Last weekend was very busy for me as the night before Delphic me and my girlfriend went to the NME Awards Tour at the O2 Academy in Leeds. We had won a Spotify competition to win tickets to see Birmingham band Peace, the over-hyped Palma Violets, Miles Kane and headliners Django Django. It was a good gig but I have never seen so many people leave during a headliners set with a portion of the crowd obviously just coming to see Miles Kane. His new songs did sound promising but a few sound like he is trying to sound like Kasabian, one of the bands he is has recently supported. Palma Violets were disappointing after reading about how they are supposedly the next big thing. Peace were OK and the potential is clearly there and are part of a group of new bands coming out of Birmingham. The next gig we are going to are Peace’s good friends Swim Deep at the Brudenell Social Club which is another great little venue in Leeds. We saw them support Spector a few months ago and they are another band destined for bigger things in 2013.
Anyway, previous NME tours have had some amazing line ups. One that sticks out is the 2005 line-up which featured Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, The Futureheads and The Killers! Yes you read that right and it seems crazy to see Kaiser Chiefs were opening that tour but the opening slot is coveted in music with Arctic Monkeys, Coldplay, Franz Ferdinand and The Vaccines all having that role throughout the years.
Eight years later, the Kaiser Chiefs drummer and songwriter Nick Hodgson announced he was leaving the band which was widely reported in the media. However the announcement of his replacement has been rather more muted and I can only find the tiniest of articles on the Yorkshire Evening Post website as the Kaisers are famously from Leeds. When I saw who it was on the band’s Facebook page, I knew I had to write a blog post about it even if it is a bit late!
Club Smith playing outside Jumbo, Leeds
For their upcoming tour, Kaiser Chiefs have recruited Vijay Mistry as their new drummer. The name might not mean anything but he was the drummer in Club Smith, another Yorkshire band. They have supported Kaiser Chiefs in the past so the link is there but I had the pleasure of seeing Club Smith play live in unusual circumstances. They were one of the bands playing at a student event in St. John’s shopping centre in Leeds in October 2012 along with This Many Boyfriends and Galaxians. They played outside the great Jumbo Records shop but once the students got their freebies they left. This only left a few people including myself to witness the bands play which was a great shame. I had researched the bands and was impressed enough to buy the This Many Boyfriends album (before the official release date) as well as the Club Smith album Appetite for Chivalry. The album has some great artwork and I approached Vijay to get the album signed. He was so down to earth and seemed surprised that I wanted them to sign it. The ironic thing is that if that album was released around 2004/2005 the band would surely be getting a lot more attention with songs like the stomping ‘Lament’. I would like to congratulate Vijay and hope the Kaiser’s fans give him a chance to blend him and not automatically think it isn’t the same without Nick who also sang lead vocals on songs like Man on Mars. It is quite a jump and in a few months Vijay Mistry has gone from playing an empty shopping centre to playing around the world and also in the newly-built Leeds Arena in September 2013!
Around the World in 80 Bands 