We’ve got Keane playing tonight. They were pretty good last year. I arrived this afternoon around three to find a contingent of fans sitting/sleeping/standing at the front doors. Apparently they’d been there since about 9am.

There were three in particular who made me write this post. They had been to see Keane at two other European destinations in the past couple of weeks, and had been at the front of the queue each time! What possesses people to constantly spend vast amounts of money to follow their favourite band around!?

This week has been a cosy little number for me. I’ve spent the past seven days at Union Chapel lighting various bands. Sometimes it’s been for TV, but mostly it’s just for the audience. Either way it’s meant I’ve been getting paid to see some great live music.

So far we’ve had roughly 25 bands and I’ve still got two days left. We’ve had the likes of The Killers, Stereophonics and Biffy Clyro, Cage The Elephant, James Morrison and Adele, Esser, Damien Rice and General Fiasco, Angus & Julia Stone, Seasick Steve and Sam Beeton, Kasabian, Reverend & the Maker and Katy Perry.

This week has been great, not because I’ve seen lots of bands for free, but because it highlights how important live music is and that there are still lots up great musicians producing some amazing material.

I do love the way tabloids hype up stories. Take for instance the Suns coverage of Razorlight at Little Noise on Sunday.

The most serious man in rock became a laughing stock after getting stroppy about people chatting during the Mencap charity gig at the Union Chapel in Islington, north London, on Sunday.

I was there for the entirety of the show and I don’t remember him once moaning about people talking through the show. I don’t recall the drummer saying the comment to relax, but I was at the back, so it’s highly possible I didn’t hear it.

I also like the way the press relates to sound problems during the show. What makes me laugh is that no one knows that Razorlight didn’t show for the their sound check. They took on in ear monitors, which hadn’t been checked, and got a bad result because of it. It’s all well and good blaming the people behind the technical stuff, but you can only go so far before people won’t want to work with you.

Sunday has been the worst night so far. How comes The Killers, Stereophonics, Adele, Glasvegas, Cage the Elephant, Damien Rice and many more to come, can manage to produce a sound in that venue, yet Razorlight can’t? Oh yes. That’s right. Johnny Borrell.

Leeds was muddy. Very very muddy. It rained during the setup process and turned most of back stage into a bog. The Radio 1 / NME stage was particularly messy out front where the punters were. Pendulum had a massive crowd appear for their set which churned the place up even more. Just before our lot went on they had an unknown US act play, which emptied the place out. It soon filled back up when the boys got on stage.

I was a little nervous about the stage setup for the show as there’s quite a lot of stuff to do in the thirty minute turn around time. It was frantic, but I got it done on time and am now a little more relaxed about the show. Reading festival tomorrow then off to Paris for a show.

I got a last minute phone call today. I’ll be going to Oxford, Leeds festival and Reading festival with The Last Shadow Puppets. Paris might appear there somewhere too. Sweet!