I love you, London!!!

Isobel : "Dad?"  Can we go and see Joshua Bassett when he's on tour?"

Well - I had no desire to see the lad and it was on a school night (literally!), so I'd be lying if I said I was hugely disappointed when there were no tickets left when I looked.  But, she was so damned reasonable about the whole thing (whilst being obviously disappointed) that parental guilt kicked in and I checked for tickets on resale...

Which is how, after a mere 6 weeks of counting down the days and having all his songs played to me at every opportunity, me and the youngest headed down to Kentish Town's O2 Forum (which I'd never been too before).  I had a sneaking suspicion people in my age range might have been somewhat in the minority in the audience...

...which was very much confirmed as we braved the rain to join the end of a MASSIVE queue - I counted a whole two other guys over the age of thirty (quite obviously attending with their daughter(s) as well).  However, my presence very much played to our advantage as we got to the end of the queue where a very nice man said "Are you sat upstairs?  Follow me!" and walked us back past all the people to join the specific queue for upstairs - which was about five people long!

And we got inside just in time to hear the massive cheer for the first support act coming on - so, after I was parted from a bit more money for a teeshirt, we wandered in, found some seats (more on this later) and sat down to watch Generic YouTuber Young Female Artist #1.  Or, as everyone else in the audience seemed to know well enough to call her, Jenna Raine.

To be fair to the lass, she had a nice voice, knew her way around the guitar and bashed out a decent enough version of Coldplay's "Yellow".  I'd also say that, for the support act, in comparison with the jaded middle-aged male audiences that I am normally part of, the auditorium was very full of pleasingly engaged listeners, plenty of whom knew enough of her songs to join in - all of which gladdened my heart and also made Jenna very happy.  Which will hopefully make up for the disappointment she'll be feeling when she realises I forgot to take a picture of her.

So Jenna had her well-received twenty minutes or so before being replaced by GYYFA #2 - although I'm being even less fair on Stacey Ryan there because she was very much not generic.  She was a lot jazzier than I was expecting, with a strong voice and an impressive range and an obvious talent for both the guitar and piano.  I would say I thought she threw in more vocal gymnastics than were strictly necessary - which made the songs almost impossible to sing along to which was possibly a mistake with an audience that were happy to sing along to anything.  

However, she did a decent enough cover of "American Boy" and finished off with "Fall In Love Alone" which was the one that everyone knew on account of it having been a #1 smash hit last year.  Yes, that may have only happened in Indonesia - but it's worth pointing out that 270 million people live there!  All in all, it was an impressive set - not necessarily quite the right fit for the audience, although they still showed their appreciation.

Don't worry though, they weren't in any danger of using up all their appreciation.  And the sense of anticipation rose as Stacey finished and various people snuck on stage and moved things about - when was Joshua going to make an appearance?  As each track being quietly played over the PA finished, a hum went round the crowd - only to be replaced by grumbles as the next one started.  Until the volume was turned up...

...and they played One Direction's "That's What Makes You Beautiful".  Which was an absolutely genius move!  It totally got 99% of audience in the right mood - and I had a good laugh at how well a song from 12 years ago went down with an audience of which half would have been in nappies when it came out.  And then the screaming really started...

Yes, he was HERE!  Doing his a-running and his a-jumping (he does a lot of both).  From side to side.  And backwards and forwards.  All over really.  It's all very tiring for someone as old as me, but the youngsters loved it.

He's got a decent voice (better than I was expecting), decent enough songs (some more memorable than others) and he's passable on the piano and guitar (but it's a good idea for him to have a band behind him).  And the lad most definitely put on a show...

Unsurprisingly, he had the crowd in the palm of his hand (and that was before he took his shirt off).  He sang one song in the audience downstairs and one amongst us lot in the balcony - both of which went down very well indeed!  I also have to comment on how well behaved the crowd were during his walkabouts, despite there being some very excited people out there - amusingly, Chloe could barely remember her own name and, when he asked how her evening was going, she replied "OK".

He also had a good line in chat - he was surprisingly open about the struggles he's had in his life and how his love for Jesus Christ has saved him and he impressed upon us all the importance of sharing the burden and being there for each other.  And there are definitely worse things you can say to a young audience.

His obligatory cover was Queen's "Somebody To Love" and he certainly did a better job with it than I would.  Despite the carpet-bombing of his songs that I've received over the past couple of months, I can't claim to be an aficionado but I did recognise "Sad Songs In A Hotel Room", "All In Due Time", "Smoke Slow" and "She Said He Said She Said" and I think I preferred the live versions, which is all you can ask for from a gig really, isn't it?  I also really liked "Set Me Free" which he did as his first finale and it had an excellent line in audience participation in the form of screaming at the top of their voices.

However, it doesn't really matter what I thought of it - what did Isobel think?!?  She loved, loved, loved it - so all was good.  As did 99% of the audience - although, amusingly the twenty-something guy who was sat in front of us was obviously only there under sufferance and his girlfriend made no secret of her amusement at the state of affairs.  Even better, that meant he spent most of the evening sat down which meant that Isobel (and her phone - our iCloud account was unsurprisingly full the next morning!) had an uninterrupted view.

A quick word on the venue - it's a lovely old theatre/cinema (which was also The Town & Country Club in an earlier life) with a conventional downstairs standing area and the most bizarre seating arrangement upstairs.  It's a combination of (often very large) old cinema seats, velvet covered padded benches, booths with tables and a bar at the back with a standing area offering a very good view of the stage.  On the night we were there, all of this was unreserved, which felt like it could have resulted in issues but the audience were once again impeccably behaved - we had no problems finding somewhere with a decent view.

I can't claim it was best ever gig musically, but there was a lot to love about the evening with Joshua delivering just what the audience wanted and sending them home happy - and I'll remember Isobel's reaction to the evening a lot longer than I'll remember "better" gigs I've been to, so I'm super pleased we went.  So it's a big thank you to Jenna, Stacey and, most of all, Joshua from me.