 Tonight was my second visit to the newly opened
and newly situated Academy in Birmingham, once
again once we parked up in Birmingham we had a
mission getting to the Academy due to the fact
that have to walk all the way up one road to go
down a subway to walk all the way back down the
other side of the road to get to the venue which
is a bit annoying, anyway after what felt like
a 30minute walking journey to get to the venue
we made our way in and to my pleasant surprise
the venue was nowhere near as busy as it was last
time I attended which was back in December for
Marilyn Manson.
We got in just as the support band were finishing
their last song, now I don’t know who the
support band were as they were not advertised
anywhere for the show and they also had no merchandise
for sale, but as I only saw the last 3 minutes
of their set I don’t really have much of
a need or urge to find out who they were in a
hurry.
There was a good 30minute break whilst the road
crew got the stage and equipment ready for The
stranglers, in this time I headed off to have
a disgusting £2.60 watered down pint of
Coke which actually had an iceberg floating in
as the Academy is well known for its watered down
Coke which features a full glass of ice chunks
merged together, anyway whilst enjoying my Coke
I had a look around at the crowd and it was dominated
by people in their late 40’s and 50’
which left me feeling quite young which is a first
for a gig as these days gig’s are normally
filled with your 14 year old scene kids but as
these 14 year old scene kids weren’t even
born when The Stranglers started off they were
nowhere in sight.
 After what felt like many hours passing by the
lights went dim and The Stranglers took to the
stage to the spinney instrumental piece of ‘Waltzinblack’,
as this piece was played and The band members
took their place on stage, the venue erupted with
cheers from the clearly excited older crowd that
was in the building tonight.
The set up The Stranglers had tonight was slightly
odd as Jett black and Dave Greenfield were situated
at the back of the stage up a massive platform
with Jett Blacks high rise drum kit pretty much
covering him up so you could only see his face
from certain directions and Dave Greenfields massive
set up of four keyboards pretty much covering
him up fully with his head poking out over the
top to the lucky few what had a good view, Jean-Jacques
Burnel was situated to the left hand side of the
stage and Baz Warne was situated to the right
hand side of the stage and there was massive empty
spaces in the middle of the stage which looked
odd but once again that was all down to where
you were stood in the venue.
The show had a bit of a slow start and left the
crowd looking a bit dry and bored but as soon
as the open note of ‘Golden Brown’
was played about 7 song’s in the crowd got
moving singing-a-long word for word with a few
select people jumping around showing their appreciation
to The Stranglers whilst having the time of their
life, in fact the crowd got into the band so much
in the end that one lucky teenage managed to jump
over the barrier and on to the stage and then
seconds later the biggest security guard I have
ever seen chased him and threw him off the stage,
as soon as the song finished ‘Baz Warne’
took to the mic to say “You were very fucking
lucky there, normally our security guard would
fuck someone up for doing that” and in this
respect is how I class the kid as lucky.
 The Stranglers played many of their hit songs
such as ‘Peaches’, ‘Walk On
By’, Sugar Bullets’ and even their
current single ‘Retro Rockets’, they
played two en-cores and finally finished their
set with ‘No More Heroes’ which had
the whole venue singing-a-long word for word for
the very last time of the night, the sound did
start to crackle a bit at the end of the set during
‘No More Heroes’ but the power managed
stayed on for The Stranglers to finish in style.
As mentioned above the gig was very slow paced
to start with and actually quite boring, but by
the end of the night The Stranglers had the audience
in the palm of their hands as they were fully
in control, and it was so good seeing Jean-Jacques
Burnel knocking out his killer basslines as his
bass work is so different than anyone else’s
and really has that 70’s feel about it,
whilst the legend that is the 71 year old Jet
Black played the drums like it was his last ever
show also got the biggest chant of the evening
which I am sure was probably heard outside of
the venue, the stranglers may be getting on but
they showed no sign at all of slowing down tonight.
The Stranglers 4/5
Review By Trigger
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