The Hedrons LIVE

Lo and behold, the traffic on my second consecutive night’s drive down Poolstock Lane wasn’t too bad at all, so for once I arrived dead on my ETA of 6pm which gave us plenty of time NOT to go to Che, and instead lay siege to some jackbit at Bar Rogue. Nice burger, if a little peppery for my tastes. Then it was a brief sojourn to the Wetherspoons to lose some money on the quiz machine (the new Catchphrase game is a bit rubbish by the way) before someone decided we should really be on our way as we hadn’t actually got tickets and were paying on the door. What a great idea that was when we turned up at the venue two hours before the Hedrons were due on….

So for once I caught the support acts in full. Geek Girl were first up and although they were dressed up like Guantanamo Bay detainees they were actually quite good. The Dethkats weren’t so good. But really I wasn’t paying much attention to them if I’m being honest. It all just seemed like noise to me.

I should point out at this point that Alan was quite pleased during all of this that when he’d gone for a Luther Blisset, Soup and Tippi recognised him and said hello. The relevance of this will become clearer in due course ;-D.

So after the support acts were done we moved down to the front, no doubt annoying all the people who were sat down. As opposed to the last time at this venue it was actually quite packed and there did seem a buzz about the place. And it was a buzz that proved to be justified by the time the night was out.

You could hardly call what the Hedrons do “subtle”, but that would miss the point. The marriage of catchy melodies and a heavy rock’n’roll vibe is sublime and in the live arena is incendiary. They rattled through their soon-to-be-released debut album One More Won’t Kill Us, throwing in the odd B-side or cover version and all was done with aplomb. Tippi also dedicated a song to me and Alan, a fact which I am not exaggerating all that much. New girl Gill has fitted in smoothly and this was one of those nights where I felt that my long-term proclamation that The Hedrons have that X-Factor to make it big might just come true. I may be biased, but they’re great and they’re better than ever.

After the show I managed to pick up a copy of their debut album and had my usual drunken chat with the drummer, Soup. To the eternal shaming of Alan though, not only did Soup recognise me, but also when I challenged her to remember my name she got it right first time. WHICH IS MORE THAN YOU DID NERINA PALLOT! ;-D Anyway, some marker pen related tomfoolery ensued, we had a little chat with the lead singer Tippi (ok, Alan had a chat with her, I just grinned) and we left for home. And the rather worrying sight of an orange light flickering on my dashboard every time I put the brakes on…but that’s another story for another time.