The first band to go on stage were awful! I hate to say this but they were so bad, they didn't even bother to tell us who they were! All I can say is that they wore suits, the singer played a saxophone, they were American, and the crowd either carried on chatting like there was no band on stage, or repeatedly shouted fuck off at the band. This was one of the most hostile crowds towards a band I've ever seen. I tried to listen to the music and give it a fair go, but it was just a noisy dirge. Almost seemed like an attempt gone badly wrong to be like Mr Bungle's Disco Volante album, or sound like John Zorn. The band was basically boring, and unimaginative!
Radish were the second band, and I had high expectations of them since I had heard a few singles which were good, but I had also heard a live concert on the radio which was good. Watching them live was boring though! I was very disappointed. It was almost like they didn't know what to do on stage! Again the crowd were hostile(the majority of those that were listening). They didn't seem to pull of the dynamic sound of the singles which have a catchy yet rocky edge to them.
Faith No More The set list was:Apart from Puffy, all the band came on stage wearing suits, and went straight into the theme from Midnight Cowboy, which was excellent, especially seeing Mike Patton play a strange instrument. I have no idea what it's called, but you blow into a pipe which then goes down to a handheld keyboard! Throughout the show the band took off their jackets and ties, but there was little interaction with the crowd. In fact nothing really seemed to get me going until Introduce Yourself which was excellent. The previous songs weren't played badly or anything, they just didn't seem to quite hit the spot!
The Gentle Art of Making Enemies was excellent as well, and didn't feature Roddy, but he came back for Last Cup Of Sorrow. After that the was the first crowd interaction. Mike P (I think) asking "Who will fuck me?" Which got lots of applause, screams and shots, and then Roddy asking the same, which didn't get exactly the same amount of interest but he wasn't far off!
The next few songs were played adequately, then Epic was played. As expected most of the crowd went mental, and it was funny to hear Mike singing most of the word to "Barbie Girl" at the end of it. After it though he said something along the lines of "I can't believe we still have to play that shit after all this time". He really didn't seem happy to have to play this "classic" that got them famous! It reminded me of when they played the first Phoenix festival, and they introduced Falling to Pieces by saying, "This is probably the last time you'll ever hear us play this song live". It was amusing though when during the song a female fan ran on stage and Mike P moved to the back of the stage, making a cross with is fingers, as if to ward off a vampire!
Roddy left the stage again for Get Out, but came back for Just a Man, which was very good to see live.
Undoubtedly the highlight if the show was after the first encore when the band came on stage accompanied by 2 other guys and another keyboard was on stage. Immediately I knew this had to be Sparks, and they went into an incredible version of "This Town Ain't big Enough For The Both Of Us". That was simply awesome seeing Ron Mael and Mike Patton duetting live on stage. After the song finished, Mike said something like, "That was fucking Sparks everybody" , as if he couldn't believe it himself, and wanted us to know how lucky we were to see Faith No More playing with some of their idols!
Be Aggressive was nothing special, but it was nice to see them cover Burt Baccarach's "This Guy's in Love With You", but perhaps only because I had never seen them do that song live before.
The 2nd encore version of Pristina was OK, it seemed to go on for a bit, and wasn't really anything special.
This was certainly not the best Faith No More show I've been to, in fact if it hadn't been for Sparks showing up I would have been disappointed ,a word I'd never have though I would associate with Faith No More!This is Ron Mael from Sparks and I'm here to give my very unbiased review of the concert that Faith No More gave at the Brixton Academy. I say unbiased because we were invited to do "This Town Ain't big Enough For The Both Of Us" as an encore number.
Starting off with a five minute version of the theme from Midnight Cowboy done instrumentally, is something that you won't hear from most bands and I though that was absolutely incredible.
Even a fan running on stage and having Mike Patton giving the cross sign as if he was trying to hex a vampire I thought was a special touch.
Their choice of cover songs is unbelievable because they did "This Guy's in Love With You", you won't hear Metallica doing that, but I mean I love songs like Epic. I think that that's one of the great songs of the recent past. I thought the concert was was brilliant and that within, sort of, I hate to use the term, "heavy genre", but we'll use that in this case that Faith No More, I think are the best of these bands, because they are the most ambitious.