Super Furry Animals

Accoustic Gig: Heavenly Social Club: 1.30pm

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. This was to get hold of a vintage bingo machine, have a board up numbered with SFA's entire backcatalog, and whichever number came up, the song was played. In reality Gruff Rhys is sat on a stool in a packed to the rafters Heavenly Social. The bingo man rolls out a ball....lets call it number 23. Gruff peers at the board: "oooooooooh.......JESUS CHRIST!! We can't play that!!! Ye can have a listen to it if ye want." And he promptly pops a CD into a cd player. As this is an accoustic gig, Cian Ciaran who works all the electronics has been given the day off, as (I think) has Dafydd Ieuan the drummer so anything electronic is really out of bounds. Some lucky people get the tinsel which acts as the stage backdrop and a sign saying "super furry animals" as a mystery prize for songs that can't be played. Gruff attemps to mime (presumably badly - I wouldn't know...I could only see his hair) to Dim Bendith and wriggles out of having to play any songs that are being played later this evening.

However there is a lot of fun to be had as the audience join in for a rendition of No K (the alphabet without a K as a protest against Kula Shaker) and Gruff gets out his horse impression for a consigned-to-the-doldrums-of-their-backcatalog Horse. The silly vibe is on warp factor 9 as nobody treats this as a serious gig, Bingo Man has to play hunt the bingo ball for a start. The rather tragic story behind Foxy Music reduces the audience to giggles (the story being that one of Gruff's friends was ginger and got shot by a farmer who mistook him for a fox. His dad had a heart attack when he heard the news and they were both rushed to hospital, it sounded better when Gruff told it.) We end with a slow country version of the Man Don't Give a Fuck, a piss take of I Can't Live If Living Is Without You and there is a toilet break halfway through.

There are also moments when it all comes together beautifully as we get some lovely versions of Dacw Hi and Y Teimlad. Despite feeling like a sardine the atmosphere was brilliant and it was well worth queuing for 1 1/2 hours (and hissing at people with wristbands) to get in.

Full On Surround Sound Extravaganza: Kentish Town Forum.

Methinks there's a man on stage who shouldn't be there yet. This is Dj Vadim, an whilst he may be pretty good at 4 in the morning he isn't at quarter to 8 at night. He scratches his decks, plays some records but the crowd are left suitably unimpressed by his overall lack of charisma.

It also doesn't help that he's followed by Killa Kela the Human Beatbox. He bounces onstage and soundchecks himself before giving us a little pastiche of beats and scratches. He then launches into a rendition of Play by Jennifer Lopez. If he was in drag you wouldn't be able to tell the difference...except that the the bass line would make your trousers shake. He's also a cruel man who goes and makes the audience's eardrums wobble, but nevertheless I think he deserves the gold medal of the evening. As he finishes his set (A) Touch Sensitive starts up. Kela acts as the bass drum and the lightman wakes up and switches on a set of tvs, lights and projector screens all showing the video to the song.

And this is when the sensory overload begins and I'm left wondering whether to watch the band or the screens, I try to do both whilst dodging bits of flying celery that Gruff chucks into the crowd during Receptacle for the Respectable. New songs are sandwiched between old favourites and the crowd bounce like lemmings fitted with duracell batteries for an endurance testing Man Don't Give A Fuck (in the middle roughly and not at the end of the gig), Nightvision, Do Or Die, Calimero (with an "I feel like chicken tonight" chorus), Northen Lites, and God! Show Me Magic that are accompanied by a light show that leaves most people half blind. Instead of having just the one mad techno wig out there were 3, TMDGAF, new song No Sympathy, Gwreiddiau Dwfn/Marwth Oer Y Blaned Neiflon. By the end we were staring at Arnie Schwarzenegger's lips saying "this is the best mind fuck ever". And so it was and SFA deserve the platinum medal of the evening.