73. Temples

The Forum

3 December 2014

Temples arrived on the scene as an indie rock band who, at first glance, seemed to be onto something, meticulously reconstructing early-‘70s psych rock with an almost obsessive attention to detail. But therein lay the problem. It was all too perfect, too polished, like they’d spent so long getting the aesthetic right that they forgot to inject the songs with much soul. Still, Sun Structures, was a move in the right direction, so I figured it would be worth a live ticket. Big mistake.

From the very first note, this gig at Kentish Town Forum completely derailed. The sound mix was so criminally bad that the crowd, a normally passive bunch of indie rock types, started heckling. Then there was the frontman, an unrepentant bellend. Oozing undeserved arrogance, he swaggered onto the stage with an attitude so repellent that within minutes, he’d actively alienated the audience, chastising us for not being lively enough.

This would have been OK if the band was giving us something to work with. Instead, they were generating about as much electricity as a potato, and the crowd, already struggling to hear anything through the sludgy mix, quickly turned on them. Boos. Heckles. The unmistakable sound of a once-promising gig nosediving into the abyss. We lasted three songs. Then we bailed. A cocktail bar was found. Dignity was salvaged. The night was saved.

And the gig? It went down in history as the worst live show I have ever attended (well at least at that point in time), so much so that I felt compelled to glue a picture of a monkey peeing in its own mouth into my gig notebook, scrawling beside it: “This represents the overall artistic merit of this gig.”