the 1975 (part 2) at alexandra palace

2 weeks ago yesterday (it was Wednesday the 1^st of October) I went with my little sister to see The 1975 for the second time at Alexandra Palace.  The show was amazing and, as I've never been in a standing crowd like Alexandra Palace before, it was really cool to experience live music in that way for the first time!

I skipped a day at college just to get a good place in the queue but, boy was it worth it! We were about 10 people from the barrier and, despite the elbows and phones blocking my view at times, I had a great position in the crowd.

I should probably also mention that the views of London from Alexandra Palace are amazing and you can see all the iconic skyscrapers and, after the gig, seeing London lit up like that was breath taking really.

There were some arguments between groups of fans in the queue at the beginning and a bit further back which resulted in some pathetic notes being passed down the line throughout the day. In my opinion it’s really sad to see things like that because we’re all here to support this band; and to think of life without influential music that means so much to all of us there, is awful- so as we all have that in common surely we should be celebrating that not arguing amongst us? I hate to say it but some of the girls sitting near us were shouting really mean things to some better-known fans at the front of the queue and it was so annoying and I just didn’t want to be involved.

A bit later John Waugh walked past and waved at everyone and everyone cheered back which was nice and it was also good to see that he wasn’t being bombarded with fans trying to get a picture or something trivial. Just seeing these people in real life is enough really.

Around 6 o’clock everyone in the queue was standing waiting in anticipation to go inside (it was also getting a bit cold out even though I had my new The 1975 hoodie – also £40 for a hoodie is ridiculous may I just point out even though I still bought it lol okay). The pushing and shoving in the queue was crazy I was literally chest to chest with one of the security guards ~uncomfortable~ but then we went straight in as we didn’t have bags to be checked. Like you're gonna bomb your favourite artist yh sure okay.

Y.O.U were cool coming on dressed in all white and giving out demo CDs before the show. I have never heard them before so I was pretty pleased that the words were relatively easy to pick up and the tunes of their songs were catchy. Now I also looooove Circa Waves so when they were announced as support I was super excited and they didn’t disappoint! Also one of my friends is a fan so I tried calling her but she's useless and didn’t answer (I hope you see this Tori you're useless ly) but all of their music is so good for head-bobbing and shoulder dancing and shouting the bridge, how can you not love Circa Waves?! It was the first time I’d seen them perform and Stuck In My Teeth was so good live it was awesome!

I'm not going to recite the set list because it’s pretty much the same as the set list for their gig at the Royal Albert Hall.  But they came on and I was literally sweating (probably from the support acts and not to mention the other 6999 people in the hall) and the crowd erupted. That feeling when they first come is not something that anyone can describe or you can really understand until you see an artist you love in real life standing infront of you.

All of their songs are super loveable and an absolute delight to listen to, but fallingforyou gets me every single time. They played that opening note and I was an absolute goner. Lyrically, that song is so powerful and so well-crafted to create great imagery in your mind I can’t get enough of that song and I stop to listen to it in full every time. I can’t even begin to explain how much that songs means to me and what memories I have connoted with that record – if I tried to explain it wouldn’t express half of what I'm trying to say.

I can’t remember which song it was during, but at one point Matty attempted to crowd surf and the whole crowd surged forward out of nowhere and I got literally crushed and a girl near me fell over (which was quite funny but she went as white as a ghost). It was kind of scary to have like 6500 people pushing against you I was this close to waving a little white flag and getting pulled out or something stupid. Oh yeah! That happened to a girl before they even came on- I guess she couldn’t deal with being right at the front of all those people, she seemed quite young anyway.

When I’d just about recovered from that, they played Robbers. Now 2 major things happened during this song and I have to talk about both. You know when you're listening to a song, like properly listening to it, and it hits you like a brick wall your interpretational meaning behind the record and your heart just about stops. And you know how that can happen to you whether it’s the first time you listen to that song or the fiftieth time you listen to that song – well this was like the 50,000^th time I've heard Robbers and a personal interpretation just hit me and I cried my little eyes out. I shoved my sister infront of me so she could properly see and seeing how happy that made her, made me cry more and everyone around me was like “why is this kid crying puddles” but wow I’ll probably never forget that moment. It’s kind of stuck on my heart like one of those new super strong post-it’s from that advert plus a couple hundred staples and 4 tubes of superglue and I’ll carry that with me forever and for that I am so grateful to the band.

Also, during Robbers, one of the boys from the barrier (I think his name is Tom) got called up onto the stage and to see how hard he hugged Matty was adorable. It’s like everyone in the hall could relate to him and what he was kind of telling/showing Matty so it’s like he represented the other 7000 people in that hall; it was amazing and so touching.

So after they finished Robbers they went straight into Chocolate but I was still having a breakdown and then combined with how much of a good time I was having I was just pretty much a massive mess. They closed so well, they always do.

