the Forum Hertfordshire – Down At The Front

Billy Lunn at Forum Hertfordshire

Paul Hudson — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 21:35:45 +0000

A nice evening with Three Counties BBC Introducing supporting a ‘Hatfield Rocks’ gig at the Forum Hertfordshire. As is usually the case with a Uni gig, there weren’t many students here. Surprising as the Billy’s known through the Subways. Luckily, with the Subways being local, quite a few friends of Billy turned up and this made the gig all the more enjoyable as it felt like you were at a friends party.

Natasha North – lovely voice

The Landed – Coffeehouse Session

Paul Hudson — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 12:02:26 +0000

Your Favorite Enemies

Paul Hudson — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 00:16:02 +0000

Another Coffeehouse session in the Elehouse and another pooly attended session. Pity, rock group Your Favorite Enemies entertained us with acoustic versions of two of their songs.

Johnny Lucas – Coffeehouse Session

Paul Hudson — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 22:12:54 +0000

Another poor attendance at a Coffeehouse Session at the University of Hertfordshire. Honestly, if I ran the Coffeehouse Sessions, I’d drop Hertfordshire from the circuit. Our students simply don’t care about new music. In fact, almost everyone actively watching was a member of staff. Maybe the timing’s wrong as it is during lecture time, but as I’ve been to many poorly attended events, it has to be our students.

Today’s session was from an enthusiastic guy called Johnny Lucas, who as he kept reminding us, uses a repeat pedal to build-up the song (yes, we know what a repeat pedal does). Unfortunately for Johnny, his enthusiasm was probably lost on a bunch of middle age staff (Did I just write that? Bollocks, I’m getting old). But I’m sure with a more cooperative audience, they’d like the effort he put in and despite the audience he played with the same enthusiasm through songs off his latest EP.

He mainly played an acoustic guitar adding vocal and beat-box repeats along with bass-lines from the bass guitar he had on a stand. Each repeat adding an extra layer, building up his song. I’m not sure how much his repeat pedal added to some songs. Some I felt would have been better with less layers as some of the songs seemed to take too long to build-up. But it’s probably nit picking. Probably the most successful layering was his vocals. Johnny’s got a pretty decent rock voice and the repeat pedal allowed him to lay anchoring vocals so at time he could really let go. The highlight was his excellent cover of Seven Nation Army / Sweet Dreams mash-up even seemed peak the interest of the few students watching.

Coffeehouse Session – Josh Taerk

Paul Hudson — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 22:25:10 +0000

Ellie Rose’s Coffeehouse session at the University of Hertfordshire

Paul Hudson — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 17:55:28 +0000

It’s nice having afternoon gigs at work. It breaks the day up. Especially when they’re nice acoustic sessions, like today’s from Ellie Rose. It’s one of the few remaining advantages of working where I do. Decent turn out from staff. But fairly poor student representation. Which is a pity as Ellie has a lovely voice and did a great little set. Why don’t students want to give new upcoming artists like Ellie a chance? Their loss.

Hayseed Dixie

Paul Hudson — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 20:11:17 +0000

AC/DC played in a ‘hillbilly’ style. What’s not to love? Well actually very little. They are exactly what you’d expect, a fun band who although don’t take themselves seriously, do take playing seriously with a very tight sound. I can imagine them going down a storm at a festival. Unfortunately, tonight they were playing the Forum Hertfordshire where we have a very unadventurous student population. So tonight’s gig was fairly empty and when called for, there was very little audience participation and almost no jumping around. A real pity because despite the disappointed crowd, the band put in an excellent and lengthy set full or humour and interesting cover versions.

In the first half of the set they played their entire AC/DC cover album. I’m not the biggest AC/DC fan. So I found this section a bit hit and miss. But in the second half of the set, they opened it up to the audience for requests and played some cracking covers such as Warpigs, Poison, Bohemian Rhapsody, Comfortably Numb and my personal favourite, the Bangles Eternal Flame. They’re not going to win any awards for originality. But sometimes, you just need a fun night of music and Hayseed Dixie offer it in a bucket loads – just make sure they’ve got a crowd that’s big enough to show some appreciation!

Babyshambles

Paul Hudson — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 20:41:04 +0000

What a shambles. The band came on the stage extremely drunk. Pete Doherty was completely out of tune for most of the evening and the guitarist played so many bum notes. It was a poor performance.

Frank Turner

Paul Hudson — Sun, 20 Oct 2013 23:08:50 +0000

God this evening was terrible. I’ve never really listened to Frank Turner. I listened to him from the street at SXSW, but I wasn’t particularly impressed. But I try to get to as many gigs at work as possible because I think it’s important to support live music. But there’s something ‘false’ about Frank Turner. He’s not terrible as such, but he’s billed himself as a ‘folk’ singer yet he sounds like he’s created a pastiche of what he thinks modern folk should sound like. Few of the songs are actually about anything. But then as he’s posh, having attended Eton, it’s to be expected. But that’s the central problem with tonight’s performance. The crowd loved it. I know that seems silly. But his music is so vacuous, it just shows how dead the music industry currently is. To me his music feels just as manufactured as any pop song and the fact that so many people were lapping it up, just felt so wrong. There was literally nothing surprising about his music. Every break, every chorus, was exactly where you thought it would be. I like music to surprise and challenge me, and Frank’s music simply didn’t.

Fossil Collective at the Forum Hertfordshire

Paul Hudson — Mon, 13 May 2013 22:30:18 +0000