What song have My Bloody Valentine played live the most?
Dear reader, seeing My Bloody Valentine play live is an experience you don’t hear, it’s one you feel.
I know this for a fact as I was lucky enough to catch them on their first reunion tour at the Hammersmith Apollo way back in 2013. Now, in many ways, I think the only reason I can hear anything today is because I wear earplugs to gigs. Sometimes I’ll take them out if I really want to feel the music (and play dice with my ability to hear anything later in life). However, wearing earplugs to that particular shindig was a non-negotiable.
My Bloody Valentine gigs are infamous for being some of the loudest music experiences one can go to outside of Sunn o))) and Swans gigs. Despite appearing to be a fairly fey indie group on the surface, My Bloody Valentine made a name for themselves by taking their dreamy shoegaze sound, hypercharging it with serrated guitar noise, then turning their amps up to legitimately dangerous levels. This has made them one of the most notorious, yet strangely beautiful bands in British indie rock.
Decibel levels at their gigs regularly exceed 100 and have been known to top out at between 120 and 130. For context, that’s akin to listening to a jet plane taking off for about two hours. Why yes, frontman Kevin Shields does have a wicked case of tinnitus, one that he “regards as a friend” these days, why do you ask? Yet despite all that, there is still one particular moment in My Bloody Valentine things where the noise levels go from loud to truly dangerous.
What is the loudest part of a My Bloody Valentine concert?
Near the end of pretty much every My Bloody Valentine concert, there is a moment where the song their playing comes to a grinding halt, and in its place, Kevin Shields makes his guitar roar. Then Bilinda Butcher does the same. Debbie Googe starts bringing waves of feedback out of her bass amps, and Colm Ó Cíosóig starts hammering away at his cymbals. Then everything starts building, and building, and building and just. Doesn’t. Stop.
There’s a really gross name for this section that I won’t repeat, but it’s a common enough occurrence at My Bloody Valentine gigs that it’s passed into legend as something of an indie rock rite of passage. One that has sometimes clocked in at 20 minutes in length, and myths abound of the band going 45 minutes at some legendary concerts. When I saw them, I got morbidly curious halfway through it and took out one of my earplugs during this section. I legitimately felt like I got punched.
This section comes at the end of one of the band’s best songs, their 1988 classic ‘You Made Me Realise’. According to setlist.FM, this is the song they have most played live, which sums up My Bloody Valentine pretty well, I reckon. Their most played song is one that dissolves into a terrifyingly loud wall of apocalyptic noise every single night and stays there for longer than nearly every other song in their set combined. We wouldn’t have it any other way.