After the gig I went to the merchandise stall and bought the Sex EP tshirt for my little sister and, because it was such a special moment for me, I bought the Robbers single tshirt even though I wasn't that crazy about the design. I wore both the tshirt and the hoodie to college the next day and had to pretend I was still ill from skipping the day before- for the record, my economics teacher saw straight through me and my brand new merch.

the 1975 at royal albert hall

On Sunday the 6^th of April I was at the Royal Albert Hall to see The 1975. I am a  h u g e  The 1975 fan and they put on an absolutely amazing show.

I hadn't seen The 1975 in concert before, but I can definitely say that they did not disappoint. They put on a killer show which had the entire audience of nearly 6000 people on their feet for the whole night (apart from during Is There Somebody Who Can Watch You when Matty asked everyone to sit down; but I’ll get to that later).

This is the first glimpse I caught of the venue. I’ve never been to the Royal Albert Hall venue before and it is a beautiful building. I’m a bit of an architecture fan and was stunned by the detail on the exterior of the building.

The inside is just as nice, you can tell it’s Victorian from the name and the so-big-you-can't-miss-it statue outside the front of the building.

After excitedly finding my seat and being given the seat closer to the stage by my friend (whether she knew it or not) I had about 15 minutes to take in the interior of the venue and it’s absolutely amazing.

The combination of the lights, the ceiling, the plush red seats (which not only had pull up seats like in cinema’s, but also swivelled left and right too), the layers of balcony’s and my closeness to the main stage, set the scene for an magical night. Looking around, I spotted several people running about excitedly wearing The 1975 tshirts and carrying what appeared to be merch, so I decided I wanted to be in on this and overly enthusiastically ran up the steps to one of the door people (I don’t know what their proper title is!!). I asked if I could get merch before the show began and was directed to door 6. I was currently at door 11 so was basically running around the corridors of the venue to get to door 6 and the merch stand. After dragging my friend along with me, we found the stand and I pushed my way to the front of the crowd and bought a tshirt and 2 posters. After being convinced it was too much to buy another tshirt, we returned to our seats and as I walked through those corridors clutching the posters and black tshirt far too tightly to my chest like it was my child, I have never felt happier. Even if the door lady did give me a weird look when I grinned so big you could see my teeth as I re-entered the main room.

After Marika Hackman finished her support act, there was a small break before The 1975 came on stage. As the notorious 5 rectangles in the background started to light up, you could feel the energy in the air that something massive was about to happen.

They walked onto the stage one at a time. First Ross, then Adam, George and then finally Matty as the place exploded into a frenzy of screams and cheers. Even from the too-cool-to-care 20-something year old boys standing next to me who smelt of smoke and vodka and cokes were shouting and screaming for the main man.

They didn’t open with an annoying speech about how grateful they were for being able to perform at such a prestigious venue, they just dove straight into their self-titled song The 1975 (the opener of disc 1 on their album) and then an amazing rendition of one of their biggest hits The City.

Followed by Milk and then M.O.N.E.Y. they played a few songs back to back before Matty announcing to the crowd: “to all the people who said this band wouldn’t work, welcome to fucking the royal albert hall”. The place erupted and screamed even harder if it was possible to She Way Out.

After a few songs, Matty must’ve been interacting with some members of the front row as I argued furiously with my phone to stop pissing about at such an important event as he went on to announce to these lucky people “what do you mean fucking Chocolate we’ve been on 20 minutes?!” A definite highlight.

I should probably mention that (despite my phone being on 28% battery and just generally being a pain in the ass) I took several videos and pictures, but the videos will not make any cut of this post as they all contain my awful singing/screaming, but most of the pictures featured are my own.

They played several of their album songs and some from their selection of EPs. Heads.Cars.Bending was even better than I could’ve ever possible imagined or describe to you. There’s just something about seeing your favourite artist live that you can’t put into words.

About halfway through the gig, they played the opening of my favourite The 1975 song; fallingforyou. I turned to my friend and desperately cried “THIS IS MY FAVOURITE SONG!” and as she consoled my shaking shoulder by wrapping an arm around my shoulder and pulling me close, Matty proceeded to announce that it was also his favourite song. At this point the ambulance arrived and I was taken away. Well that was probably the level of medical attention I should’ve received, I was absolutely beside myself. I pretty much cried the whole way throughout the song whilst trying to film it to re-enjoy later on (I watch at least once a day) and scream some of my favourite lines and try not to collapse on the floor.

To add to the atmosphere; Ross, George and Matty all left the stage to give Adam his moment. He played an indescribable version of Hnscc on his own, and for a song without lyrics I felt a very strong connection with.

After the boys returned to the stage they played several other hit songs from the album, including Is There Somebody Who Can Watch You. It was absolutely stunning. I think it is pretty much legally obliged that everyone see this so im going to drop a link here.

