Nobody has asked me to give an opinion or quote about this, despite the fact that I have been proved right on several occasions now.
Anyway, tonight I was going to the second of Prefontaine's monthly residency gigs at The Lacehouse. I was looking forward to seeing some other Nottingham music media types there; Dean Jackson from BBC Introducing, Mark Del who presents the Nusic podcast, at least one person from Leftlion is bound to be there, and I was sure that The Nottingham Evening Post (as I still call it) would be checking them out for a feature as they love the local scene here too. Then there's my good self, who trumpets Nottingham's music scene on UK and USA radio. We could all sit at a big table and argue over who is best.
It turns out that it is me who is the best, as I was the only one out of that illustrious list of Nottingham music flag wavers who turned up.
Someone I've been giving a lot of my flag waving time to, Chloe McShane, was supporting. Prefontaine are one of the city's most supportive bands who aren't afraid to nail their colours to the mast and collaborate with people who deserve the exposure. Chloe was amazing as expected, and although it wasn't busy at the venue, she sounded better here than at Alley Cafe last week, as she didn't have my bugbear to deal with, the talkers. There are 'bootleg' recordings of Chloe's set from tonight, that I will play on the radio as soon as I can.
Prefontaine went down brilliantly with the small-ish but appreciative crowd, and I'm looking forward to seeing them in another venue in a couple of weeks. They play at The Chameleon, which is sadly closing down. It's a strange venue to be honest, an intimate, grungy, little den of a place which is bang in the middle of town, yet totally invisible if you don't know where it is as you have to go down an alleyway and up a flight of stairs finding yourself above a card shop in the Old Market Square. If I'm honest, I am surprised that we've been given notice that it's closing, due to the rather chaotic nature of the place. To stay in the character of The Chameleon, the closure should have been revealed simply by a group of people turning up to find the door padlocked up. Maybe the erratic running of the place was all an act? I once knew someone who ran a drinking club late at night, and was licenced to serve alcohol 24 hours a day. However, he made out that he was running a dodgy drinking den in order to give the customers a frisson of exciting naughtiness to their post-pub drinking, and was so realistic that his cover was only blown when someone reported him to the police for running an illegal den, and the police informed them that it was legit.
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