Evan Dando - Joe's Pub, New York, USA - Saturday 30th January 2010

Being in the USA at the same time as Evan Dando is doing a solo tour, always seemed like too good an opportunity to miss. So, I headed up from Philadelphia to an absolutely freezing cold New York - to see Evan Dando play, then to catch the Arsenal vs Man U game in Nevada Smiths the following morning. The gig was in Joe's Pub, a weird gig venue that was almost like a dinner show - doors opened at 6, most of the audience had a dinner reservation (with a minimum $12 spend per person), the show ran from 7 until 8:15, then we all got thrown out so that another show (with another set of dinner reservations) could kick off at 9pm. Very strange indeed.

So, without any support act, Evan Dando walked on stage just after 7pm, tuned his guitar for a minute or two, then started playing Confetti. This was very well received, so he played a number of other songs - Lemonheads songs, his solo songs, and the now expected covers. All of this was played with an excellent sounding Fender guitar, and for some of the songs he had Chris Brokaw helping him as well. Obvious highlights were his versions of Style, No Backbone, Tenderfoot and the set closer Layin Up With Linda - but really, the whole set was packed with great songs.

As an Evan Dando gig, this was fairly standard, the songs came thick and fast, he barely said a word as he fell straight from one song into the next, and it all sounded excellent. It struck me as a strange place to be playing, as people ate their pasta for dinner, but there we go. I enjoyed the set very much - but still think that nothing beats a full, electric, plugged in Lemonheads set. So, whilst this was very good, it left me wanting more - and thinking about just how good the full band are.

Work trip to Warsaw, Poland - 18th to 19th January 2010

A flying visit to Warsaw, where the high temperature for the day was scheduled to be -7 degrees. I say a "flying" visit, but it almost didn't happen thanks to the lack of urgency in Aer Lingus's approach to flying. Almost a 3 hour delay spent sitting in the departure lounge at Gatwick, then the danger of the crew having worked too long, or the airport in Warsaw closing for the night. Just before that latter problem became a reality, we got going, and arrived at 11pm. Luckily, I was staying in a hotel across the street from the airport, so a 2 minute bracing walk after leaving the terminal building, I was in my hotel. As I quickly remembered is customary in some parts of Eastern Europe, the heating was jacked up to the highest possible level, making it possible to sit around in a t-shirt and ignore the fact it was -10 outside.

The day I was in town was no warmer - at one point whilst stood outside waiting for a taxi, a gust of wind blew and made it feel like I was wearing no clothes. Really cold. There was a load of snow on the ground which obviously never gets the chance to melt through winter, but unlike the UK chaos recently, the country still seemed to be moving OK. They just moved the snow to the sides of the road, piled it up into huge white walls of the stuff, and carried on as normal.

After a day of work (including a huge burger for lunch, in an empty backstreet American diner called the Pink Flamingo), I headed back to the airport for my (thankfully not delayed this time) flight home. Whilst waiting for checkin to open (no online checkin on Aer Lingus from Warsaw, how advanced!), I strolled into the now mostly disused old terminal building. Presumably a modern piece of post communist architecture when it was built in the early 90s, it already looks very outdated, and was very spooky when you were standing inside an empty building that should be buzzing with activity.

Trip to New York City, USA - 12th to 13th December 2009

Work trip to Philadelphia, USA - 7th to 11th December 2009

After a long period of not being able to travel for work (thanks partly to my daughter being born, but mostly to the recession), the credit card tentatively came back out again for a pre Christmas trip to Philadelphia. My office is right opposite City Hall with its statue of William Penn on top, so I snapped this picture as I was heading from one floor to another. Despite the cold starting to arrive for winter, my stay there had nice clear days - and even a day where the temperature got up to 15 degrees, which was a nice surprise.

After almost a year of not going to the US (after a while of going there very regularly), I was surprised at how easily I got back into the swing of things. I made an early visit to Old Navy to stock up on some cheap jeans, and generally found it very easy to slip back into eating burgers and drinking Vitamin Water all day long. A couple of nice meals (complete with over attentive and falsely "happy" service), and it all seemed very familiar again.

