Ash: Astoria.

Photo by Sheep Purple

My fiancee and I went to see Ash on Saturday night, performing 1977 in its entirety at the Astoria. At least, that was the plan. However, the mistaken assumption that they would begin playing at 9 rather than 8pm caused us to miss two thirds of the album performance (including Goldfinger and Girl From Mars, obviously, which made us so sad). Despondent, we hung our hopes on at least getting a decent encore.

The encore was a magnificent hour-long fangasm. In addition to fucking fantastic singles like Shining Light and A Life Less Ordinary, they ran through a number of covers (I Only Want To Be With You, Helen Love's genius Punk Boy), old favourites Uncle Pat and Jack Names The Planets, a brand new song, and just generally brought the house down. For being brought back onstage by Imperial Stormtroopers and blitzing John Williams' (Mos Eisley) Cantina Band, they score impossibly high points. Hell, I consider the Cantina Band performance worth the ticket price alone. I've had the Girl From Mars single since small times, but I never in my life would have expected to ever see Ash play that live.

So, thanks Ash (Thash). We'll kindly forget about the last album if you keep up this sort of performance onstage.

Here are the studio recorded versions of Punk Boy and Cantina Band.