Ejekt Festival 2017 - Day 2 - Kasabian & The Jesus And Mary Chain

So it was finally time for the 2nd day of Ejekt Festival. And all this on a night before a flight abroad for another concert (This was not the first time I was attending Ejekt Festival on a day before a trip abroad. The previous one was ten years ago under rather disastrous circumstances)

But it would all start with Peter Hook And The Light who I had already seen at the same festival at the same venue 4 years ago back in 2013. This time they were playing "Unknown Pleasures". I wasn't sure if I could make it on time to see them but I finally did. They had just started playing when I arrived at the venue. I saw most of their set and I was there for "She's Lost Control" and that would have been enough for me. 

The set ended of course with "Love Will Tear Us Apart".

 

I managed to find my friends and after their set I ventured around the venue for the usual freebies. These included the usual cokes, (I went around the entrance several times to get more of them), but this time I tried a different flavour of the noodle product. The added extra this time was that someone in the company of our friends was there with an invitation from Heineken, one of the sponsors, so we got free beers as well!

The time for The Jesus And Mary Chain set was approaching and we managed to get well up front. They were the main reason I attended this second day of the festival after all. And they didn't disappoint. Their set sounded like a "Greatest Hits" package most of the time. What did disappoint was the sound, something we had already noticed during the Peter Hook And The light set.

 

We stayed at the front for Kasabian, although they were almost half an hour late in appearing. I had already started worrying about my flight the following day.

When they did appear though, we were rewarded with a set that spanned most of their career, not just their latest album (which is pretty good by the way). They still played "Empire" which I had first heard at Wembley back in 2009. Plus they also played 3 songs from my favourite album "West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum". It's my favourite, because it was during that tour that I had first seen them.

 One of the songs from that album, "Fire" was the last of the night. I had started to withdraw towards the exit (grabbing another free Coke in the process) in order to catch the last tram and that's when I realized something I could not see while I was upfront. The crowd was not a huge one. Not as huge as you would expect to find at a Kasabian gig in Greece anyway. It's a pity because Kasabian are one of the few bands that play here on each one of the tours like Depeche Mode.

All's well that ends well. The festival was completed, I caught the tram and this time, as opposed to 10 years ago, it didn't crash. So the Ejekt curse has been lifted! In fact, when I saw that the tram was 15 minutes away I caught the one going in the opposite direction. A couple of stops later I got off, and then got on the right one. In this way, I managed to avoid the congestion at the tram stop and get a seat for the long ride to the centre of Athens. From there I had another night bus ride and a short taxi ride to my house. I didn't get any sleep because in a couple of hours I had to leave for the airport and my flight to Rome to see U2. But that's another story, coming up on my next blog post...

SETLISTS:

THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN
01. Amputation
02. April Skies
03. Head On
04. Far Gone and Out
05. Between Planets
06. Blues From a Gun
07. Always Sad
08. Mood Rider
09. All Things Pass
10. Some Candy Talking
11. Halfway to Crazy
12. Nine Million Rainy Days
13. Just Like Honey
14. You Trip Me Up
15. The Living End
16. War on Peace
17. I Hate Rock 'n' Roll
18. Reverence

KASABIAN
01. Ill Ray (The King)
02. Bumblebeee
03. Eez-Eh
04. Underdog
05. Shoot the Runner
06. You're in Love With a Psycho
07. I.D.
08. Club Foot
09. Re‐Wired
10. Treat
11. Empire
12. Bless This Acid House
13. Stevie
14. Put Your Life on It
15. L.S.F. (Lost Souls Forever)
Encore:
16. Comeback Kid
17. Vlad the Impaler
18. Fire

Oasis and Kasabian @ Wembley in 2009

Yes, I have seen Kasabian before. Back in 2009 they were supporting Oasis at Wembley. A friend of mine had told me "Make sure you get there early, Kasabian are very good!" Well, I did get there early because I was planning to see all three bands, Oasis, Kasabian and The Enemy. However The Enemy did not appear "due to illness" (there was that flu going around at the time). Now it's too late, The Enemy have split up (and little did I know then that Oasis were going to split up in the few weeks following that concert).

