5/5/2009 Ginger & Laika Dog @ Islington Academy

Subject	Ginger & Laika Dog @ Islington Academy
PostedDate	5/5/2009
	This is a gig I'd been looking forward to for a while, and for the second time in a week I find myself back at Islington Academy. Again, the venue is fairly full but not sold out. As people who know the acts on the bill would expect, the atmosphere is excellent. The choice of support band seems to be very popular.Laika Dog are fronted by Terrovision singer Tony Wright - who has to be one of the most engaging and likeable frontmen in the business. He's a cheerful character with years of experience, and still looks like he throroughly enjoys what he's doing. The music isn't that similar to Terrorvision, although there are vocal similarities at times. Lakia Dog aren't as heavy and riff based as Tony's other band, but they can still rock it up. Their set is very well received by Ginger's crowd, but that isn't so surprising as there was always a lot of overlap between Wildhearts and Terrorvision fans. Tone and the boys do an excellent job of entertaining and warming up the crowd for the headline act... With three well received full solo albums under his belt now, Ginger has a lot of very strong material to draw from and these days has no need to dip into theWildhearts extensive back catalogue. Anyway, if Wildhearts songs is was you want you get to see that band fairly regularly again these days so it's all good. Tonight's set is largely taken from Ginger's first two solo albums - 'Yeah Yeah Yeah' going down very well, and one of my favourites 'Drinking In The Daytime' making me very happy! 'Why Can't You Just Be Normal All The Time?' was an unexpected surprise, although it missed all the crazy girlfriend ranting bits. Fans of Ginger's earlier post-Wildhearts work were rewarded with a great 'Sonic Shake' from the Silver Ginger 5 days. Obviously everyone would inevitably have had a few favourites missed out of the set (I was hoping for 'Bulb') but I think every one present would have heard plenty of their other favourites too and still have gone home happy. I didn't think it was one of Ginger's best shows personally, although he seemed happy enough. There wasn't as much banter as usual - maybe because he's having a 'sober' tour and isn't as chatty? He was good natured and seemed to appreciate that plenty of people had come out to see they show - saying that London was the best selling show of the tour. Well you'd expect it to be anyway wouldn't you? I know Ginger genuinely really does appreciate the fans that keep buying tickets and CDs enabling him to carry on making music for a living, but tonight the 'ab-libs' about how good looking the audience was, ect seemed a bit stale and over familiar and it seemed a bit like he was 'going through the motions' compared to earlier times. It was still worth the price of the ticket though, and I think everyone still went home happy after hearing plenty of their favourite songs. Maybe Ginger was tired after just finishing work on recording the next Wildhearts album? Hopefully we'll see a bit more enthusiasm from him when the mighty Wildhearts tour later in the year...