The highlight of the trip (not difficult, since the rest of the time in Philly was spent either in meetings, sleeping or eating) was my office Christmas party (or "holiday" party as they insist on calling it. A free bar for 4 hours was certainly as good as you get anywhere else - and by 9pm when the bar ran out, an impromptu pub crawl broke out. I got to see an excellent selection of Philadelphia bars, and luckily managed to remember it all too.

Arctic Monkeys, Screaming Females - Terminal 5, New York, USA - Thursday 10th December 2009

Whilst I was on a work trip in Philadelphia, Arctic Monkeys were due to play a club gig in nearby New York. I wasn't really a big fan of their latest album, and had also spurned the opportunity to see them in London the previous month (I didn't fancy a trip out to Wembley Arena). But, with the excuse of an evening in New York thrown in, I bailed out of work an hour early, and headed up to New York on the train, taking in some of New Jersey's highlights on the way. On arriving in New York, the temperature seemed to have dropped by 10 degrees from Philadelphia, making it a memorable trip as the wind blew through my coat like it weren't there. VERY cold indeed.

We eventually made our way up to 56th street, to Teminal 5. There were a good number of touts outside and in the nearby streets, suggesting that an Arctic Monkeys gig was a bit of a big deal at least. After an obligatory ID check, we got into the venue, a large hall with a couple of levels of balcony around the edges. The crowd was pretty young, with lots of New York high school kids, college students, and a fair number of English voices around also. There were also lots of the kind of people you expect to see at a gig like this in New York - people who thought they were ultra cool, but in reality came across as a bit self absorbed and/or coked up.

The support band were a three piece called Screaming Females, who came from New Brunswick, New Jersey. They had a strange looking woman on lead guitar and vocals, who was the only female in the band. Their guitars sounded pretty fantastic (I would expect you need to see them live to appreciate this, as I doubt their recorded stuff is as good), but sadly the same couldn't be said of the vocals. For the vast majority of the songs I heard, I found myself wishing that the singer would concentrate on just playing the guitar as well as she was, and would get somebody else to do the vocals. Despite that, the songs were good, and the quality of that lead guitar made you willing to forgive quite a bit.

After a short break, Arctic Monkeys appeared, looking very different to the last time I saw them. Longer hair, more rock star looking, and generally looking the part much more. Their first few songs drew quite heavily from Humbug, featuring quite a few false song endings which drew applause, only for the song to kick back in again with more noise than before. Throughout the set, I thought the sound was fantastic - both from a technical point of view inside the venue, but also the way the band set themselves up to play live. When they played some of the older songs, they sounded very accomplished indeed, with some excellent new twists on the way they were played. Despite not having really liked the new album before this evening, the songs they played from it sounded really very good - forcing me to go back for another listen to the album.

As well as the new songs, there were obviously some of the old favourites - I thought that Still Take You Home was amazing in particular. The best audience reactions seemed to be for Brianstorm and I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor, the latter of which featured some very enthusiastic crowd surfing. The band ended their main set with a reworked and brilliant sounding version of Fluorescent Adolescent, which also featured an interlude where the drummer sang Last Christmas. Great stuff. Throughout the show, the crowd were roaring their appreciation between songs, and Alexa Chung was busy dancing on the balcony. All in all, the band went down a storm.

Despite the very late night, I was really glad I went to this. Arctic Monkeys had been getting muted reviews for their latest album and live shows, so I wasn't sure whether I would enjoy it. But, the gig was so much better than expectations, and confirmed just what a good band they are. I also feel lucky to have seen them in such a small venue (rarely possible these days in the UK), which is how they come across best. A fantastic band, playing a set that sounded really special.

The Cribs, Los Campesinos, Sky Larkin - Brixton Academy, London - Thursday 3rd December 2009

This was the night when Wichita Records took over Brixton Academy. Having seen The Cribs recently in Kentish Town and been very impressed, I took the plunge and bought tickets for this gig, part of a tour of some bigger venues. I was then delighted to see that they had pulled off their "lets get great support acts" trick again. After Adam Green at the Forum, this time it was the amazing Los Campesinos!, and Sky Larkin.

