Maximo Park

Last Wednesday we went to see Maximo Park at Shepherds Bush Empire. We saw them about 6 years ago and were impressed with them live. Tracy got the tickets for me as a father's day present back in June.


Shepherds Bush is much nearer than the O2 but parking is a bit of a lottery so I made the extravagant decision of hiring a driver to drive our car, relieving us of the stress of finding a parking space. It proved to be useful. We had been told to use the stage door entrance which was accessible from the rear of the venue. So we drive around to the residential road backing on to it only to find there are no drop kerbs anywhere near the passageway leading to the venue. We have to be dropped 100 yards away. Then at the stage door we are told we can't actually enter there; we were just instructed to go there to collect the tickets and we now needed to go right around to the other side of the building where they would set the ramp up. When we got there I was freezing and starting to shake. We couldn't believe it when we were told they stored the ramp in the toilet, and yes you guessed it..! Fortunately they weren't long and we finally got in.

There is only 1 wheelchair space but it is well placed and although it's at the back, it's a pretty intimate venue. Maximo Park came on at 9-25 and kicked off with two tracks from the new album. Paul Smith is a brilliant frontman and quite mesmorising because you simply ignore the other band members, who apart from the keyboard player remain almost static throughout. For those of you not familiar with them, here's a video of one of their bigger hits





They played until 10-45 and were still as good as 6 years ago. We texted our driver who picked us up and took us home


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