As it is my birthday, and my girlfriend is a very nice person, she bought us tickets to go see Hand Held (Kirsty Stegwazi’s latest thing), The Smallgoods and The Lucksmiths at The Corner last night. It was their new double CD retrospective album launch – which you know I didn’t buy but well you know bah.

I haven’t been to a Lucksmith’s gig in .. well a very long time … I am thinking the last time I saw them play was at the Punters but that part of my life is a little blurry. It was very amusing watching the crowd – still mostly full of nice middle-class private school girls and their cardigan wearing floppy-haired, thick black rimmed square glasses wearing boyfriends. Of course, these days there is a much broader cross-section of ages now – some of those private school girls are now early thirty somethings and some of the floppy hair is looking a little thin.

I don’t know how much Ruth liked it – might have been a little happy, cheery, hopeful pop for her – but I had a good time. The support was good, barring Kirsty Stegwazi having some serious guitar problems early in in her set and their drummer being “in jail”, and the Smallgoods are very late Brian Wilson. The Lucksmith’s did a good set – I don’t know a lot of the later stuff – but they played some early stuff – though not enough of the early, early stuff which is my favourite. But I guess bands evolve away from their older stuff (except the Rolling Stones who really need to retire already) and I’ll just have to burn some CDs onto my iPod to get that all time Lucksmith’s sound.

Finally, the Corner is a little juxtaposed these days – Ruth took me upstairs and that is a weird crowd up there – at least compared to the scruffy types like me downstairs. And the no smoking thing in the band room is good but does mean the smell of BO is bloody strong. I am of two minds about which smell I hate more…

P.S. Girlfriend also bought me Lego Mindstorm! Hmmmmm robots… Very happy.