Live Review

3OH!3 – Koko, London

• 4th Oct 2010

For one night only, Camden’s Koko became Kokoh! as renowned party starters 3Oh!3 took over the club.

It was a bizarre night, it all started very strangely, the heavens had opened on London skies for the first time in a long time, and the crowd standing outside waiting in the rain was a strange one. Not necessarily strange looking or strange in behaviour, just not what I expected. I think I expected lots of 12 year olds and bored looking dads, but that was not the case, instead it was an older teenager, early 20s crowd, people like me that were excited yet knew they shouldn’t really be there!

I also didn’t get the support act. OK I know that everyone loves Ian from Lost Prophets, but why put on a DJ as a support act, it just confuses me every time! He played some good tunes under ‘L’Amour La Mourge’ but no one really wants to dance on a Tuesday night at 8pm.

I think my preconceived ideas of 3OH!3 as an ironic pop band were also confused. With a crowd full of excited drunks (no offence) their hits went down well, but they really do take themselves seriously. Ok they can write a bestselling pop tune, My First Kiss and Double Vision went down well, and get some killer guest vocals on their album, no Katy Perry didn’t turn up on the night but ‘Starstrukk’ was brilliant. At the same time, they aren’t what one could describe as ‘world class’. In fact, their performance was scrappy, fun and although their covers of old rock songs may have fallen flat on their face; it humoured me to see that they might actually have a background in decent music. Now in no way am I saying pop is rubbish, I love it, too much probably. It’s just you can’t class yourself as a band when your band play the same three chords throughout a performance, and badly ‘sing’ over the top of it. It was good fun if you could take it with a pinch of salt, hey I loved the night, but I still felt that with a little more irony and sarcasm it would be so much better!

Still, they brought the ‘House Party’ and we all danced!