Concert Review: Dave Matthews - Birmingham - May 13, 2006

I had no idea.

No idea just how enthusiastic and adoring the fans are. No idea of the insane distances they'd travel to see him. And no idea just how damn good Dave Matthews is live.

The evening began like many others. We drove to Birmingham, parked the car, and walked over to the venue. Despite the fact that we'd arrived an hour before the doors opened, the line of people queuing to get in stretched further than the eye could see. Despondent, we started to make our way to the end of the line and noticed prominently placed "Jump the Queue" signs.

These suggested that if you enter Bar Academy - a diminutive little bar that sits alongside Birmingham Academy, our venue for the night - and buy a drink, they'll stamp your pass and let you jump the queues. The queue for Bar Academy was approximately one tenth of the length of the main queue and there was a drink at the end of this one. No contest.

We soon entered the bar. The lone barmaid didn't look terribly happy about the assembled hordes of Dave Matthews fans clamouring for a drink, but I squeezed myself into the crowd in an attempt to get her attention. The bar seemed to be entirely filled with Americans which took me by surprise; it's not very often you get that when you go to see a band in Birmingham. Indeed, you don't get that a lot in the UK. While I waited, I did a deal with a couple of local chaps who were at the side of me.

"See," one said to the other, "I told you we weren't the only people in the UK liked Dave Matthews". The deal was whoever gets the attention of the bar staff first buys the other's drinks and gets their tickets stamped. As luck would have it, I reached the bar first. Five bottles of water later we had five stamped tickets and hurtled into the venue.

I thought we'd done quite well; the main queue hadn't moved much at all whilst we were getting our tickets stamped, but there were already a significant number of people around the stage. I would later learn that said main queue had formed roughly four hours prior to the doors opening, so in hindsight, I don't think we did too badly.

Article Author: Daniel Woolstencroft

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