Blog: Chris T-T At The 100 Club

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I was back at The 100 Club on Saturday night, a venue that feels derangedly OUT OF TIME these days, as a classic basement club right slap bang in the middle of present-day Oxford Street. Twenty odd years ago when I first came down to old London town there were LOADS of venues and clubs in this area, but the 100 Club is pretty much the last one standing, and the fact that you have to go down a short office corridor to find it underneath the main street feels appropriate, like you're going into an archeological DIG. That makes it sound less good than it is, which is DEAD GOOD.

I was there to see the incredibly excellent Chris T-T, who it is permissible to CALL Chris T-T in this context as he was BACK in that guise for a one-off (with a few warm-ups) comeback gig to promote the VINYL reissues of London Is Sinking and 9 Red Songs. As revealed a little while ago, I am doing an ALBUM with Chris at the moment so have known about all of this for a good long while, and it was thus AMAZING to finally be there at the actual GIG that had been so long planned.

As soon as I wandered in I bumped into Mr P Joyzine and shortly after that was joined by Mr J Kell and Mr D Paton, all in time for the first set which saw a CLEARLY MOVED Chris come on for a solo set. This, to me, is QUINTESSENTIAL Chris T-T - I am of course AWARE of the fact that he is a ROCK STAR with a KICKASS band but the vast majority of times I have seen and/or played with him it's been in this singer-songwriter format, so it was wonderful to see him at it again. Actually, thinking about it, it WEIRDLY didn't feel WEIRD at all, like I'd just seen him play a couple of months ago rather than many years, and all the songs came flooding back as a room full of UTTERLY DELIGHTED people BELLOWED the words back at him. It was amazing!



The second half was pretty much the same except for with the aforesadi ROCK BAND, which sounded RUDDY IMMENSE. As I say, I'm used to him as a singer songwriter, so this WAS a bit weird. "Oh yeah," I thought, "He's got whole ALBUMS of proper ROCK BAND stuff!" There were loads of HITS again in this half, including the aforesaid ROCK BAND doing versions of songs like "7 Hearts" with their proper arrangements, and again the whole audience, your humble reporter included, having a FLIPPING WONDERFUL time.

It was a joy to see, and a testament to an AMAZING Rock Career what he has had and, as we saw that night, continues to have whether he's out there doing it himself or not. Afterwards I had a bit of a wander around and bumped into a whole HOST of friendly faces, some of which I hadn't seen for AGES before queueing up for a HUG from the great man himself. It is always a thing of joy to see your friends succeed, especially someone who deserves it as much as Chris, and I strode out into the night thinking "COR! Gigs are GRATE!" Because, clearly, they are!

posted 19/11/2025 by MJ Hibbett

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