Cat Empire

This is just a quick note about going to see the Cat Empire last Friday. I’ve been listen to them for the last few years as they are quite big in the land down under. They’re a really cool jazz/funk/rap group from Melbourne that reminds me of the old Kiwi band SuperGroove. I was going to go see them last year but ended up having a better offer & missing them. So when I got the opportunity to see them this year I was first in line – Actually I didn’t know they were touring & Georgia got the tickets. Any whoo….WOW!! The core of the band is 6 guys. Felix (Vocals/percussion), Harry (Vocals/Trumpet), Will (Drums), Jamshid (Decks), Ollie (Keyboard) & Ryan (Bass), but in concert they also grabbed 3 of the horn players from the opening act ‘The Ross Irwin Soul Special’ & they got a hell of a lot more Jazzy! Ross’ crew did a pretty good job warming the crowd up but from the moment the empire took the stage untill when they left about 2 hours latter they owned the venue & everyone in it. There was every thingfrom instrument solos, to just letting the crowd sing for ½ a minute to two chicks coming on stage & Scu-dee-bobed for about 5 minutes (You know Shi-ba-bop-ba-dop-ba-bing). Absolutely awesome & fully got me wanting to get back into seeing live gigs…& more jazz!

This was taken by someone in the Cat Empire at one of there 2 London shows…So let’s say that’s me Ground floor back left (from the bands point of view) with their hands up ….see me?
Afterwards I popped over to my flat mate’s birthday drinks (Which he was having on the other side of London to our flat?) & was reminded what it’s like being around plastered people when you’re not…so set about rectifying the problem. Later we invited a whole bunch of mates back to our place & realized we only had 5 cans of beer in the fridge & all the off licenses were closed! Lucky for stashed bottles of liquor & all night Kebab shops that only sell lemonade in cans. Sorry to anyone in the Willesden Green area who wanted a sprite to go with their Kebab last Friday night. All in all a very very cool night.