New Found Glory
Date :
December 14 - 2001
Venue : Glasgow Garage
Support : Fenix Tx & Rx Bandits
Tonight at the Garage, you can't move for the sea of people outside it, much more than it's 750 people capacity, there must be at least 1000 people here tonight. Eventually, about 15 minutes later than scheduled, we all got in.
Had we of blinked when we got in we would've missed the Rx Bandits, the openers of tonight, and label mates with New Found Glory and Fenix Tx. From what I know of, the Rx Bandits are, as far as style goes, they are one of the only original sounding bands on the scene just now. They play a weird, yet very good mix, of ska and pop-punk, and also have very strong vocalists, and crazy trombone players, that use their trombones as light sabres and guitars, and as with any ska band, they have the stupid yet great fun, dancing too. From the moment they went, there was a small pit down the front, with a group of guys that knew all their songs, and eventually, the majority of the crowd morphed into a surprisingly rough pit for the style they play. Their set passed by very quickly, playing a few songs from their newest cd on Drive Thru, 'Progress', keeping a smile on everyone's face. Then suddenly their set just ended, after about 15-20 minutes, which as you could guess isn't very long even for a support band, but they done a good job, and I look forward to them returning, hopefully being assigned a longer set.
Fenix Tx, also label mates with both bands, have started to build up a worldwide fan base of their own recently, with releasing new videos and all the rest, and are very much capable of selling out venues almost the size of the Garage, which holds about 750 people by themselves, and a good amount of the people there were big Fenix fans. They have a brilliant opening song, fuck knows what it was called, but it was a good powerful opener, as are the next few songs, playing a couple of songs from the latest release 'Lechuza' (or something like that) which get the crowd going very well. And by the time they reach what I believe is their latest single, 'Threesome', the whole Garage is jumping for them, so they're going down very well so far. They play more songs, all sounding pretty similair, then comes this one song, that sounds a lot harder than the other songs they have been playing, which shows that they are being serious when they tell magazines that they are influenced by Slayer. Fenix Tx did very very well for a support act, and got somewhat longer onstage than Rxbandits, but also got a better crowd going too. This gig has already been worth the 8 quid we all paid for it.
Now comes the after support act pause. The sounds of guitars being tuned, drum kits being randomnly beaten by someone with no clue of how to play it, yet still knows the exact set up, come on, we all know that dont we?
Now at last, after a wait from June, when I bouight my ticket, and on this day of December 14th, the lights finally go down and you can hear a ringing chord on the guitar, and five people appear on stage, and the room errupts. They give the usual 'hi we're new found glory etc etc.', then burst (literally) into Better Off Dead, which is without doubt the best opening song i've ever heard a band play, with the exceptions of Capdown's Unite To Progress, and the whole room is going to them, and they're some skankers and everything, we all now know that this was well worth the wait. NFG continue with songs from the self titled album, then they play a cover song, surprisingly enough from their covers album ' From The Screen To Your Stereo' Everything I do I Do It For You, which goes down very well, and is a good sing a long number, but so are all NFG songs. More and more bounce and sing a long pop-punk tunes are being put on us, such as the new single 'Dressed To Kill', and other very similair songs. One of the strong points of the night, is when NFG play, in my eyes, their best song 'Eyesore', which is a really slow song, yet still it got an oober-jumpy crowd going down. Now...They play 'Sincerely Me' now, also a very good song, and before it, they do a little bit of an Ali G piss take type thing, when they dedicate the song to 'me julie'. And then comes 'Sucker', which gets, once again a very bouncy alongy crowd. Now, this made the whole encore thing predictible, as they finished off with 'Boy Crazy, a very catchy song, but they are going off without playing the song that got NFG where they are today, that being Hit Or Miss, so guess whats going to be in the encore. So off they go, and the NFG NFG chant sparks off, and they emerge again, and announce that they are going to be playing two more songs. First off, they fire 'Ballad For The Lost Romantics' at us, which is the same as any other song, only with irrelevant lyrics. Then, as you could guess, comes 'Hit Or Miss' and it really does get everyone in the garage bouncing and singing along, which is fun for some....So the show finishes again, only this time it's for good, which is a bit of a bollocks.
I think i enjoyed it more the last time I went to see NFG, as it was in a better venue, and it wasn't very predtictible, as they played Hit Or Miss before the went offstage. I was very surprised that they only played the Garage, they could easily of packed out the Barrowlands, which holds around 2000 people, and has been voted one of the best venues in the UK. The night was topped off with me and my mates meeting the new Fenix Tx guitarist. He was really cool, and tells us that they're coming back here very soon, so that will be great when they do. This gig was well worth the wait, although around half of the songs combined of NFG & FTX, sounded very much a like, but they were all very good, so they get away with it.
- Click here, for a review of
Fenix Tx headlining, Glasgow Garage, 15.04.02
- Click here, for a review of Rx
Bandits, supporting Fenix Tx, Glasgow Garage, 15.04.02