I got back from travelling to Muscat for work on the Sunday and on the Monday night, I saw The Snuts (see the blog here) and on the Saturday, we travelled to Manchester in the worst weather you can imagine to see Sam Fender.
Seeing Sam Fender at the Co-op Live Arena was a bit of a pilgrimage for me; I loved him from the start. I was obsessed with Hypersonic Missiles when it came out, listening to it on repeat over and over again on my bike, wondering how the fuck someone that young could write lyrics like that (think Jarvis Cocker or Arctic Monkeys).
For my 50th birthday, one of the presents I got from my wife was to go and see Sam Fender in Nottingham at the Arena in March. Sadly for me, by that stage, I was horizontal and crying all the time due to the loss of the function of my thyroid, and that weekend, I managed to miss the Sam Fender and Stormzy concerts back to back, both of which I would have been absolutely entranced by.
It took two years or more till I had the chance to go and see him. I didn't love the venue; I wrote about that somewhere else in the blog, but Fender, oh my God, I've never seen anyone play the guitar like he plays the guitar.
Other people more famous and more clever have realised that for a long time (Elton John donated to Sam Fender a vintage guitar to help him on his way, which is worth extraordinary sums of money).
Fender is now this mature 30-year-old artist on stage (He was previously criticised for having no charisma on stage). He chats, and they laugh; they joke and make a complete mess of a song they didn't intend to play (Wild Gray Ocean). He explains why things arrived and where they came from; he does an interlude of thrash metal where he plays Spice and Howdon Aldi Death Queue in a bright red-lit box.
He's back again for stadiums, London for one and Newcastle for three. You won't get the tickets for him now unless you're prepared to pay through the nose, but honestly, it would probably be worth it.
Keep an eye out, though, because he's never ever thrown away, and he'll only get better and better.
You might not be able to get his tickets, but you can preorder his new album, People Watching, and the title track is already an extraordinary anthem.
Blog Post Number - 4042
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