I Come Alive / The Used, O2 Academy, London

I saw The Used last night. It was awesome.

Because I'm a cool kid and also because I don't like waiting outside a venue for the doors to open, I left the house in time to catch the second support act. Or that's what I'd thought. Transport for London totally had other plans. The train arrived as normal, but then proceeded to crawl from station to station because of some signalling problems around the Camden area. Which is pretty impressive seeing that said area is on the other end of the line. Without problems, the journey takes 36 minutes station to station. We'd barely made it to Stockwell in that time, where I left the Northern line to it's misery and jumped on the Vic line, which for once was running and not even experiencing delays. Made it to the venue with enough time left to drop off my coat, pop to the toilet, position myself in the audience and stand around for 15 minutes listening to the venue's idea of appropriate backing music.

I therefore can't really comment on the awfulness or awesomeness of the support acts. I assume they were ok as most people were still inside the venue and not hanging out outside waiting for the noise to finish.

The Used took the stage almost on time (there was a running order for the bands on the website), which was quite a surprise.

But before we take a look at the gig itself, let's have a moment to discuss the band's wardrobe choices. In particular Jepha's. Because, seriously, what was the man thinking? The only possible explanation would be that he didn't have any clean clothes left and had to steal them from an 80's metal band that was staying in the same hotel, although I have the suspicion he was actually serious about his outfit. It kinda matched his pornstar mustache. Still, I would've preferred to not see him in a jeans vest with studded shoulders (gold studs, too), a sleeveless loose fitting black top and light blue jeans. The only redeeming feature were his converse. I like it when men were converse, especially if they team them up with 501's. I probably would've jumped Jepha on stage if he'd done that (and subsequently would've gotten thrown out, but it would've so been worth it), so maybe he'd sensed danger and thought he'd wear something less jumpable. He also seems to have taken out most of his (visible) piercings, which is sad. He still looked hot as hell, though, which goes to prove that nothing can distort real beauty *le sigh* The rest of the band was unobtrusive. Ok, Dan was wearing a bright red headband (him and Jepha read the same magazines, no?), but he's the drummer for god's sake and they're not exactly famous for their fashion sense, which is why they get stashed away behind the drum kit. Bert was all rock singer and ball of cute** in band t-shirt, black shorts and black shoes vans. I approve. Not sure what Quinn was wearing, couldn't see him that well as he was on the other side of the stage and I kept getting distracted by Jepha's hotness and Bert's, errrr, Bert-ness. Which is absolutely fascinating. I'm assuming Quinn was wearing something as I most definitely would've noticed nudity and what he was wearing was fairly inoffensive.

** for considerably crazy and possibly physically dangerous values of cute

Now, the gig. Due to my lateness I started out pretty much at the back of the room. Which would've been annoying if it wasn't for my knack for active queuing. Some people might call it elbowing my way to the front, but I'm more subtle than that. I just fit in small spaces, am squishy and short enough for tall people to not notice me until it's too late and then I'm already in front of them. And I've got years of experience, perfected at numerous New Mode Army gigs, which most of the audience clearly didn't have as they were half my age. A few songs in I was 4 rows from the front, which was alright. I could've taken photos if I could've been arsed to get my phone out, but judging by the amount of cameras I've seen there'll be photos on the web soon, so why get all distracted from the gig if other people do all the work for me.

In terms of setlist, I'm not familiar enough with their albums having mostly fallen in love with the latest one (Vulnerable, it's awesome) to be able recognize the songs and even if I'd known the titles of the songs, my memory is shite, so this is stolen from setlist.fm and may be wrong:

Take It Away

The Bird And The Worm

Listening

Kiss It Goodbye

I Come Alive (I remember this one)

I Caught Fire (yay)

Hospital

The Taste Of Ink

All That I've Got

Buried Myself Alive

Blue And Yellow (yep, that was awesome, too)

Give Me Love

Put Me Out (bounce, bounce, bounce)

The Best Of Me

Paralyzed

an acoustic set of

Surrender (this was intense and insanely good)

On My Own

and, the encore

Blood On My Hands (awesome)

Pretty Handsome Awkward (definitely)

A Box Full Of Sharp Objects

I did my best to sing along to the songs I knew, jumped around and generally had a very, very good time. You could see that the band was having fun on stage, Bert is just amazing, and the energy of the crowd was there, although I've been at gigs where the air was almost electric, but it was pretty good going nevertheless. It was one of the roadies birthday the next day, which meant he got a birthday cake (the interesting bits of a naked man, including cock ring, dead classy) and 'happy birthday' sung by the audience.

Got home around midnight, wide awake, which was annoying seeing that I had to get up and go to work the next morning, but what can you do.

Definitely want more of that, and yes, next time The Used come to London, I'll (most likely, subject to availability) be there.