The connection between Oasis and Kasabian was already evident back then. When Oasis split one of those "Hitler learns..." videos appeared on YouTube  ("Hitler's Reaction To The Oasis Split"). At the end of it Hitler is wondering "What can I listen to now when I'm helping Eva tidy up the bunker?" and one of his aides suggests "Have you tried Kasabian?"
Anyway, I got out of the tube and started making my way (now renamed "Olympic Way" since in 3 years time, London would host the 2012 Olympic Games). Something that I had done several times in the past, but this time was different. It was going to be my first time in the "new" Wembley.

I arrived at the gate and the security guy proceeded to search me. He got two cameras, a mobile phone, an MP3 player and other gadgets out of my jacket, but "he still hadn't found what he was looking for". Finally he asked me "You don't have any alcohol, do you?". "No", I promptly replied (I honestly didn't). There was plenty of alcohol on offer inside, and lots of food, so I grabbed a pint of lager and went to my seat. Now my seat was in the 3rd and uppermost tier. It was my first time on a stadium with a 3rd tier and Ticketmaster had warned me that "you may feel Vertigo looking down from tour seat" so I was a bit overwhelmed. Nothing of the sort happened and although the seats were high up, they were close to the stage so I could see quite clearly. It was my first concert with my then new Canon camera with its 12x optical zoom (and 48x digital) and I made good use of it. That camera of course, after 7 years of heavy use in concerts (and lots of dust and debris on and in the lens) had to be replaced.

Anyway, as I got to my seat, Kasabian had just started. Their current album at that time was "West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum" so their set relied heavily on that.

But afterwards it was time for Oasis, the reason most of us were there and the reason I had sat in front of my computer at work 9 months before that trying to beat the competition and get a ticket. These Oasis concerts sold out within minutes and I was lucky to get one, even luckier than I thought I was at the time, since, as I have already mentioned, a few weeks later Noel and Liam had a fight and Oasis split up.

None of these things concerned me at the time when Oasis came up on stage playing hit after hit plus songs from their then latest - and final - album "Dig Out Your Soul" which I thought was pretty good especially the single "I'm Outta Time" which sampled John Lennon's last interview and really had a Lennon-like sound. I thought the audience should at least know that and sing along with it - as I did - but no, they were only interested in the old ones. Well, never mind...

 The highlight of the night of course was when Noel announced "I'm not singing this song ever again" and he just played guitar while the audience sang all the lyrics to "Don't Look Back In Anger". Priceless!

 

After the concert was over we were faced with the usual, but almost impossible task, of getting back on the underground. We were waiting for what seemed like hours and on top of that it was raining (although I didn't mind that while I was inside the stadium since my seat was in the covered section).

I was standing waiting next to a police horse for quite a long time and we spent a lot of that looking at each other. Finally, I did manage to reach the tube station, get on a train and get back to my hotel in Earl's Court that night and on a plane to Athens the following day. The funny thing was that I did catch that flu during that trip, which manifested itself while I was attending a Paul Weller concert in Athens the following week, but was over at the end of the week just in time before my next trip which involved three Bruce Springsteen concerts in Italy, Rome, Torino and Udine, one every two days. But that is of course, another story...
I'm happy to say however that I will be seeing both of them soon. Kasabian and no, not Oasis, but Noel at least!

SETLISTS:

KASABIAN
01. Underdog
02. Shoot the Runner
03. Cutt Off
04. Processed Beats
05. Empire
06. Where Did All the Love Go?
07. The Doberman
08. Fire
09. Fast Fuse
10. Club Foot
11. Stuntman
12. You Got the Love
13. L.S.F. (Lost Souls Forever)

OASIS
INTRO. Fuckin' in the Bushes
01. Rock 'n' Roll Star
02. Lyla
03. The Shock of the Lightning
04. Cigarettes & Alcohol
05. Roll With It
06. To Be Where There's Life
07. Waiting for the Rapture
08. The Masterplan
09. Songbird
10. Slide Away
11. Morning Glory
12. My Big Mouth
13. The Importance of Being Idle
14. Half the World Away
15. I'm Outta Time
16. Wonderwall
17. Supersonic
18. Live Forever
Encore
19. Don't Look Back in Anger (Acoustic)
20. Falling Down
21. Champagne Supernova
22. I Am the Walrus
OUTRO. Married With Children