover)
7. My Propeller
8. Crying Lightning
9. Catapult
10. The View From The Afternoon
11. I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor
12. Secret Door
13. Cornerstone
14. If You Were There, Beware
15. Pretty Visitors
16. Do Me A Favour
17. When The Sun Goes Down
Encore:
18. Fluorescent Adolescent
19. 505 Play Video
We both thoroughly enjoyed the gig...the energy was fantastic, with barely a pause between songs. Alex Turner only spoke to the crowd three or four times during the whole gig, and some of the songs were extended with additional guitar solos. When the sun goes down was an amazing performance, alex held the chord before the "metal" riff for about two minutes and the atmosphere was incredible.
Only possible criticism would be that I would have like to have heard a few more songs from WPSIATWIN, Mardy Bum, a certain romance and fake tales were noticeably absent, and in my opinion too much new material was played. I do like Humbug as an album, but live the songs lack the energy of their earlier efforts, which really showed in the seated section (standing sold out) with people sitting and foot tapping through the new songs, and standing and dancing for songs from the first two albums. Being a guitar nerd, I would also like to see Alex's strat return, but I guess that very few people even noticed him changing to a jaguar (for me the tone and the look of the stratocaster suited the band better). The sound Quality also wasn't fantastic, with too much treble for the volume levels, but I think this could have been the hall's acoustics as much as anything....
But the report doesn't end there.
We left the hall quickly after 505, and waited outside for a taxi...there were none to be seen. At this point we had 45 minutes to get to Paddington, which is perfectly doable by taxi...
If you can find one. Which we couldn't.
by 11:15, fifteen minutes before the train was due to leave we decided to give up and come up with a new plan. We decided we had four options:
(1) Come clean with our parents and ask them very nicely to collect us
(2) Get very very very drunk and catch the first train the next morning
(3) Sleep rough
(4) Find a cheap Hotel in Kensington
None of these seemed like good ideas...so we walked to a very posh hotel by the park to try and blag a room...
The cheapest they could offer us was £150 for a single bed for the night. We decided to pass, and the helpful man on the front desk pointed us towards some B&Bs and hostels about a mile away on a map he gave us....so we started to walk. Predictably, they were all full.
My friend phoned her mum, who did a quick google search and found one hotel in the area with a single vacancy, and directed us there via google maps. We arrived an hour later, at two in the morning. The Hotel did indeed have one room, and the charged us £70 for the privalage....and I can hand on heart say it was the worst hotel I have EVER stayed in....I seriously thought the bed was a single at first. It was that small. There was no toilet in the room, you had to go down a flight of stairs and past reception, and the bed sloped, so it was impossible to lie at separate ends...oh and we were awoken in the night by the man in the next room having VERY violent sex with a hooker....which had us both in fits of laughter. Sounded like he enjoyed it so much, he wanted to know who her father was.
So the next morning we headed dreary eyed back to paddingtion (we stayed near Victoria station) and had JUST enough money left between us for two child tickets back on the train...literally with 10p spare. We were back in Bristol by three pm.
So the trip was a bit of a disaster....but 100% worth it! It was one of those real stories to tell people, and despite the situation we still had a laugh...so all in all it was a good trip....and it helps that the gig wasn't bad either!
but my advice to anyone reading this is not to try and get to a gig and back by public transport in one day!!!
