This was my third day in the London area and I was heading for the third gig in just 3 days. Let's face it I was running a little bit thin on energy. My hotel room had the worst smell ever for a hotel room (I honestly can't believe how I survived in there) so I had to do something to keep me alive. I went to The London Dungeons and I am happy to inform you that it is either a scam or directed at very young children. I completely failed to get it. But anyway, it kept me on my feet and alive for the evening.
I decided to go for a pre-gig drink-up at a rock'n'roll bar that is known as The Crobar, the coolest of it's kind in the entire world and one of my favorite bars ever. While I had a bunch of beers and JDs and whatever, the bartender managed to sell me a 2cd, 2 t-shirts and a patch, not bad.
I kept checking the Borderline venue (right next door) but it seemed rather empty. At some point I decided to go there and to my horror I found only 10+ people in there (more or less including the bartenders.) I immediately convinced them to sell me the Jason poster above the bar to have it autographed after the show.
We later learned that the support musician had never bothered to show up and also I guess that people had just decided to show up late on this Monday night. When Jason Ringenberg finally took the stage the venue held a lot more people. Not in any way crowded in there, but acceptable. Jason was simply excellent. He joked about the joy of being back in an English speaking country after having been in Spain for several gigs, which is rather hard for a singer/songwriter who likes to tell stories that nobody down there seemed to understand half a bit of.
It turned out that Jason was up for a bit of a request gig. You simply shouted the name of a song (mostly Jason And The Scorchers songs were being requested) and he would tell a little story about it (usually very funny) and then he'd play it. Just one man, his guitar and various Harmonicas. It was outstanding. Not one time did he say: nope, can't or won't do or play that. He even danced around on stage from time to time in his cowboy boots. Hilarious fun!
My request "Help, There's A Fire!" was a rather easy one, but I love that song. Also "Bible And A Gun" was requested and that would have been my choice otherwise. In between all the requests he kept joking about this and that and also squeezed in several brand new songs from the forthcoming Jason And The Scorchers 2010 album.
After the gig he was so kind to join me for a photo and he signed my poster. Unfortunately all his merchandise had sold out in Spain, so I couldn't buy anything, but we had a nice little chat about last time The Scorchers visited Copenhagen's Pumpehuset and how insanely cool that really was. I really hope they'll come back some time soon.
After the gig I went back to The Crobar for a few goodnight drinks before I finally declared my 3 day rock'n'roll trip for over and went back to my stinky hotel getting a smelly night's sleep and then going back home in the morning.
Rating: 
Band: Jason Ringenberg
Venue: Borderline, London, UK
Concert Date: 2009-12-07
Ticket Price (DKK): 95
Ticket Provider: Ticketweb
Content Type: Concert Review
Language: 
Updated: 2009-12-18 21:54
Created: 2009-12-11 19:52
