I was meant to meet with my brother, sister and a mutual friend for a couple of drinks and a meal. Instead, a couple of match going, battle-hardened Scousers joined me and the party for a sloshing 7-8 pints and a live performance from Nick Mulvey at Shepards Bush Empire. On a fucking Tuesday night.
I was just about to go home for a sensible night in when my brother asked me to come to the gig and despite the fact that Nick Mulvey isn’t the type of musician I would usually go and watch, he has a few solid tunes to his name and a gig is a gig at the end of the day.
Mulvey is a London lad himself but spent time in Cuba studying music and art before immersing himself in different West and Central African styles.
There wasn’t a beat missed all night as fan favourites, ‘Unconditional’, ‘Myela’ and ‘Fever to the Form’ were joined by ‘Infinite Trees’, ‘Transform your Game’ and ‘Mountain to Move’, all solid crowd pleasers.
However, the best moment of the night didn’t actually come from the stage. It came from a lad standing about 3 people behind me…
After finishing a song, Mulvey looked into the audience, wearing his beanie and a puppy dog look on his face that hadn’t shifted from kick off….
“Listen guys” he started, “There is some really bad stuff going on in the world right now and we just need to look after each other, we need to care, we need to love. Peace is what we need and that is what this next song is all about, I want you to feel that.”
The crowd went silent for the briefest of moments when, clear as a fog horn, a hero shrouded in darkness, projected across the whole room;
“I don’t know anything about that type of thing, I just work in the Asda and like beer.”
The none-stop Instagram Live streaming crowd didn’t like that, but I think they got even more wound up as I was almost screaming in laughter.
I literally got told to “Shut up” by some dead-eyed 20-year-old girl which only made it funnier…
Anyway, I enjoyed the music and we kept drinking for another hour or so before I decided to head home for the night, tired, drunk and in no shape for the rest of the week.
