Thousand Yard Stare – Prince Albert, Brighton

I have no idea how I managed to take this photo!

Thousand Yard Stare don’t play many gigs these days but I try to get myself to all of them within sensible driving distance, so that includes the 75 miles each way to Brighton, which took just 75 minutes getting home and only slightly longer going there. It often takes me more than an hour and a quarter getting home from London.

I booked this gig in March – my 14th TYS gig and my 12th since they reformed 8 years ago. As singer Stephen Barnes remarked from the stage, they’ve actually been together twice as long second time round than they were in their major label heyday of 1989 to 1993 – although I imagine they played 100s of gigs in those two years.

I’ve been to this venue once before and it’s pretty good – 100 capacity, convenient car park around the corner (it’s expensive, but everything in Brighton is), air conditioned – which didn’t quite turn the room into a fridge, but as it was the hottest day of the year at 32C (and it’s September!) it was still welcome. And the sound is good too, which is always important.

Thousand Yard Stare are a rare 90s band who reformed and decided that new material would be a big part of what they do – and the two albums they’ve released in the last couple of years are really strong contenders too with no filler. And they are *still* incredibly tight on stage. I can’t recall exactly how tight they were when I saw them in the 90s but it’s clear they’ve put in quite a few thousand hours since then.

Sadly I didn’t get there in time for support John MOuse, but I had 1 hour and 30 minutes of perfect giggery, and it was nice to have a brief chat with some of the band afterwards. I was particularly humbled that Stephen had remembered I was planning to move house when I spoke to him in November, and he asked me how it was going!