Capdown
Date : April 11 2002
Venue : Glasgow Cathouse
Support :
Whizzwood
We arrived at the venue at door opening time (after an hour in the internet cafe, as appose to reading book in borders) to quite possibly the biggest que i've ever seen to get into the Cathouse, all here, of course to see Britains finest, Capdown.
At about half eight, three-piece hardcore crew Whizzwood took to the stage. They started off, with really, in the long run of things, a generic hardcore song, and to someone who doesn't know what I mean - heavy palm muting on the guitar for the intro, and three chord or so rythym, thunderous bass, and the drums going at light speed, although, surprisingly they didn't get an instant pit going, which was a sign that this wasn't going to be the best of Capdown shows. One thing Whizzwood are good at is being funny onstage, especially when they called the, in their words, "little secuirity guard woman with the spiky hair at the top of the stairs" the "bitchiest bastard ever!", which was incredibly funny. As the set progressed the crowd was starting to go pretty restless to them, with quite probably the most violent circle pit ever going in the big open space in the middle. But no matter how good they got the crowd going, I was going off them more and more after every song, because EVERY song sounded EXACTLY the same. So by the end of their set of similair and repetitive hardcore, I was well up for Capdown, and I hoped to god that they wouldn't let me down.
Around twenty minutes later, Capdown took to the Cathouse stage, to an electric reaction, from the now jam packed Cathouse, and straight away, they launched into 'Faith No More' and instantly had the crowd going restless, and straight after that, they sent out their request for "a little bit of cannibis!", they then followed up the opener with tokin anthem 'Kained But Able', which had the crowd going equally wild. But from then on, the whole thing just started to go downhill, in that, Capdown started to sound increasingly sloppy, because of problems with the (shite) P.A. sysytem in the Cathouse, they played very few old songs, with the exception of 'Pound For The Sound', during which Jake got up a few random audience members to try to out-skank him, but of course they didn't, because Jake is the skank massa, and very few songs from 'Civil Disobedients'. The only highlights of the set really, were when they played 'The Neverloution', but they missed out the hardcore part at the end, which was a bollocks, and no matter how old the songs getting, 'Ska Wars' gets one of the best reactions out there! They stuck mainly to newer material, including 'Dealer Feaver', 'What Doesn't Kill You', which were the highlights, as far as new material goes. And unlike previous sets, songs missing were 'Positivity', 'Unite To Progress', 'Civil Disobedients', and 'Head Strong', all from the album 'Civil Disobedients', which 'Pound For The Sound' can't even come close too. Maybe when Jake got his hair cut, some of their ability to put on live shows went...but whatever it was, there was definetly something missing from this set, although it sure wasn't stage energy, as Jake never stopped, Keith was bouncing around, for a change, and Boob was his usual, charisma of a brick! They closed up with circle pit number or 'An A-Political Stand Of Reasons', although, the circle pit was shit, because people kept on falling and then everyone stopped moving, and then ended the set with Capdown classic, that can never be left off a set list, 'ACAB (All Coppers Are Bastards)', which the crowd loved and was the perfect way to end their slightly sloppy show. The main dodgy thing about the set was, that the crowd was really shit, because the venue was over-packed and it was just pushy shovey all night, with no real space for a decent pit (only during Capdown).
No matter how dodgy this show was, Capdown are still one of the best live acts around, because I can't forget about the previous gigs, but this show just had something missing from it. And also, when will they learn that they are capable of playing bigger venues? They've built up a far bigger fan base over the last year, so they should take advantage of that, and play the Garage next time, but they probably won't. Rock on next time!
- Click here, for a review of Capdown on the Co-operation Tour 2002