Cut off your hands

I went to a gig in my lunch break yesterday (a career first). Cut off your hands played a twenty minute set at Pure Groove record shop in Smithfield.

I got there five minutes before the gig started. The shop was open as normal, it was just busier than usual. (I'm often the only person in there at lunchtime).

I stood at the front and looked at the speakers, amps and drumkits. A person behind me said that with all that equipment the gig would be deafening in the small record shop. He was right, my ears are still aching 30 hours later.

There were about 30 people there, swelling to about forty by the time the gig started.

As you can see from the pic they are a four piece indie guitar band. Young fellas from New Zealand. Nice to listen to, quite melodic, check it out on My Space, there is nothing not to like about it. The singer was energetic and had a couple of drums of his own to bang away at various points.

They were the politest band you could ever see. The singer thanked the audience for sharing their lunchtime with him. After the gig I spoked to their bass guitarist, who was browsing Pure Groove's wall of the 100 CDs and records they have selected to sell. He said they have come over to live in London because they have signed to a UK record label. I naively asked whether they had thought of signing to a New Zealand label. He said that there wasn't any decent labels in NZ and they always knew they would have to move to the US or the UK (they weren't bothered which one of the two).

The band haven't had a day off for 2 months. They have been either playing a gig or travelling to one. I asked him how he coped with that. He said that when they had a similar workload on their Australian tour they all ended up really sick (but that was partly because people wanted to party with them after the gigs).

Then he had to go and pack up his stuff because they were playing a gig in Portsmouth in the evening. I've looked at their tour schedule: it seems like they are playing every University in Britain over the next month.