Faithless @ Alexandra Palace, London

As some people will know, I missed the last Faithless gig due to a slight problem of it being in Manchester, while I had interviews in Bracknell either side of the day of the gig. Fuck it. So, as soon as we saw the tickets on sale for the gig at Ally Pally. It was only later that we found out it was going to be an 8pm to 2am gig, rather than a more “normal” time – but hey ho, not a problem.

Anyway, last night was the night of the gig, and bloody good it was too. The support was – well, iffy, I suppose would be a tactful way of phrasing it. The first band were (if memory serves) called Overhead, and were abysmal. The sound mix was totally out, and they just weren’t good at all. The second band, Infadels were much better – although in fairness they didn’t really have to work for that praise – and did a good job of warming up the crowd.

It has to be said, Alexandra Palace is bloody huge. I’d never been there before, but want to go again – hopefully this time when cameras are allowed inside the fucking venue. It’s a great place, from all appearances – with a couple of exceptions. But more about that later.

Faithless themselves were – as always – bloody great. This tour was in support of their new greatest hits album Forever Faithless, so the gig involved the best bits from all four albums. Starting off with “Reverence”, and covering all the high points – Insomnia, God is a DJ, We Come One and a bundle of others – they really just showed the support acts (and everyone else) exactly how a big gig at this level should be done. The lighting rig was exceptional, the sound quality spot-on, and the entire thing just rocked.

In fact, the only low points were some of the crowd, who could’ve been under the dictionary definition of “fuckwit cunt”, and the farce at the end. For some reason Ally Pally has never seen fit to sort out the access roads, so when we eventually got a cab back to the hotel (a farce that deserves it’s own post – suffice it to say for now that I’ve never been so glad to get out of a cab intact, and without the (expected) aid of fire-crews and a 999 call) it was stuck on the access road for a good twenty minutes.

It doesn’t take a great deal to organise things like traffic flow, car-parking and the like, but it was the side that Alexandra Palace failed in. And, as a final memory of a superb gig, it does make me think that I wouldn’t go there for another one, despite how good everything else was. Which is a pity.