Quiz night and the Vaccines

I don't do much in the way of pub quizzes, but I must confess I do like them. Tuesday night I went to an annual quiz night we attend - a charity do in favour of the RNLI. There are over 20 pension industry teams of  6 (or in our case 5 as one pulled out sick). Indeed my firm entered both an A team and a B team. Luckily our A team (a team somewhat more mature in age), comfortably beat our youngsters (or we would never have heard the last of it).  In fact I was pretty pleased as we came a close third out of 24 teams, even with our team a man down to flu (ok, it was a bloke so probably just a cold) beating all the other pension lawyers and only two teams of investment bankers ahead of us. And one wouldn't really want to win. That would be ostentatious wouldn't it? Too, too vulgar.

Favourite questions were "where is the Stars and Stripes never raised or lowered", and "what was the world's first synthetic foodstuff". (The first we got). And for me (alone in the team) the easiest was how many half-crowns were there in an old pound. Yep, I was the only one old enough to predate decimalisation. Just occasionally there are advantages to decrepitude.

(The moon, margarine and 8 if you felt the need to know the answers.)

Last night was gig night again for me. Regulars to this blog will know how much I like Brixton Academy, and that was indeed the venue. This is what it looks like when virtually empty before the acts come on. (Yeah I know it looks dark, but that's because it IS dark)

Two support acts on the bill. First up were Summer Camp. Likeable enough duo, with a powerfully voiced female vocalist. Bit too strong at first but you got used to her.

I had at least heard of the next band, if not anything by them. They were a Florida band called Surfer Blood. Nothing to write home about (not even electronically on a blog), but amiable enough and their chubby lead vocalist did at least have a decent voice. His announcement at one point that "This is a new song" was somewhat wasted on 99.99% of the audience to whom everything they played was new. But just not very interesting.

Then onto the main course; the Vaccines. Really like this band, and their style of music. Much more impressive live than on cd, not because they are exciting to watch but because one can appreciate their driving, grinding guitar noise. At heart, I like guitar bands, and a fast driving beat, and they tick all the boxes - 3 guitars out front, drums behind, and that's it. Great noise. Only catch with them is lack of material. Just the one album so far. Would be good to see them after a second with a bit more to choose from. But great night with a very enthusiastic bouncing young audience in the moshe pit.