Frankmusik, Killa Kella and Gigantor at Manchester Club Academy. 8th December 2009

I felt older than I have ever felt in the queue for Tuesday night’s gig. Not only were people legally allowed to drink alcohol far outnumbered by those who could not (there was a fair percentage that didn’t look like they could legally consent to sex) but they were making themselves very obvious. A lot of them were drunk (illegally) and most of them were shrieking and running around. There does seem to be a trend emerging that modern 14-16 year olds need to act up to look cool. It’s fecking irritating. Once inside we were also limited to only buying one drink each as Manchester Uni Union obviously didn’t fancy getting fined for supplying alcohol to underagers.

Then it started to rain, and proceeded to start raining quite hard. Despite it being in my union I could only get in with one guest (I had three) and the other Man Uni student coming with us was running late so we stood there and shivered.

So we got inside and shook ourselves off wet dog style and huddled over our one-at-a-time drinks. The first support act was a DJ (Gigantor, so called because he appeared to be about seven feet tall and about three wide). He was alright, as far as DJs go, but from where I was sitting it appeared he was being paid to stand on the stage, twiddle knobs and drink. It’s a hard life for some. I hardly knew any of the songs he was playing and I didn’t feel like dancing anyway. I felt like I needed a Zimmer frame.

The second support act (Killa Kella) was an actual band with an actual variety of actual people doing actual musical things but were still crap. Well, I say crap, but that seems a bit harsh. They were very hip hop and I don’t know anything about hip hop. The lyrics were very repetitive though. The good hip hop I've heard is like poetry set to a beat. Perhaps I was right first time and they were crap. The fourteen year olds, still high on their one illicitly gained WKD, lapped it up though.

Finally Killa Kella left the stage and we sidled down the side of the teenagers to get closer to the stage. Frankmusik is pretty new on my musical radar and he only has one album out (and two remix albums, which smacks of old rope to me, but ho hum) so I was quite interested in seeing him live. That one album, however, is rather good and far more accomplished than most of the lyrically pointless synth pop 80’s revival nonsense that’s doing the rounds at the moment (hang your head in shame La Roux). He also turned out to be a fantastic vocalist, never faulting through the whole set and treating us to some beat boxing when technical difficulties gave us an impromptu break. As he only has one album out he had to pad the set a bit with covers (Amy Winehouse’s ‘Rehab’ was very well received) and an acoustic version of ‘Three Little Words’. That was one of the highlights of my night as I prefer the version on the remix album that is more chilled than the single version. I had hoped he would do my favourite song (‘In Step’) last, but he did ‘Better Off As Two’ instead which is also a rather good song. It was, however, quite a short set and although enjoyable, we were soon stumbling wide eyed out of the Union and back into the Manchester rain.

As I said, it was good, but I'm not sure I’ll see him again.

Peace and Love x