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So tonight was the first night, for me, of Orbital’s Green/Brown tour. They have already played Exeter and Southampton, I’m also going to London and Nottingham.
The drive from London to Birmingham was an absolute nightmare and what should have been 2.5 hrs took 5hrs. When Lucy and I arrived at Birmingham we slowly started meeting up with our Orbital friends, Jon-Michael (Denver Colorado), Matt aka Badger (Sydney Australia), Aimée (Belgium), Wendy & Tez (Wrexham Wales) and finally Steve aka Loopz (Birmingham via the tour bus). We met in The Ruin before the gig and the food was ok(ish) and the beer pretty good.
At 7pm we headed to the venue O2 Institute in Digbeth. Getting in was pretty simple, except Aimée and Badger were on the guest list and were told that they had to go upstairs and not on the dance floor with the rest of us. Loopz to the rescue and sorted. We then met Steve aka FilterSequence (Nottingham).
As Orbital were playing both the Green and Brown albums, there was an early start bang on 7:45 when they played the Green Album. This album came out in 1991 so they played tracks that hadn’t been played live for a very long time. Oolaa, Desert Storm and Farenheit 303 were absolute ear-bleeding stunners. The first set finished about 9pm and there was a short 20 minute break.
After the break they returned to the stage and played the Brown Album from 1993. The levels of enjoyment from the crowd were just incredible. A few tracks in Badger turned to me and said “Your turn, come on Dave”, which prompted screams of More Acid (the squelch noise type not the hallucinogenic type), this all dates back to the Brisbane gig I went to with Badger in 2019. They also played my favourite track Remind, I’m not sure my knees are going to cope with another 2 nights of this. My favourite part of this second set is when the merged from Walk now to Walk about absolutely mental, move of this kind of behaviour Hartnoll's more!
When they finished the Album a short break before they returned to play a 4 track encore of Spicy, Dirty Rat, Satan and Where is it Going.
After the gig I managed to get hold of the two set lists and then blag my way into the after party with Aimée and Badger who had wristbands due to being on the guest list. We had a few beers and chatted with friends. Phil had been shipped off to the Hare & Hounds to play a DJ set, but Paul was in attendance. Just before we left, it was getting cold and Badger was wearing shorts & a t-shirt, both Aimée and Badger showed Paul their tattoos and I said to Paul I bet you have Aimée tattooed on one arm and Badger on the other too which he replied “Yeah and I’ve got Dave on my Arse”.
A most entertaining night where I danced with friends perhaps a little too hard, Monday will be the judge of that.