Milburn, The Mighty Six Ninety - Bush Hall, London - Wednesday 29th March 2006

Off to see Milburn again, this time at Bush Hall in Shepherds Bush. Chandeliers on the ceilings, nice photos on the walls, all in all a somewhat posh venue for a gig like this. Having never been there before, I was struck by the size - once your ticket is ripped, you are in the bar, and 5 yards further on, you are in the main hall - very small indeed.

The support band were the Mighty Six Ninety. They featured a female keyboard player with an extremely revealing dress, basically she stood on stage throughout the set with her breasts on show. She didn't actually seem to play the keyboard on more than about half of the songs, which did make me think she was something of a gimmick. After the set, she spent the rest of the gig walking back and forth through the crowd, who had little choice but to recognise her.

Mighty Six Ninety's set started very well, the first couple of songs were pretty good. On the first song, the singer sounded like Morrissey on an upbeat tune; and the second track was reminiscent of the Killers' pop leanings - instantly catchy and easy to start to like. The set did seem to flag somewhat in the middle, and got slightly frustratingly boring; but the last few songs returned to the form of the beginning, and were excellent.

The catchy songs could mean that this may be a successful live band - but if their website is anything to go by, they are still a very fledgling band.

Milburn came on stage sociably early, and did much of what we know they are capable of. Playing just-released single Send In The Boys early on in the set, they had the crowd going from the first verse. The room was not completely full, but there was a large and absolutely manic semicircle at the front, of very hardcore kids going totally mad throughout the set.

The venue was clearly not well suited to this kind of gig - no pit between the crowd and stage meant that security were constantly on stage trying to repel crowdsurfers - and they were awful at it. One bouncer in particular kept getting in the way of the guitarist playing his guitar - as if the bouncer was the person we were all there to see! The lighting was just fixed spotlights that didn't move or flash, and the sound was also not good - the venue tried to compensate for this by just turning it up. That of course didn't make the sound good, it just made it loud bad sound. A good venue for a more sedate act, but not for an energetic rock band.

Despite all this, Milburn triumphed, because the quality of their songs shone through every obstacle that a dodgy venue could throw up. Final song What You Could Have Won will be a guitar classic for sure, and I'm sure there are many more where that came from.