Watching a gig with support bands you’ve never heard of before is always a hit or miss. Sometimes they can be surprisingly good, pretty decent, and other times, plain horrible wanting you to wish there was a skip button to fast forward to the next song, heck, the next band even.
Last Thursday’s Cobra Starship gig at King’s College London had 3 support bands on the bill, MiMi Soya, Cash Cash and Sing It Aloud, all of which are bands I’ve never heard nor seen before.
The show started pretty early, say 20 minutes after the doors opened. The first band up on stage was MiMi Soya, a female-fronted quartet from sunny Brighton, England. Their brand of pop-punk was surprisingly good to the ears and their energy on stage was pretty fun to watch. Plus, having a female vocalist named Hero is pretty damn awesome.
Next up was a band called Cash Cash, from New Jersey, who were pretty popular with the female dominated crowd. They were quite average though but still performed a good set and their songs are very catchy, that’s powerpop for you.
The last support band was Sing It Loud, another band from the US, Minnesota to be precise. A five-piece band who plays pop punk/powerpop as well. I liked them better than Cash Cash, less catchy but their songs are more structured.
Eventually, the show run out of support bands and it was finally time for Cobra Starship to perform. If you’ve known me for sometime and have been reading my previous blog on WordPress, you would know that I was pretty disappointed when I first saw them live at GIAN 2008.
Their music is sort of a guilty pleasure of mine and as such, the reason why I decided to give them another chance and watch one of their shows.
I was not disappointed.
They kicked off their set with The City Is A War and this time around, the sound was perfect with no more tech issues which ruined their GIAN show. This was followed by two tracks from the first album, Send My Love to the Dancefloor, I’ll See You in Hell (Hey Mister DJ) and The Church Of Hot Addiction. They kept the crowd dancing and the energy flowing with Kiss My Sass.
A medley of 3 to 4 songs was next which in my opinion was sort of a cop out to squeeze in more songs. As far as I remember, the medley contained Keep It Simple, Prostitution Is the World’s Oldest Profession, and The Ballad Of Big Poppa And Diamond Girl. I am not a 100% sure about this though. This medley might have been started with another song though, Damn You Look Good and I’m Drunk (Scandalous).
Cobra Starship rounded up the evening with other crowd favourites, Smile For The Paparazzi, Pete Wentz Is The Only Reason We’re Famous, and of course, Bring It (Snakes On A Plane). Pat and Ben from Sing It Loud also helped out on a few song.
Of course there was an encore, which started with Ryland talking on stage which he was pretty good at. After programming in a few beats, the song Pleasure Ryland started with the rest of Cobra Starship coming up on stage. They capped off the evening with Guilty Pleasure and called it a night.
My disappointment with Cobra Starship has now been erased and re-written over by an amazing set and performance last Thursday. MiMi Soya was the surprise support of the evening who really impressed me. As for Cash Cash and Sing It Loud, they are ok bands but in a sea of pop punk these days which is all the rage with the kids, they could easily get lost but do have some potential.
