Day 5: London
Welcome
Yesterday we traveled up to London for our show at the Forum Theatre.
Breakfast was acquired by Tristan who visited a bakery not far from our hotel on the Brighton beachfront. The item was a ‘Breakfast Danish’ - egg, bacon, and black pudding.
We set out Northbound on the A23 with a bleary sky and scattered rain showers keeping us company. London’s Orbital Motorway, the M25, then carried us anticlockwise around the outskirts of the city until we caught the A2 at Dartford to carry us right into the metropolis. From there it was a slow crawl for an hour until we arrived at Kentish Town, the home of the famous Forum Theatre.
A short break for a snack.
We arrived slightly ahead of schedule and took the time to get settled in before unloading the van and easing into our setup routine.
Jon safely rigging the birds onto a truss.
Here’s a rare behind the scenes clip from our soundcheck for anyone that’s interested. Please excuse the warping picture, my phone camera was struggling with dimensional continuity.
The Kentish Town Forum Theatre (currently known as O2 Forum Kentish Town since it’s acquisition by Live Nation in 2015) was built in 1934 as an Art Deco cinema and over it’s long life has served as a dance hall, Irish dance hall, bingo hall, and live music venue. It was a spectacular room to perform in and we were blown away by the atmosphere when the room filled up. The night was opened as usual by a blisteringly high-energy performance from our friends Cherym. This was followed by local band Drug Store Romeos who played a set of eclectic dream-pop and deployed a bubble machine at several key moments. It felt like playing to a sea of people in this huge wide theatre and it was impossible not to have an amazing time performing. The crowd were very happy to see us again after a two year absence and we tried to make it worth the wait.
Drug Store Romeos - bubble machine is deployed!
I’ll leave you with a series of photos of the evening taken by the incomparable Will Reading.
