Oh so Xtreme

So, on Monday I went to the Mean Fiddler for Virgin Xtreme's launch night, since I won tickets and all. I hadn't been to the venue before and was surprised at how close to being as big as the next door Astoria it was.

Firstly, it didn't do anything at all to sell the radio station to me, as they played a loop of music about 3 times over which just sounded like xfm if it was even more based around the NME. Plus the compere was an incredibly irritating sterotypical laddish twat, coming out several times between bands, Stella in hand, to say 'fuck' a lot and to tell us all as often as possible to get to the bar and get ready, because obviously it was very important to show that he was a big fan of drinking and not some kind of poof or something.

The highlight of The Ordinary Boys' set was when they stormed offstage about 30 seconds into their first song. Possibly the highlight of the evening in fact, a hilariously farcical beginning.

The Dead 60s have a couple of good songs, but insisted on playing them several times over in quick succession. And some of their lets-see-how-many-guitar-effects-we-can-show-off instrumentals seem to go on for millenia.

Hard-Fi were therefore left to be the highlight of the night, and all was going fantastically well until a few songs in when Rich Archer's voice suddenly vanished. Watching them struggle through their singles, helped out no end by the crowd, after this was entertaining but still a bit of a let down, together with their set being rather short anyway. Still, it was free!

Finally, something from the Xtreme website: