Our resident barman Jake Longhurst caught Eagles Of Death Metal's live set at Rock City at the start of December, and despite only being a casual fan of the Californian rock band, here are his thoughts on the show.
As a very, very, and I cannot emphasise this enough, very, casual fan of the Eagles Of Death Metal, I was quite happy to be working this shift, as whilst I wouldn’t have paid for a ticket to see them, I was excited to see what kind of a show this band would put on. As I got into work and walked to the back room, I found out I was on my favourite till for gigs yet again, the furthest left till on the main bar, so I was looking forward to a good show. I started at 6:30pm, when the doors opened, so I didn't have much to do when I initially arrived as all the setup had already been finished, so I walked over to the bar and got set up on my till, waiting for customers to come and order.
Unsurprisingly, that didn’t take very long, and soon enough we had a slow but steady stream of customers ordering drinks. Very early on, I challenged a man for his ID when he was blatantly in his late 40’s at least, and we had a good laugh, at which point he took it upon himself to be my dad for the duration of the shift, and started by saying that I don’t have to clean my room tonight, which was lucky seeing as I finished my shift at about 4am so wasn’t planning on it. He came back a little later with some friends, and he called me son when he ordered, I replied calling him dad, and then one of them started to get very confused and believed we were father and son, which we decided to carry on with for a solid half hour, including mentioning how I inherited my rugged good looks from him, not to mention my sense of humour.
I also had an absolutely delightful couple start chatting to me about the band their son is in, and how they were at their son’s show when a random American man walked in and said he loved them, and revealed himself as a member of the band Rancid who were supporting Green Day later that evening, and gave the whole band free tickets. I for one would’ve probably been unable to speak at that point, and ended up deeply absorbed in this whole conversation, which made it very fortuitous that the bar had cleared up completely, meaning I was able to carry on chatting for about twenty minutes.
Not long after that couple left the support band, Bones, came on, and they played an excellent set. The drummer left a particularly good taste in my mouth, as whilst he was only playing for a short time, I saw plenty of variation in style, lots of different fills, alternate time signatures, and some cool stick tricks. Whilst they were playing, I distinctly remember two men on the top side of 50 coming up and ordering three or four rounds of Jager bombs, two pints each, and a glass of water. I was very bemused by the whole encounter, and both the co-workers on the till next to me felt very similarly. I also had, in the club shift after the gig, a student order 12 shots of lemonade, which was by far the weirdest thing I’ve ever served, and whilst it is entirely irrelevant I do hope that he reads this and remembers making such a weird order.
When the band came on to start their set, there were two things that I noticed. The first was how ridiculously American the frontman is, and the second was how many of my co-workers suddenly ended up next to my till so they could get the best view of the bass player. A brief bit of context, the bass player is in fact a woman, who happens to be very conventionally attractive, which held massive appeal to most of the bar. The set they played was very good, however I couldn’t listen to much of it as we still had a steady stream of customers all night.
"The lead singer suddenly started going off on a spiel that was as all-American as a double cheeseburger and fries"
My highlight came about three quarters of the way through the set, when the lead singer suddenly started going off on a spiel that was as all-American as a double cheeseburger and fries. He talked about bald eagles, God, guns, etcetera, as if trying to make sure every stereotype we have for America was confirmed. Then they played a great cover of Moonage Daydream by David Bowie, which was a great sing along for two of us behind the bar!
That was the final song of the main set, but they came out for a four song encore and started off with Can’t Help Falling In Love by Elvis which had the whole crowd moving. The very final song was a mixture of Speaking In Tongues which is one of their own original songs, and Ace Of Spades by Motörhead, which is the third time this year I’ve heard that song covered live, by three different bands. I definitely enjoyed working this gig - we had some good sing-alongs, some fun customer interactions, and the bands were both great. So, a good evening was had for everyone.
Jake Longhurst
Edited by: Gemma Cockrell
Featured image courtesy of Eagles Of Death Metal via Facebook.
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