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All Is Quiet On New Year’s Day

It was probably a bad sign when, on the way into the city to see the Mystery Jets, it became apparent that the kids on the other side of our train carriage were also going to the same gig.

They were discussing their fake ID strategy for getting themselves admitted to the venue, which included the convulted explanations they were going to use for why the names on their tickets didn’t match the ones on the real IDs they had presumably borrowed for the evening from similar looking, but older, friends or relatives.

And if the fact that they must have been about 16 at most didn’t make me feel old, the fact that the date of birth printed on their real fake IDs read 1990 certainly did. These kids weren’t born when The Stone Roses and She’s So High came out.

We spotted the kids inside the venue later on, so clearly their elaborate plans worked. But if the Hi-Fi Bar hadn’t let anyone underage in then there wouldn’t have been much of an audience. We were significatly older than anyone else in the venue: it was like a kiddies version of Camden, all skinny jeans and porkpie hats. And with just 200 tickets sold (according to the girl on the door) for a 650 capacity venue, they’d had to make it two-for-one just to fill the place up. Hardly surprising, I suppose, that not so many people are prepared to commit to a gig by a little known British Indie band on New Year’s Day (the band themselves even admitted that they wouldn’t have gone to a gig on the first of January–to thank us for making the effort they produced a tray of drinks and passed them out to the underage kids at the front).

That said, we enjoyed the gig, and they seemed to go down surprisingly well with teh kids in the room. Not the best looking group of lads in the world, though–you can sort of understand why they might have decided to start a band…

Mystery Jets, Hi Fi Bar, Melbourne

Oh, and the Hi-Fi turns out to be a cracking little venue. I’ve now been to three of Melbourne’s gig venues, and I think that this one is my favourite so far. Small enough that you can pretty much stand anywhere and get a good view (and we positioned ourselves on the raised bit at the sides so that even Sal could enjoy an uninterrupted view of the band).

I’m very much looking forward to returning there at the end of the month to see Razorlight in similarly intimate surroundings.