Happylife - Rock City, 12th April 2005

What I should be doing is writing a review for Terrorvision, who as usual did a fantastic gig at Rock City in Nottingham on Tuesday 12th of April. But then I’m not biased, especially since in the past I have set up stages for them. Well ok, maybe a little!

Instead what I’m going to do is tell you about their support band Happylife, who in all honesty I had never heard of until now. I wasn’t expecting much, just the usual support band fodder you normally get to make the headliners sound good. I couldn’t have been more wrong….these guys were awesome! What really did it for me was their song entitled “My World”, after that they had my undivided attention.

It’s hard to describe their “sound” because it’s always a personal thing, but for me they sometimes reminded me of the Foo Fighters, Lost Prophets or even Placebo. It’s a little unfair to make these comparisons though because they deserve to be recognised in their own right, and they deserve to headline.

They had quite a large audience at Rock City, who either moshed along quite happily or stood there shell shocked, wondering why they hadn’t heard of this band earlier. They have now!

After the gig I was walking through the foyer and I get a Happylife leaflet waved at me, I did a quick double take, realised it was their singer and congratulated him on a good set. I’ve dealt with loads of bands, and quite frankly I get sick of some of the bad attitudes and was expecting some smart a*** comment. It didn’t come, there was no bad attitude and there was a grateful acceptance of the praise. He said how much the CD was (cheeky lol), and my lovely girlfriend bought me one as a present, and then said that it would be good to get it signed. Now when she said this the singer was on his mobile phone so it didn’t seem like this was going to happen. To my surprise he holds his phone away from his ear and says “Yeah, no problem, give me a second”, finishes his call then signs the CD. Now that is a good “frontman” of a band and there aren’t many that would do that.

So I now have their CD, and honestly, it has only left my CD player at home so that it can go into my CD player in my car. You really can’t help but like it, and irritatingly, when you turn your stereo off you find yourself still singing some of the songs…”Step into my world & die for me”. Verdict: Brilliant.