Wheatus – MC Frontalot – Math The Band – City Stereo – at The Tunnels – Aberdeen, UK

The Tunnels, Aberdeen – a dark dank walk under the city’s main shopping street into what looks like a hidden private club. On entering it’s more like a nice bar for meeting friends. With the doors opening at 7pm we expected a late night waiting for Wheatus and having to endure some boring support acts. First on out of the three support bands was City Stereo.They were a lively young five piece from Salisbury squashed on stage amongst the other band’s equipment. They were actually not bad. The sound was a little bit ‘5 years too late’ but the vocals were good and they had catchy tunes.


With the crowd nicely warmed up and filling up the room the next support act came on. Math The Band were (to put it mildly) bizarre, and will be very hard to describe! They consisted of Kevin on guitar and Justine on synthesiser. They self describe themselves as an ‘electro-Punk spazz duo who use a combination of old video game systems, analog synthesisers and energy drinks to make the fastest, loudest, party-est music they can imagine’. Basically this meant them playing fast, loud music along with shouty vocals and amusing energetic leaps and bounds on the stage. It wasn’t music you’d listen to at home, but to watch on stage was very entertaining! You just never knew what was coming next.

With two supports acts done there was now more room on stage and the guys from Wheatus started checking their equipment. It turned out that they would be playing as the next act did his MC’ing. MC Frontalot was ‘house called’ from the stage and eventually leapt into view. He was dressed in smart trousers, a shirt and thick glasses, with a torch on his head. Even those not into rapping enjoyed his style. He started off with a rap about grammar and grammatical mistakes and followed that with various rants about first world problems and spoilers of films. He was brilliant! He obviously got on well with the band and his rapping was seamless. Ken Flagg on keyboards assisted with vocals and was actually a very proficient singer.

Wheatus stayed on stage after MC Frontalot finished his set so they went full tilt into their own set. They didn’t feel like a main band playing to their own fans, it was more like a bunch of friends playing to friends who just happened to be really good at what they did. There was plenty of audience participation – before most songs Brendan would ask what people wanted them to play next and quite unusually the crowd would shout an array of tunes rather than just asking for the well known ones. The banter was fantastic – between the band and even better between the band and the crowd. At one point Brendan said he loved it in Aberdeen and that he’d definitely come back again as ‘you Aberdeeners are crazy and I love it’. He was promptly corrected to say ‘Aberdonian’ which he thought was hilarious, and commented back that if we were Aberdonians then why weren’t Canadians ‘Canadonians’?!

Wheatus played many great songs including ‘Fairweather Friend’ and ‘Leroy’. Between each song they chatted to the crowd, told stories and swigged whiskey (they called it Scotch and promptly got corrected again!). Some gigs drag on but this one was interesting, fun and hugely entertaining. For some reason the chant “here we, here we, here we fucking go!” was regularly shouted out and often played along to by Wheatus. It was such a shame when the gig was drawing to an end. Just before playing ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ Brendan gave an amusing little safety talk on moshing: ‘Please enjoy the music in a vertical manner rather than a horizontal manner to prevent little people getting a testicle squashed at the front’. The song went down a storm and the place kicked off. Even MC Frontalot came on to join in with it causing even more of a riot. The crowd begged for more and they obliged with one last song.

So much for a long boring evening waiting for a band to come on with not a hugely known repertoire. The whole night was entertaining from start to finish and just got better and better. Wheatus are definitely a talented band who fight against the norm (probably due to being messed around by Sony in the past) and seem genuinely pleased to mix with their crowd. Hopefully at some point they’ll get the recognition they deserve – although that could possibly remove the closeness currently felt between them and the fans.


Show review by:
-Sally M.-
Overseas Correspondent

-Dod M.-
Big Wheel Staff Photographer

 
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