Turning up to play an acoustic set early on in the evening were Orlando Weeks and Felix White from the Maccabees but ‘Today is not about them’, said the organisers giving the smaller bands a chance to shine. This didn’t stop Orlando and Felix attracting the biggest audience however, and once they had finished large crowds dispersed from the club to go elsewhere. The set itself was short, soft and sweet, included were the usual: ‘Lego’, ‘About Your Dress’, a gypsy/cabaret version of the live favourite ‘Precious Time’ and a couple of technical problems that seemed to shorten the set even more as they had to abandon a song.

Before the show I asked Orlando and Felix to tell me what it’s like to gain enough popularity to fill Academies and festival venues and then get the opportunity to return to an intimate venue.

O/F: It’s great, a lot of fun and good to do when asked to come along by my mate who organised this.

What do they think of new independent event organisers like You’re No Promo emerging at the moment?

O/F: It’s really good that they’re offering opportunities for unknown talent to play and also for us to hear them.

Do they mind being associated with others like Jamie T and Talk Taxis as a certain group of similar bands as they constantly tour and play together?

O/F: Not at all, we love it because we’re really good mates so we get on well when we tour together.

Are there any unknown bands that they’ve got into and can recommend?

O/F: New Vinyls, a band from Edinburgh, they’re wicked. I’m also getting into some old stuff; I really like Paul Simon and Randy Newman.

I was ecstatic to hear that, Paul Simon’s Graceland album is a must for anyone who hasn’t heard it.

What is their opinion on these bullshit genres invented by the NME like ‘art-punk’?

O/F: I kinda don’t mind, whatever floats their boat, I guess it just shouldn’t be taken seriously.

I agreed, the NME’s just a comic really.

O/F: Yeah.

What about this fashion that loads of indie kids have swarmed to conform to, that includes cardigans with stars and polka dots and skinny jeans?

O/F: Again, I don’t really mind, it’s important that it forms a group that people feel they can belong to and blend in with.

Wouldn’t they rather see people looking original and standing out at their gigs?

O/F: Well, when I was a kid if I saw someone dressed differently to everyone else and standing out I would think, ‘What a twat’.

Hm, fair enough. Just before they went off to get onstage Orlando said, ‘This is our first acoustic gig, it’s gonna be shit’. Well it certainly wasn’t disastrous.

As for the More Assured, they played full band and put on an amazing show thanks to their bassist, Slinky, pulling out all the stops by jumping on amps and putting the gig on hold to say, ‘Has anyone got a guitar strap? You can have this one it’s shit!’ Besides this the More Assured proved themselves to be a lot of fun by using every line of what I call, ‘pop-scat singing’, from the ba-da-bas to the oh-uh-ohs, which luckily weren’t quite so unbearable as you’d think.

Example closed the all ages gig with his act based around the ‘I’m an arrogant tit and I know it’ notion. This meant making his way through the dark room in sunglasses and shouting ‘If anyone else has a pair of these, put them on so that I’m not the only one that looks a twat in here!’ It was by far the best set of evening, it included sampling of classic songs like ‘Paint it Black’ and ‘I Just Want to Make Love to You’, combined with lyrics about commonly talked about problems like kids with knives and white boys from Fulham who can’t rap (supposedly him). Just at the end, when there was no time for an encore and all the lights came on in the organisers’ effort to make the place look less like a rave, Example did one more number anyway with a Weird Al Yankovic style spoof of Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’.

The all ages gig was just about an all round success, if only the smoking ban hadn’t affected the club and made it stink of public toilets.

Words: Will Slater