Oxygen Thief

Chemical Brothers at the Brixton Academy

On the 18th I went to see the Chemical Brothers at Brixton Academy. I'm sorry to say it was enormously disappointing and I really didn't much enjoy it at all, which is a particular shame because they were really good, and the sound was excellent. The problems, related, were that the crowd were there for a gig while I was there for a dance, and that there were far far too many people. I dropped at 21:30 and again at 22:30, and by the time they'd got going at 23:20 I was hot, sweating and out of breath. Already we'd seen a guy collapse from heat, get up, collapse, get up and eventually be dragged out by his friends. I felt it wasn't likely to happen to me, but I was very hot. I was with these two weirdly behaving Indonesian women and had to leave to get some space. I sat in the balcony for a bit, flipping out while they played their best tunes, but unfortunately there was just nowhere to dance, nowhere to chat and nowhere to chill.

After the Chems I arranged to get a cab some of the way back to mine with the two Indonesians, but I stopped to give my bro a hug and they fucked off without looking back. I got the night bus instead, as Brixton to Victoria isn't a trek. I spent a few minutes chatting to some kids at the bus stop, trying to warn them off speed (while obviously rushing my nuts on E) but they seemed quite taken with it. I tried to reason with them, but they weren't having it; they seemed quite new to speed and maybe they haven't had the crushing mental breakdown that will inevitably descend if they keep doing it.

The bus ride home was actually considerably better than the gig - I had a seat to myself and just tranced out to the vehicular motion and the sounds of the gig going through my head. At 2:20am I got off at Victoria and spotted the kids from the bus stop waiting by the gated and locked entrance to Victoria Station. Feeling emotionally open and warm as I was, I invited them back to mine to wait for the first train of the morning. I hope I would've done that even when not especially high, because it turned out they were really nice kids - 18-20 years old and not an iota of surplus education between them. We had a spliff, chatted and listened to Luke Vibert. I was a little sad when they left.