Supporting were Chad Valley: a delightfully eighties medley of keyboards, synthesised drumbeats and a colourful and kinetic film accompaniment. Vocals versatile in pitch and tone punctuated the hits of bass to great effect and carried the songs through the set with great effect. Ending his set on a note of thanks directed towards the Mountain Goats for having him, an intolerably long interlude began the gentle rise of tension in the room to something that could be called by London’s standard ‘fever pitch’: an Australian trying to get the crowd to cheer the Mountain Goats on and speed up their ascent to stage. All such attempts fell on apparently deaf ears. Welcome to London.

Given another twenty minutes of preparation time, the headliners took the stage in a somewhat unseemly flurry of introductions: unseemly, but thoroughly enjoyable. John Darnielle began his set in typical style: entering dialogue with the crowd in a once again typical warm and well-humoured manner. 1 Samuel 15:23 was to be how the set would start, in a wonderfully more full-bodied form than its album counterpart – piano replacing guitar and John’s voice far more of a roar. An uptempo version of Old College Try was the successor to this, and served to do nothing but blow me away: a full-band expansion with John’s voice in the jubilantly aggressive range in which it excels and Peter on supporting vocals fleshes out an already amazing song with a greater musical depth than anything present on Tallahassee. Cotton was another song performed with far greater vehemence than that of the recorded version: full vocal exertion on the part of both vocalists and facial expressions which could only be the result of truly enjoying performing. The set continued with such great musicianship and such great awareness that they were performing: there was nothing static about any element of the performance. Even during the songs John performed on his own, the execution was fluid and animated.

The official set ended with Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod, Going to Georgia and This Year: the ante was most definitely upped by these performances – dynamic songs, all of which were incredibly popular with fans – Hast Thou and This Year had a vast majority of a large KOKO crowd singing along with great aplomb. The observation made by John soon after This Year that the crowd, despite the size of KOKO, was an incredibly intimate one was truly supported by this grouping of people together in one place and singing as one – this one was to have nothing on the one of No Children’s audience chorus, but that was to be seen.

A band who will play three encores and spend the best part of two hours on stage is not one to be sniffed at: more fan favourites crammed in right at the end. As well as that, a cover of Franklin Bruno’s Houseguest gave John a chance to demonstrate his stage eccentricities: wonderful interplay with the audience and great hands-free gesturings. No Children was prefaced by the almost standard declaration of John’s that you better practice singing it before you need to: definitely enough of a proposition to get the crowd screaming along as one. For a sense of community at a venue, this gig is definitely one of the best I have ever attended.

Black-and-white taken with Neopan 400 rated at 1600 developed in ID-11, Chinon CE-5 and Super Travenar 28mm f/1.28. Colour with Pentax K100D and Chinon 50mm f/1.7, with a Hoya polarizing filter. Click for full size.

It’s all bullshit.

Sure, university is definitely useful as a means to an academic end, and also indeed for its unintended end of social interaction; but there is nothing of the much fabled ‘broadening of horizons’ to be found there. The people you meet will, with very few exceptions, have an agenda and nothing but the will to fulfill it. the sort of intellectual debate which higher education is fabled for will not occur until you find a group of people with at least the tolerance to hear your views, rather than immediately disregard them and use your cessation of speech as nothing as a marker for the starter of their own. Again, these people will be hard to find, as illustrated by reading Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals: ‘disputes with men, pertinaciously obstinate in their principles, are, of all others, the most irksome’ – I would care to wager that David’s levels of ‘irk’ were ‘pertinaciously’ high.

There’s another problem: there’s every chance (unless you’re doing a real, rather than social science or any other humanities degree) that you’re going to be expected to read shit like that. There is a world of literature written in a manner written in prose so prosaic yet unnecessarily flowery with punctuation that you will become delightfully au fait with over the next three years of your life. Minutes will turn to hours will turn to days as you battle with these books you will end up reading two to three times overall in order that you actually understand what’s going on; and that’s just hoping that you’re not going to be educated in the ‘real’ meaning behind the text: something completely abstract and definitely not explicitly stated in the text, just to spite the hours you’ve spent in a vain attempt to understand. Following on from this, your essays are never designed to actually have the questions answered directly: ‘what is x‘ never means ‘what is x‘, rather ‘what is x? What do leading scholars think of x? What problems does x pose?’ followed by more and more implied questions ad infinitum.

As a first year student, enjoy your halls. These generally basic buildings with generally basic amenities will be regarded as luxury once you leave and end up in your bedsit in that rough part of town, with the leaky toilet which never quite works properly. Paying £2 for use of washing machines and £1 for tumble driers will seem like the rational choice once you remove yet another pair of limescaled jeans, and they are no doubt your favourite this time. Sure, your doors may be set square in this hovel you now inhabit, but that offset door which would never close had a certain element of character and charm about it. It was quaint: a testament to the experiences of others who had done godknowswhat to that door. Of course, your time in halls won’t be without some shortfalls which won’t (most likely) befall you in your later years: some fucking idiot turning off your freezer (to conserve electricity, apparently)* and spoiling around £20 worth of your frozen food probably being at the top of this list. Tasteless frozen-thawed-and-refrozen sweetcorn will never happen to you again.

And yet I’d change nothing: reading Machiavelli’s casual sexism makes it all worthwhile.

*I should probably point out here that I took that point a little far: it was most likely just an accident. But I loves my food.