As it was Zak's birthday yesterday, X and I decided to cordially treat him a ticket to go see Dirty Pretty Things with Mattias and myself. Wee!

It was a cold, cold evening in Stockholm city. The first snow of the winter had just fallen on the same day, and with that in mind, X and I huddled outside Debaser Medis as we met a semi-hungover Zak and a happy Mattias. We all went in, had a great time talking - not to mention watching Zak in amazement as he downed a beer in a few seconds flat - and celebratory missed the boring support act Molotov Jive.

We then waited and laughed together and had a great time; it was just the right mix of people and I laughed basically constantly. Mattias caught sight of a woman who works at the same place as we, and I nonsensically said "What are you doing here?" which she - thankfully - wasn't insulted by; I hastened to tell her I normally say that to people. Erhm. She was chaperoning her daughter; the gig carried an age-limit at 18, but you could enter if you were 13-18 if a parent was present. There were actually quite a lot of parents at the venue.

We entered the gig room, the band sprang in and did their thing, being constantly surrounded by roadies who really must have been well paid; they even adjusted microphone stands, for krissakes! X and I laughed at the idea, and come on! I immediately thought of Okkervil River and how they even extract, unfold, pack up and ship out all by their own might, no roadies included. Damn it. Seems like Mr. Barât has grown a tad lazy, but hey, I've never been in his shoes.

"Blood Thirsty Bastards" as performed last night.

During the gig a man came up to me, dressed in a sweatshirt. He made a gesture as to say "lower your mobile phone and stop filming the gig". Well, turns out that's exactly what he meant.

"Your filming the gig is copyright infringement on my music," he said. "What?" I retorted cunningly. "You're infringing on copyright by filming the gig. You're going to have to delete the film right now." "Of course! I'm sorry."

He quite carefully watched me as I stopped filming, pressed the delete-button and the screen went blank, and read "No videos or pictures". He was happy with that and said I wasn't allowed to film any more. I was happy with that.

By the way, that's the first and only time I've been happy about my camera being so slow that it hiccuped at just the right moment. See, nothing was deleted; when my camera accesses its media library it takes ages to display anything, and a few times it's said that there are no pics or video to display. This was one of those few times. Of course I deleted all videos afterwards.

I think the band played more tracks from their first album than from their last, which I really enjoyed. The energy was there, and they performed well. I've always loved how they've swapped lead vocal-duties, and it was actually quite nice to see them from a distance, as opposed to seeing Lightning Bolt. And of course, nobody (in our midst anyway) could decipher what Barât said between songs. Or to be exact, what few words he uttered in-between two songs. Silent man, he is.

Some of the tracks were brilliant live, like "The Enemy":

After the quite short gig - just over an hour long - that finished with The Libertines' classic "I Get Along", we finished the evening off with a little drink and then went homewards. A very nice evening, all in all!