Venison...

Wow. It's been a while... So basically this time last week (June 9th), I was lucky enough to have a friend with a laptop that was able to actually get on to the Dingwalls site, and get us a pair of tickets to The Strokes secret gig! They went on sale the night before at 9pm and I was lucky/geeky enough to find this out from helpful old xfm, so off we went... It was possibly better than I could have ever imagined, probably because I only had one night to burst with excitement before the gig and little time for heightened expectations, for a band which I thought I wasn't ever going to get the opportunity to see - let alone in a tiiiiny room for only a tenner.

I enjoyed the 'Venison' business, they actually performed under that name and all the merch had Venison on it, as well as the crowd chanting it to goad and support them - to which Julian responded by holding his hands up 'guilty'. Such a dude. The Camden venue only had 500 people in, who were mainly surprisingly young, and it was the hottest room I have ever been in - we are talking sweat rain here - and the crowd were unusually stubborn with letting people past, probably because it was the first gig The Strokes had played in FOUR YEARS. Yeah you heard. For ten English pounds. Yep.

It was so surreal, they appeared out of a tiny door onto one of the smallest stages I have ever seen a band perform on, completely understated with just black fabric as the backdrop. They launched into 'NYC Cops' which sent everyone understandably mental, and was perfect and effortless. Julian left on the leather jacket and sunnies the whole set, he must have been dying inside, but it definitely kept up the New York indie-cool appearance we have all recognised them for since 2001. Thankfully the set was loaded with classic songs - what I was looking forward to watching most, with crowd favourites clearly being 'Hard to Explain', 'Reptillia' and after much Venison chanting, the encore 'Juicebox' and 'Heart in a Cage' were very appreciated.

Surprisingly 'Last Nite' wasn't recieved as excitingly as I had predicted, I thought it would be standard favourite, as it is probably their most famous song. But perhaps this just shows that the crowd was made up of true fans who know their other songs, or as it was last before the encore I thought people were actually dead and exhausted/melting - seriously I'm not exaggerating this heat, it was beyond tropical. Julian had warmed up a fair bit by this song as joked 'shit I forgot the words' before he launched into the hit, before he was getting friendly with the lucky/squashed lot at the front - high fiving them regularly and saying: "I like you guys", "What the fuck is going on at my feet?!" and with one girl "Wait.. I just saw you go to the toilet... have you washed your hands?!". Mainly a warm-up gig for their performance at Isle of Wight Festival on Saturday just gone, The Strokes definitely proved hardly any time had passed in the last four years, watching them perform was like listening to them again for the first time when I was thirteen - unique and clearly influential and well as being ridiculously and unimitatingly cool.