Sky Larkin were up first, playing songs drawn mainly from their criminally underrated album The Golden Spike (and the BBC seem to agree about it being underrated too). The songs were catchy, and the band managed to not get completely lost in the largeness and emptiness of Brixton Academy (when you are on first and playing to an empty venue) - their sound filled the venue nicely, and their set was well received.

Next on were Los Campesinos!, a band I'd seen before in the most amazing circumstances, and have loved ever since. They kicked their set off with Death To Los Campesinos!, which ensured the audience were right into what they were doing from the word go. As well as a selection of the best tracks from their first two albums, they also played a clutch of new songs from their forthcoming album, Romance Is Boring. These sounded excellent, quite a bit rockier than some of their older stuff, but very good. All in all, I was gutted when their set ended, so good it was.

But obviously The Cribs soon made up for any disappointment caused by the loss of Los Camp - their set was once again full of power and energy, and never dipped below being fantastic. Again they dropped pleasant surprises (in the form of older songs) into the set at various points, my highlights of this set were Emasculate Me, the obvious Be Safe, and City Of Bugs which is becoming one of those awesome set closing songs. A brilliant set (again) from a band who, if there is any justice in the world, will be getting bigger and bigger as they continue to get better and better.

Arsenal vs Chelsea - Emirates Stadium, London - Sunday 29th November 2009

A depressing realization took hold in North London today. That was the fact that Chelsea are a significantly better football team than Arsenal. Five years ago, these were even matches, and Arsenal tended to have the edge when it came to the result. Now, the gap is getting embarrassing. I know that Arsenal had injuries, most notably to Van Persie - but I don't think many Arsenal fans will seriously suggest that it would have been different had he been there.

For most of the first half, it could have been different. Arsenal controlled more than their fair share of possession, all the while without really creating any decent chances. Whether that was because of a lack of decent forwards in decent positions, or committed Chelsea defending, or something else, who knows. But by the time 40 minutes were on the clock, things seemed to be going fine from an Arsenal point of view.

Then it all went wrong. 2 goals in the last five minutes of the first half. Both from Ashley Cole crosses, one finished by Drogba, the other an own goal, and neither that the defenders will be proud of. All of which won the game for Chelsea, and made the story all about how Chelsea soaked up all we could throw at them, then beat us - and beat us pretty clinically. As the second half came and went, there was no obvious way that Arsenal were going to get back into it - the gap was too wide. Wenger (to his credit) threw on alternative attacking options quite early, but Walcott had a wretchedly ineffective game, and with 7 Chelsea defenders every time we went forward, there wasn't likely to be much of a way back into the game. Dismal stuff.

As an aside, it absolutely was not why Arsenal lost the game, but the referee was appalling today. Over officious in moving free kicks a yard to the exact spot he wanted them taken from. Willing to book Traore for his first foul (thus blunting his defensive game from the first quarter hour), but totally overlooked a litany of Mikel's fouls until the 70th minute. Picked up and ran the width of the pitch to give the fourth official the "missiles" that came from the crowd at Lampard and Drogba - of course they shouldn't have been thrown, but if any referee had done that at Stamford Bridge five years ago when Vieira was getting pelted, they would have done little else for the whole game. Over picky, and it seemed like he gave Chelsea lots of small advantages, and denied those to Arsenal.

Still, none of this takes away from the fact that Chelsea are in something of a different league to Arsenal at the moment, and that is upsetting. It seems hard to imagine Arsenal having a spine with the strength and power of Cech, Terry, Essien and Drogba. We are a million miles away. They soaked up all we could throw at them, and still had plenty more. That's Arsenal out of the title race (as Wenger admitted after the game), and until we have players that are more than just skillful but lightweight, you can't see us winning the title. A big wakeup call, we are still some way away from where we want to be.

