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Kiss my Ass, everyone who has complained about me going on about the Arctic Monkeys this past year. This week their first single, “I bet that you look good on the dance floor”, went in the charts at number one.
I first saw the Arctic Monkeys just over a year ago at The Earl of Arundel and Surrey on Queen St (Sheffield). I paid £4 to get in and they were first on the bill. The crowd were glum the sound was crap and it never got going. I seemed to be the only one enjoying it. I actually had a chat with Alex the lead singer afterwards, they didn’t look happy and I’ve seen a lot of bands come off stage looking like that. “Don’t worry about it” I said, “just keep going, you were miles better than those other groups”. I feel a little embarassed about that now.
Anyway, I downloaded the mp3′s of their site (the full versions dissappeared a few weeks later) and caught them at The Boardwalk and then The Forum for the Tsunami gig in Febuary this year. It was great to be in the knot of hard core fans in the middle of a crowd that mostly had been dragged along moaning by people like me, these are the fuckers who are now telling everyone (like me) how they saw them first. Hehehe!
I was too lazy to make it to some of the gigs in Manchester and Leeds, then suddenly tickets were like rocking horse shit and only available to the fanatical who lurked in Internet chat rooms working on strategies to obtain said substance… the rest is now history
Up the Monkeys..
For the Record:
Here’s my original post on Sheffield Forum asking which bands to go and see, check out the first and last post on the page:
Sheffield Forum – Which band should I go to see tonight?
I also tracked them through the blogosphere with a feedster search which started with the occasional hit from a livejournal sites. Later I had to delete the rss feed because of information overload. Did you know that they got their name from a Tramp outside McDonalds (I think) who said it was like the Arctic and they were a bunch of cheeky Monkeys?
here’s the link
They also opened the first richardradio show I did (Nov04) and featured in the eighth. Pity I was such a crap DJ
PS. Thanks to Karl one of my podcast students for mailing me the news. (At least someone was listening)
Posted by richard 
