Friday 18 November 2011

Dad Rocks! Olive's Coffee Shop, Norwich

In a bid to extend the Norwich Owl's range of gig venues, November's gig sees us treading the boards at one of the city's premier coffee houses.  Yes, you read that right, we are at the home of frothy macchiatos and cinnamon syrup. Not, you would imagine, a place where rock and roll dreams come true.  And if you think that, well, you'd be right...This is awful.
Arriving in a painfully quiet venue, with four quid bottles of ale freely available, the Owl are treated to the acoustic stylings of support act Shoes and Socks Off, who consist of a beanie-hatted Badly Drawn Boy lookalike playing the sort of acoustic meanderings that merely start and end, with little in the way of tune and melody to draw us in.  The theatre-like surroundings merely add to the "difficult" nature of the gig, with only a mid-set trip to the toilet from one of our number adding to the excitement levels, as the sound of piss hitting pan detracts from the dirge being served up stage-front. 
But we remain positive, and as the similarly dreadfully-monikered headliner takes to the stage, we await confirmation that all is not lost.  And, predictably, we are left disappointed by a set heavy on proficient strumming, but light on inspiration and anything in the way of a tune.  And throughout the whole thing, we are scared to breathe for fear of upsetting the six people ahead of us who are finding the event enlightening.  Guess there's no accounting for taste.
In short, coffee shops are not the place where the zeitgeist is to be found, and as the evening progressed, the chap to our right who snoozed on a sofa throughout the show, increasingly seemed to have the best seat in the house.  Avoid.

Chris 

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