Review: Coheed & Cambria Neverender II 12.5.2008

#43 (46th of Coheed)
Friday, December 5, 2008
Coheed & Cambria
Astoria
London

So in keeping with the tradition of weird coincidences that benefit me, not only was I lucky enough to get a work trip to London at the same time as the London Neverender shows, I was also lucky enough that the only show I could really attend (IKSSE night) ended up getting postponed - so on Tuesday night I was at a swanky publisher reception in Tower Bridge and Friday night I was in the enormous Astoria nightclub watching the 'heed.
I was also extra excited because due to the postponement, Claudio decided to open with a few Prize Fighter Inferno songs. To be extra thorough, I took notes this time (though I'm sure YouTube is full of video):
-acoustic cover of The Outfield's 'Your Love' which I thought was amazing but apparently people weren't super-familiar with. Josie's on a vacation far away... I like that song anyway.
-explanation of Claudio using his dad's guitar cheat books when learning to play the guitar and then an acoustic version of Purple Haze (yeah-huh)
-PFI's Wayne Andrews, The Old Bee Keeper (w/Travis on lapsteel; photo with dude's head in the way)
-a new song he's working on for a musical he's writing with Chondra called "Rosie Barber and the Family Massacre" which was tentatively titled "The Echomaker" after a book Chondra was reading in the gym (see how the notes come in handy)
-Who Watches the Watchmen? with the crowd doing the "do's" and handclaps for the electo-beat in the original
-then finally Claudio was talking about his and Chondra's song [which I immediately knew would be Journey] and was in fact, Faithfully (because of the "joy of rediscovering you" line which makes me physically ill, but I guess if you're a music man like Claud you identify with it). I felt like a lot of people didn't know this song either, so perhaps I am the cheeziest person in Coheed's audience. Hmmm...
I was kinda sorry he didn't do more PFI songs (I went to freakin Margaretville last summer, fer crying out loud!) but hopefully I will get to see that in another time and place.
The regular Neverender Night II show was the same as the other cities. I thought the London crowd was really good and I was pretty happy that I could sit down and still sing along and see and not annoy or be annoyed.
Getting out of the block the Astoria was on was pretty tough - there were way too many people crammed into that block with no extra space due to contruction barriers and scaffolding. People were not as pushy as Americans though. Of course in DC, at least three people would have been stabbed in such a mess but I made it to the nearby Tube station with no real problem outside of my general anxiety about crowds and being touched by strange people.
I was glad to made it to this show since it will probably be a while before I see Coheed again if they're going around opening for the likes of Slipknot and other things like that.