Oasis Centre
Swindon, United Kingdom
Show notes
With Hundred Reasons. Low key warm up show for the NME gig on Feb 5th.
Set list
- A Life Less Ordinary
- Angel Interceptor
- Submission
- Goldfinger
- Cherry Bomb
- Shining Light
- Walking Barefoot
- Sometimes
- Oh Yeah
- Candy
- Kung Fu
- Girl From Mars
- Pacific Palisades
- There’s a Star
- Burn Baby Burn
- Nicole
- World Domination
Encore
Review
Ash performing in Swindon. What’s that all about? Band member Tim Wheeler summed it up by asking the crowd at their Oasis Leisure Centre gig if they got much rock and roll there. The answer was of course no but one thing’s for sure, we had it that night.
The atmosphere in the hall before Ash came on stage was electric, and the crowd expectant. Many of us were getting restless because the long wait was such a tease. You half expected a tribute band to come on stage instead or for someone to announce that the whole gig had been a complete wind up. But no, the lights dimmed, the people went crazy and out they came. They opened the set with “A Life Less Ordinary” and the crowd surged forward at such a fast rate that the more vertically challenged of us nearly got trampled to death. It was a case of either bounce at the same time and pace as everyone else or prepare to get seriously bruised!
Then they got through four other tracks from their latest album, Free All Angels, before they gave us one of their earlier anthems, “Oh Yeah”. It’s an Ash song that takes you straight back to the summer of 1996, when it was released. Along with this song came the crowd surfing, it was like watching a sea of people holding up another sea of people. Magic.
Tim was the true wit by telling us that “there is a lot of love in this room” before dedicating the recent hit “Candy” to Pop Idol reject Darius. It was amazing how quickly that song changed the atmosphere from one of frantic rock bouncing to a calm, swaying mass of hands.
Next they gave us two of their earliest songs, “Kung Fu” and “Girl From Mars”, before Tim told us that it was drummer Rick’s 26th birthday. The response was a chorus of happy birthday being sung but what most folk didn’t realise was at the majority of recent gigs it had also been Rick’s 26th birthday. That cheeky Mr Wheeler!
We got the classics that we all expected from the set including “There’s a Star” and “Burn Baby Burn”, but then again there would have undoubtedly been uproar if we hadn’t. It was a surprise, a very nice one at that, to hear one of the band’s B-sides that had never been sung live before - “No Place to Hide”.
As with every gig worth going to there was the usual process at the end of band walking off stage, crowd eagerly shouting for more, band walking back on stage to blow us away with a few more memorable tunes. And then it was all over. We all reluctantly piled out of the hall. The mood good and uplifted but somewhat sad. It’s true to say most of us were hoping it’s not the last time we will have such a decent band gracing us with their presence at the Oasis in Swindon. There’s a Star all right and it’s called Ash.
Review from BBC