The View, 1990s, The Magic Numbers - Channel 4 Album Chart Show, Koko, London - Monday 15th January 2007

After going to watch Channel 4's Album Chart Show being filmed last March, I was somewhat put off by the experience of seeing bands play songs that you don't really know; and waiting for ages in between bands, whilst attention-seeking TV presenters embarrass themselves. So, despite tickets being free (and missing an amazing show in October that Kasabian, The Killers and Beck all appeared at), I haven't really been arsed to go back. This time though, The View were playing, so it had to be done.

I was pleased to find that, in general, the show was better organised, and much more enjoyable for the audience than a year ago. In fact, if you choose to, you need not even notice too much that filming is going on, for much of the time at least. Which, given that it is free, makes for a decent evening if you like the bands. £4.20 for a can of Fosters is, however, not amusing at all.

First band on were the Magic Numbers, who played 3 songs from their new album, which of course is not as good as their debut album. I have to admit that I have become a bit bored with the Magic Numbers, and can't help feeling that many of their songs would be great if they lasted for 3 minutes, but are a bit tedious when they are getting on for 5 minutes long. I think they released their second album too soon, and should have waited until they had 12 better songs to go out with. Their opener was This Is A Song, which was good. The other 2 songs were quite forgettable.

Next up was a short set from 1990s. Last time I saw them, I was impressed, and they sounded a million times better than that this evening. They played 3 great songs, sounded really tight, and the guitar sound in particular was fantastic. They also looked like they were having a great time. The Channel 4 people messed up the filming of their first song, so they had to do it again, which is always a bonus at these things. Overall, I was really impressed with them, and I couldn't believe it was the same band that I saw 5 months ago.

Next up were The View. With a single out that day, they had comfortably the biggest cheer of the night when they came on stage. They played Coming Down, Same Jeans, Skag Trendy, and The Don, all of which sounded fantastic. Unfortunately again, the filming went wrong, so they just had to play Same Jeans again, which had the crowd very excited the second time around. With some unintelligible on-stage banter in between songs, we were treated to the full View experience, if a somewhat shorter version.

Bloc Party did play after The View, but I'm going to see them in a couple of weeks, so didn't really want to wait around for half an hour, just to see 4 songs. And, you can't watch bands play after The View these days, they are a proper headline band now.