Youth Groups

After reading my post about the Lo Fidelity Allstars, friend-of-the-site Dina emailed me this link from Vh1.com. It contains the tour dates for the band’s summer 1999 jaunt across these United States.

A couple of things about this tour itinerary blow my mind. Keep in mind that the band had released its debut album, ‘How To Operate With A Blown Mind’ the previous summer, and were only known - if they were known at all in the U.S. - for ‘Battle Flag’. Blog buzz didn’t exist yet, so the only way anyone would have known them would be because of that one single. And their singer had left the band already, so the live experience was already entirely different from the album.

That’s why all these details are amazing. They’re headlining 21 dates across the States! For a British band, that’s amazing. And there are FIVE shows in Florida! Believe me when I say this: Nobody plays here that much. I wish they did.

Also, the venues they were playing were big! I’ve been to the places they’ve played in New Orleans, Atlanta and Tallahassee, and they are all respectably large. In DC, they played at the 9.30 Club. You know who’s coming to that venue in the next month? Snow Patrol! Justice! The Ting Tings! Fatboy Slim! Sleigh Bells! All these acts are demonstrably and empirically bigger than Lo Fidelity Allstars in 1999.

To clarify: I just wrote four paragraphs because of a set of tour dates from 13 years ago that I saw and that stunned me.