Dead Social Club, Nerys Joseph, Jon Paul Palombo - The Enterprise, London - Saturday 31st October 2009

After the excitement of beating Spurs, what could improve the day more than an afternoon's celebratory drinking, followed by a gig in the evening? Being Halloween, there were lots of people out and about in fancy dress, and being a warmer than expected (for the end of October) evening, the streets seemed to be busier than ever around Camden. My destination was the Enterprise, where a few decent bands played. Last time I went to a gig at the Enterprise, the band were amazing and the floor almost caved in, so expectations were high!

First band on was really a solo guitarist and vocalist called Jon Paul Palombo, who had a backing vocalist here to help him out. His full band are supporting Glen Matlock a few days after this gig, and he was just filling in for another band at this gig. The songs were pretty much all decent, and you could see that they would work a treat when played with a full band. Put simply, they were obviously far too good for a "bottom of the bill" slot at the Enterprise - so it was a treat to see them there - I suspect their normal home is playing bigger slots at bigger venues.

Next up was a lady called Nerys Joseph, who sat behind a keyboard and played what I guess you could describe as "angst ridden" songs, about things that angst ridden females write songs about. Played on a piano, they sounded nicely melodic, and her voice was quite powerful too. She had a flautist and a guitarist for some of the songs - and although it wasn't exactly my cup of tea, she obviously had some talent for singing and songwriting.

Even more "not my cup of tea" was the next band. I don't know what they were called, but what they were doing didn't float my boat at all. Its probably a good point to remember the phrase "if you have nothing good to say, say nothing", to suffice to say that the bar was calling loudly after a couple of songs of their set.

Finally, the band I had come to see, Dead Social Club. They had got into the Halloween spirit, arriving on stage in white t-shirts that they had drawn on, plus face makeup. Quite a few of the audience had dressed up as well, all of which made for a good vibe. The keyboards at the beginning of their opening song built the atmosphere up from the very beginning, and they benefited from excellent sound in the venue. They played songs I hadn't heard the last time I saw them - including Calm It Down, and the excellent Let Love Die. For a couple of those newer songs, I thought the guitars were excellent, and really made the band sound like a true crossover between a synth band and a guitar band. I hate to compare bands to The Killers, but I mean it as a compliment in this case! The final song of the set was the excellent The Bridge, and with no encore, they left the audience wanting more - always a good result. I was really impressed by Dead Social Club again, and will be aiming to see them again soon.

Arsenal vs Tottenham Hotspur - Emirates Stadium, London - Saturday 31st October 2009

After what seemed like an eternity since I last made it to an Arsenal game (well, it was almost two months ago), the biggest game of the season so far was not one to be missed. The baby was packed off to her grandparents, so Spurs at home could be enjoyed in full. I attended the game on 7th November 1999, which was the last time we lost to Spurs in the league - and avoiding defeat in this game would ensure we got to the 10th anniversary. Of course, in the run-up to the game, Spurs players, manager and fans were giving it large about how they are ready to overtake Arsenal now - but then, don't they always say that?

Going into the ground, it was good to see the results of the recent "Arsenalisation" in the lower tiers - lost of fantastic decoration, which makes our stadium more like a museum or art gallery in some respects - and a definite cut above any other stadium I've been to. Arsenal are leading the way once again.

Arsenal started the game very sluggishly, for the first half hour things just weren't clicking. Although David Bentley could have been booked a couple of times in the first 20 minutes, Spurs seemed to be doing a good job of containing Arsenal. Of course, certain Arsenal players didn't help with that, namely Diaby who had an awful first hour or so, and Almunia, whose distribution I thought was very poor, losing the ball pretty much every time. Bendtner seemed to be putting in the effort and playing pretty well, but even that didn't last, as he limped off after just over half an hour. And the man we all look to for inspiration, Cesc Fabregas, seemed not to quite be clicking to begin with.

