The Wombats (Empress Ballroom Blackpool) Friday 9th May 2008

We bought our tickets for the wombats months before the gig, (I had never heard of them..) but my husband assured me they were quite good, so I agreed to go. We go to gigs at the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool's Opera House regularly and they are always good especially as the ballroom has a sprung floor.

The last few months, I had got to know a few of the Wombats songs as their music has been played on Radio 1 regularly and in the charts, and they appeared on Al Murray's Happy Hour and The Friday Night Project with Justin Lee Collins and Alan Carr.

The Wombats are a three piece Indie Rock Band from Liverpool (well two are from Liverpool and one is from Norway), who met at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. They were the opening act at the opening ceremony of Liverpool Capital of Culture. As well as coming to the end of a World tour, they are appearing at Radio 1's Big weekend, Glastonbury Festival, Reading and Leeds Festival and The Isle of Wight Festival.



The Wombats - Backfire @ the Disco

I have to be honest when I say I had never heard of the Support 'Glasvegas', but they seemed to be popular and they were quite good.
The Wombats Gig itself was really good, although I only really knew a couple of the songs that have been in the charts, 'Backfire at the Disco', 'Moving to New York' and 'Lets' dance to Joy Division', however the Gig was very very badly organised. Firstly there were security on both entrances of the Winter Gardens, and they were letting people in both entrances, but if you were unlucky enough to go in via Church Street Entrance, you were then told to join the back of the Queue at Coronation Street Entrance so why have both entrances open???. Normally in the past when we have been, they only have Church Street Entrance open which is where they have security and bag searches.

We could not believe how many kids were there, at first I thought maybe I was at a Busted or Girls Aloud gig!!!!! When we got into the ballroom, we were shocked to see that the surrounding bars were all closed, there is a room adjacent to the ballroom called the Arena which was open, but it was heaving as there were only a couple of staff on and if we had queued for a drink, we would have missed the gig. As much as a rip of the beer is at the bars, at least when the ballroom bars are open you can always get served as the bar stretches pretty much the whole length of one side of the ballroom.

In the Ballroom foyer where the merchandise was on sale along with the confectionery and slush puppies... was a small bar (well it was a make shift bar!!!) with 2 fridges selling warm beer (bottles and cans - no draft) (when I say warm beer that's because they did not have enough room for the amount they were selling....). The staff had told us that the main bars were closed because of the amount of children and it was the only way they could police who they were selling to. They restricted alcohol to one per person and if you were buying 2 drinks, they wanted to see both people, which is fair enough I suppose, but the staff were getting aggro from people trying to buy a round and being refused because their mates were in the ballroom!!!! The queue for the warm beer was also massive, so you paid £3 for a warm bottle (sorry poured bottle in a plastic cup!!!) of San Miguel. but it was not as bad as the Queue in the Arena bar!!! My hubby tells me that the toilets (that are also in the arena, so if you are desperate, I hope you can hold it in!!!) were flooded by 8pm. There must have been a better way to organise this.....



The Wombats - Kill the Director

As I said before, the wombats were really good, and I assumed they were a new band that only really formed this year as I had not heard of them, but they actually formed in 2003. They came on and did about an hour and a half or so, and the place was bouncing!!!!!
As much as there were loads of kids, there were also lots of adults of all ages and their profile is going to get bigger especially with all the festivals they are playing this year. Some of their music is on YouTube so you check them out.....

I would definitely recommend getting a ticket and going to see them as they are definitely worth it. They have gigs lined up in Newcastle, Liverpool, Spain, Netherlands, Sweden, Manchester and Dublin among others, oh and T in the Park.
You can book tickets via Ticketmaster, See Tickets, and E Gigs among others.