Look at me now, I'm falling - I can't even talk, still stuttering

A weekend involving much travelling finishes up in Hammersmith

I already knew I was in for a busy day yesterday when our youngest asked to go and see Arsenal Ladies play in the afternoon and The Vamps continue their endless "10 years since something happened' anniversary tour in the evening - what we didn't know when we booked it was that we'd all be up in Leeds the day before dropping the eldest off at uni. So after a very early start (which involved a surprising amount of panicking at not being able to find the way in to Leeds train station), we were somewhat starting to flag by the time we made it to the Eventim Apollo - but we had faith in The Vamps to restore our spirits.

But first, like last time, we had a couple of support acts to experience - The Vamps seem to have a good track record in giving new acts a spot at their gigs. First up, we had SOAP which is a name that gives you no clues what you're going to get - and what we got was a clean cut bunch of guys who desperately want to be either Busted or Arctic Monkeys. And, somewhat surprisingly, since given the minimal stage set-up they had, they did a pretty decent job of it - they had fit for purpose songs which were well performed with plenty of personality, which resulted in a large amount of engagement from the already 90% populated crowd. They also finished with a very decent cover of ABBA's "SOS" - I have to admit my expectations were massively exceeded and I really enjoyed them (and very rudely, I didn't take a photo of them!)

Next up - Talia Mar. And she wants to be a Sugababe, although I suspect her voice is probably too good for that sort of thing (meow!). She did suffer somewhat in comparison with SOAP because she was on her own up there singing over a backing track, but there was no doubt she was live and there was some decent banter. And she gave the kids what they wanted by singing Taylor Swift's "Cruel Summer", although I preferred her version of TLC's "No Scrubs" - her own songs were fine, but pretty forgettable.

Both acts were pretty enjoyable and the crowd paid attention and showed their appreciation, but it's fair to say there were only four reasons everyone was there - Brad, James, Connor and Tristan! And they very much delivered what was required - it was the ten year anniversary of Meet The Vamps, their first album, so they (I'm told) played all of that and a couple of other fan favourites. Being the huge fan I am, I only recognised "Wild Heart", "Wake Up", "Can We Dance", "Last Night" and a couple of other highlights which warrant further discussion. Firstly, their cover of "Cecilia" is noteworthy because it's remarkably decent - it's really far better than it has any right to be. And finally, their closing number "Somebody To You" was quite something because of the sheer volume of noise being made by the crowd - I've only been to the Apollo a few times but that was the loudest I've heard there.

And a very interesting crowd it was too - there were obviously a load of people who loved the album when it came out (often accompanied by tolerant/mildly amused other halves) but there were also a load of people around the age of my fourteen year old who have obviously come to the group later. They're also quite fanatical - at one point, Brad asked the crowd who'd been there the night before and a lot of screaming resulted.  All of which is a testament to the ongoing popularity of the boys - they've ridden the wave well. They're also surprisingly decent on their instruments, particularly James shredding his guitar. Tristan was also given his moment in the spotlight with a surprisingly long drum solo - and when I say surprisingly long, it wasn't far off five minutes!

A few more items of interest from the evening - I have to give a shout-out to the Korean(?) old lady who was sat just down from me and it's fair to say she was just having none of it. She was with (I would guess) her daughter and son-in-law and she sat motionless in her seat staring straight ahead for an hour before she stood up and told her daughter they were off - leaving the son-in-law there to video some of it before he too was obviously summoned to leave! 

I also had an interesting chat with one of the barmaids who was wondering exactly what I was doing at a Vamps gig - when I explained I was with my daughter she reminisced about how her dad took her to cool band like Metallica and The Stranglers, which I couldn't help but contrast with my experience of daughters demanding I take them to Sabrina Carpenter, Lizzy McAlpine and Joshua Bassett. There's absolutely no doubting who's the soft touch in this family..

And finally, a deep philosophical question from Brad - how are bands supposed to get people to clap along to songs these days? Everyone wants to video everything (there are a lot of people out there with no storage left on their phones this morning) and it's just not possible to video and clap - I spent way more time thinking about a solution to this than it probably deserves (and, of course, I got nowhere)

Enough with the triviality of my opinion - what did Isobel think? She had a great time and that's all that matters - I suspect her concentration levels might not have been too high at school today given we got in at 12:30 and she was VERY tired, but it was all worth it as far as she's concerned. On my part, it's not something I'd choose to go and see but I can appreciate a good band delivering what their fans want and there's absolutely no doubt that's what happened here and I will admit that their best songs are really very listenable indeed.

The one thing that Isobel and I definitely agree on is that we're both very glad that the gig we were due to go to tonight has been postponed until January - another late night would have been the end of us!