Then, in an awesome 90 seconds just before half time, the game exploded into life. Robin Van Persie managed to steal in front of Ledley King, turning what seemed like an innocuous chance into the first goal. The celebrations were enthusiastic, both on the pitch and in the crowd. Then, straight from the restart, when we hadn't even properly finished celebrating, Spurs gifted the ball to Fabregas, who ran 30 yards from the centre circle and scored. The stadium went absolutely crazy, one of the best celebrations I've ever been a part of - and I think the sheer surprise that we had managed to go 2 goals up in 90 seconds, without really having threatened until then, was a big part of what was making everybody so happy. Half time arrived, and the celebrations continued in the concourses, with everybody looking shellshocked but happy.

Those 90 seconds basically won the match. Unlike a couple of annoying examples from previous weeks, Arsenal showed no signs of screwing this one up. In fact, I was surprised by how much Arsenal dominated after that, and by how poor Spurs were. Maybe I made the mistake of overestimating them (an easy mistake to allow yourself to be fooled into). There were decent spells in the second half where Spurs just couldn't get hold of the ball, and the "ole" shouts started with a good 20 minutes to do. They even almost gifted us the third goal too - inexplicably stopping playing when the referee had clearly waved play on. Their stopping almost fooled our players into stopping play too, but luckily we went on to get the goal. We even had the opportunity to miss a couple of complete sitters later on - and at 3-0 up, even Diaby started to stroke the ball around, now that it didn't matter any more.

Any win against Spurs is always received well in N5, so when the final whistle went, it provoked an afternoon and evening of celebration around the pubs of Holloway Road. By normal standards too, this was a decently emphatic victory - we never seem to stick 5 past them, which is a shame, but this was as emphatic as we tend to get against them. Just what the doctor ordered, and our incredible average of over 3 goals a game continues.

Kasabian, Amorphous Androgynous - Forum, London - Wednesday 21st October 2009

Off to the "HMV" Forum for the second time in a week, for a Q Awards gig. Despite Q magazine being possibly THE most out of touch and "dad-rock" loving publication in the world, their interests do occasionally manage to happen upon decent bands. So, a chance to see Kasabian in a much smaller venue than they would ever normally play (at least in this country) was a gig I was quite excited about.

I got into the venue in time to see a decent amount of the support band, an act called Amorphous Androgynous. When I arrived, they were playing a strange cover of Oasis track Falling Down. I say a "strange" cover, because the band had 9 members, playing an eclectic mix of instruments - kind of a hippie band, and a new version of the Polyphonic Spree. I was utterly unsurprised to see that they are supporting Hawkwind later this year. A few of their songs actually sounded pretty good, but they were a weird, weird band to watch, especially to watch in support to Kasabian.

After what seemed like an unreasonably long changeover, with Kasabian's old roadie guy having some good banter with the crowd, the opening bars of Underdog kicked in, and provoked the obvious enthusiastic reaction from the crowd. When Tom came on stage to start singing, I thought two things. First, that he had had a much needed but very dubious haircut. And second, that the sound was screwed to the point that you couldn't really hear much of the vocals or guitar on Underdog. A shame, because its a great song, but luckily the sound improved hugely after that.

The set itself was a fairly standard one for this year, very similar to what they were playing when I saw them in July. One thing that is obvious when watching Kasabian is the number of excellent singles (or otherwise very strong songs) they now have. There are a good half dozen from their most recent album (like Underdog, Fast Fuse, Fire, Where Did All The Love Go, etc), and about the same again from the previous two albums combined. That means they have a good dozen huge tunes to play, which means you don't end up with too much album track filler. That probably goes some way to explain why their live sets are going down so well.

Of course, as well as having the dozen excellent songs, they also have the two or three truly massive songs, that are becoming amongst the songs that this decade will be remembered by. So, when they kick into Club Foot as the last song of their main set (a song that is all over the TV and at football grounds, despite being five years old now), you know you are watching a band who aren't just making music for now - they are writing songs that will still be being played in ten and twenty years time. That, as well as their ability to put on an excellent live set, makes Kasabian gigs a pleasure to attend - you get to watch a band writing themselves into guitar music history, and UK popular culture. Great gig.