The Middlenight Men gig review – The Middlenight Men Launch Party – “Issue 1” Camden.

The Middlenight Men gig review. The Middlenight men Album Launch Party – Tonight’s venue is Underworld located in Camden, London. The underworld claims to be the heart of the alternative music scene in the UK and has played host to bands such as the Foo Fighters, The Darkness, Sum 41 and Radiohead to name a few.

Tonight’s gig is headlined by The Middlenight Men, a band formed in the 2019. According to their website they are ‘A band that has been born out of 2 decades of touring and partying from dozens of interlinked musical projects that has seen it’s members come together to form a superstar band of epic pop proportions.’

The Middlenight Men are fronted by Nick Hughes. Nick has performed in many bands over his 20 year career such as Love zombies, The Yo-Yos and Duncan Reid. Nick has gained support from bands such as the Wildhearts and Terrorvision, who he accompanied on a stadium tour in 2016.

After years of encouragement to write his own album and an incident in Buenos Aires Nick came up with the idea and wrote ‘Issue 1’. Nick was joined by some of his favourite colleagues to make the album. Whilst some of the members of The Middlenight Men may come and go they intend to spread joy through their music. The Middlenight Men see themselves as ‘The Marvel Avengers of the Rock n Roll World’.

The Middlenight Men are using the Underworld Venue to launch their debut Album ‘issue 1’. Released in February 2021 the album was well received by the Music reviewing community. The Middlenight Men are joined by their support bands ‘Hey You Guys’ a band from Worcester UK with 2 albums under their belt and The Hot Damn! Which are, in their words ‘four hot damn ladies rocking a hot new sound’.

Hey you Guys

First up are Hey you Guys , fronted by Pete Adams, they started their set with the song ‘Rio’ off their comically named second album ‘Difficult Second Album’. Before the performance of ‘Wolf’ Pete explained that for tonight’s show the they had a replacement Drummer and Bass guitarist. Pete brought a laugh to the crowd as the band were giving away free copies of their album tonight on the condition the audience stayed for the whole set. He then went on to canvas the crowd hoping someone in the audience had a record label and a deal for Hey You Guys. Playing a set list of songs off their first and second albums Pete gave an animated performance. He even jumped off stage to view the performance of the rest of the band from an audiences perspective. All in all a great live band you should defiantly see if you get the opportunity.

The Hot Damn!

On stage next were Gill Montgomery, Josie O’Toole, Laurie Buchanan and Liz Hayes who make up the band ‘The Hot Damn!’. Gill (ex The Amorettes), who is lead singer and guitarist, performed a series of songs which included ‘Catch Me if You Can’, ‘Enter The Ride’, ‘Still Got Rock ‘n’ Roll’ and ‘Little Pretender’. Laurie and Liz both provided backing vocals. Laurie on guitar and Liz on Bass both looked like they were having a rocking time up there on stage. Josie, with drumsticks held high, counted the band in to many of the songs. Josie’s performance on the drums is energetic and powerful. For someone so small she certainly makes a big sound! The band were well supported at the venue as they performed their debut single ‘Dance Around’. Their set ended with their cover of ‘Everything I Learned I Learned From Rock ‘n’ Roll’ which had the audience singing along with them.

The Middlenight Men

Then it was time to welcome onto the stage the ‘Marvel-ous’ superhero inspired ‘The Middlenight Men’. Opening with ‘Rat Star’ and ‘You’ (getting Over) a couple upbeat songs giving all ten members of the band opportunity to demonstrate their musical talents. There was plenty of onstage movement and it evident that the band were genuinely having fun performing. It wasn’t long before ‘Heroine heights’ with its tenuous Batman style intro and probably the reason the band were all in the cliche superhero masks was pleasing the crowd. There was a slow down in tempo as Nick Hughs performed ‘ExtroIntro’ and shortly after came ‘BA Baby’ which was one of the audiences favourites judging by their participation singing along with the chorus. For the last song before the band pretend to leave The Middlenight Men performed the bonus track off the album ‘The Story of Three’.

The two song encore started with Nick singing ‘Sleep’ before the full complement of the the band returned and completed their set list with ‘They’ll Be The Ones’. It is clear The Middlenight Men draw on their influences from all the musical connections they have such as ‘The Wildhearts’ and ‘Terrorvision’ to put on a brilliantly fun and entertaining show with a collection of personalities and instruments. I’m looking forward to seeing Nick and his Middlenight Men at future shows as they will be supporting a couple of bands that I will be seeing before the end of the year. Hopefully it wont be long until the they are headlining their own tour as they are a band I would certainly recommend getting tickets to see.

The Middlenight Men gig review

Neil

You can check out even more on The Middlenight Men below!

https://themiddlenightmen.com
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