The Sigla Blog

Of all the gigs going on as part of BudRising, The La’s was the one I was most looking forward to. The band haven’t played here very much (Feile in ‘91 and one other gig in Ireland) as they’ve been dogged by problems. Singer Lee Mavers has suffered from bouts of chronic stagefright which prevented the band from touring and has battled both alcoholism and heroin addiction in the 1990s. To date, they’ve only released one full-length album, the eponymous and excellent ‘La’s’. So finally, as they prepared for Dublin, a legion of fans (including a couple of coaches that travelled over from Liverpool) held their breath. Would they cancel? Would the gig happen? It nearly didn’t…

8.30pm Myself, three friends, my brother and his girlfriend meet up outside and forego the option of a pint in Conway’s across the road to head in and check out the supports. We just missed The Urges, but catch most of Mainline, who sound a lot like The Jesus and Mary Chain, but not as good.

8.55pm Mainline end and we rub our collective hands together in anticipation of the Liverpool’s best band after the Beatles.

9.15pm Everyone shifts from foot to foot, checking their watches. Venue is very hot and airless. The only beer on sale is Budweiser.

9.23pm The brother receives a text from another friend who is in Conway’s - “The La’s are all here and are totally pissed”.

9.24pm My brother, who has sold his Weezer tickets to come to the gig, breaks out in a sweat.

9.35pm Another text from Conway’s-based pal - “They’re all ordering rounds of shots and pints and are very drunk”.

9.37pm Franz Ferdinand’s ‘Take Me Out’ is played for the third time and no doubt the sound engineer wasn’t expecting to run out of CDs while waiting for the main act to come on.

9.40pm There are four staff having a tense conflab with the sound engineeer. When they finish, I ask him if the la(d)s are still in Conway’s. He adopts a bad Spanish accent and does a Manuel, replying: “I know nawwwthing”.

9.45pm Another text from Conway’s. It mentions more shots and pints. The brother begins to wish he’d gone to Weezer instead. The combination of tired legs, oven-like conditions and watery beer is not good.

9.47pm The roadie comes on to tune the guitars for the third time. One of our party quips that they must have the best tuned guitars in Ireland. If they’re all completely locked, will finely tuned guitars even matter?

9.50pm I ask an MCD dude with a headset what the story is, he just shrugs. I inform him of the Conway’s situation and he rolls his eyes and sighs deeply.

9.55pm The anticipatory mood turns ugly and the crowd starts to boo loudly. If they don’t come on in the next few minutes, we all start to fear that they’ll play at all. People will probably start throwing their warm, plastic cups of undrinkable Bud at the stage.

10pm Suddenly the lights go down and there is a ripple at the black stage curtain. Without warning, four scallies amble on to the stage. Given the booze consumption, we decide not to get our hopes up that it’ll be a good performance.

But what followed was really, really great. With only one album to their name, they played most of it and did a couple of B-sides. Highlights for me were ‘Way Out’ and ‘Looking Glass’, although I knew they were probably incapable of the speeded up ending, which is demanding to play. They skipped it, but the song was still brilliant. They played really well together and John Power weilded a mean guitar. Most unusual was the drummer who looked like he should have been ID’d to get in the venue. He played the entire gig standing up and for a while, I was convinced he wasn’t playing all of the drums. It didn’t matter, they blew the crowd away. The only disappointing thing was the lack of new material, which Mavers is rumoured to be working on, but it’s a minute criticism. The songs, which are 15+ years old are - to paraphrase one of their song titles - timeless melodies.

The crowd went absolutley mental when they played ‘There She Goes’ and Lee Mavers vocals never sounded so good. We could still hear him, despite the fact that everyone in the entire room was singing the words.

11ish After a short encore of ‘I Am The Key’ & ‘Knock Me Down’, they left the stage and headed no doubt for the nearest bar. We even went to Conway’s, tentatively watching the door away in case they arrived, but alas they drank their post-gig shots elsewhere and well-deserved they were too. The night ended with a text from another friend who said that Weezer were ‘good, but not great’ so the brother, as well as every La’s fan in Ireland, went home with a smile on their face.