He asked everyone to take a seat and remain silent throughout the song which some people struggled with but it was nice to hear a solid “I love you too” to a devoted fan. The performance was magical and a real privilege to watch. The raw emotion in this song and also in Me was a feast for fans lapping up the wonder that Matty has become to many devoted fans.

I'm going to put in loads of photos here because why not

The gig unfortunately had to end at some point but what a way to close. They took a few minutes to take photographs which have been posted all over Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc and I caught my own.

As the lights went down and I took my last glance at the boys I felt exhausted from all the blood in my head from headbanging and aching in my spine from my hair flips but totally ecstatic to have seen one of my favourite bands live.

The evening didn’t end there for me. I waited longingly for a good 40 minutes after the gig right next to the stage door to try and meet my heroes after the show.

It was kind of nice in a weird way to be squashed right next to complete strangers but also fellow fans who were still buzzing from the show. That is literally the door they would’ve come out of in the picture (!!) But as we approached 11:50 I really did have to leave otherwise I would’ve missed my train and been stranded in Liverpool Street Station until the next train home. After several mishaps with half awakely, not really focused tube changes from getting on the wrong line twice, me and my friend stumbled into the station, past a late-night café and onto the 00:02 train back to Colchester.

I have never been so happy to see a share bag size of Walker’s cheese and onion crisps before in my life. We trudged into the Colchester train station at around 01:45 in the morning and after dropping my friend home I slumped into bed at 02:30 ish ready to have no sleep before going into college for my economics revision session at 9am the next day.

why being a vegetarian is not all bad

I'mm a big The Smiths fan so was reading into Morrissey and his beliefs/views/opinions and found myself on his fan page. There was a tab where people had asked him about his vegetarianism and why he chose to become a vegetarian and he had replied to some of their posts. So I got reading and he referenced a video called ‘The Video the Meat Industry Doesn’t Want You to See’ on YouTube, and I went to look it up. I would embed it into this post but the content is really explicit and not for you if you are offended easily. Luckily I’m not too fazed by things like this normally, but I literally couldn’t watch beyond 1 minute into this video. The mistreatment of animals shown in the video was absolutely disgusting. Admittedly the video is a couple of years old (I’m not sure when it was posted) but the point still stands.

I was literally appalled by some of the things I saw, but wasn’t initially convinced to give up eating meat. 

This is a link to the video but be warned that there are very explicit pictures and it's not for the faint hearted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eoF6w7R9oI

So if you watched that you know it’s not nice at all.

Aside from my initial reasons for becoming vegetarian, there are other reasons. Diets which don’t involve meat aren’t unhealthy for you despite popular beliefs. In fact there are some positive health benefits to cutting down the meat! It can reduce your chance of heart disease which is definitely a positive for your health. It’s all biological and stuff, but it’s to do with the type of fats in meat. The LDLs (low density lipoproteins) can cause fatty deposits and may even lead to CHD (Coronary Heart Disease). In women, it can reduce the chances of contracting breast or ovarian cancer, as it cuts out some of the hormones which cause cancerous growths. It also saves you from eating a higher amount of calories (especially in red meat) and helps you stay skinny in your skinny jeans!

On another The Smiths note, the title song from their album ‘Meat is Murder’ discusses the moral reasons for being vegetarian. I’ve played it so much in my house; my mum has dubbed it ‘Hala’s vegetarian propaganda song’ which I resent but unfortunately she’s got a point.

Hear the song here:

In addition to my moral and health reasons for being a vegetarian, I think we can all admit that both raw red and white meat feels a bit gross.

Initially, my mum was a little concerned when I told her I wanted to become vegetarian as she was unsure as to how to supplement for excluding meat from my diet, but after doing some research and being vegetarian for months, I can positively say that there are loads of tasty alternatives to not eating meat! There have been loads of new products launched onto the vegetarian food market in the past 10 to 15 years for example; quinoa (it’s a bit like grainy rice and lentils), nuts, beans, yogurt, cheese, tofu, legumes, almonds and other nuts, veggie burgers, and if you really want to eat meat, there’s quorn meat available which is actually delicious despite what people may think.

I don’t really mind people asking me about my vegetarianism as I am totally willing to talk about it, but the only thing that winds me up is when people try to dig at me or say that they don’t believe in what my choice is. For example a girl at college said that to me and I just got annoyed and wasn’t willing to talk to her (she was being extremely rude as well I may point out). When people try to tell me I should start to eat meat again I think it's pretty rude, it’s not like I’m going round forcing my beliefs on you, I’m not asking you why you eat slaughtered animals!

I’m pretty sure they should be thankful that I’m not as a passionate vegetarian as Morrissey because if he finds out you aren’t vegetarian in conversation, he just walks away. Maybe I should go all Morrissey on these people…