The Heavy Setlist

Short Change Hero
What You Want Me to Do?
Big Bad Wolf
Sixteen
A Lesson Learned
Coleen
Set Me Free
Girl
In the Morning
That Kind of Man
No Time
How You Like Me Now?
— Encore —
Oh No! Not You Again!!

This is another lost W♥M article. It was originally filed in late November 2010… but for whatever reasons, it was lost when we transitioned to WordPress. Unfortunately, I also do not have a backup of the original article.

To understand the time-frame, this was very early in doing concert coverage with a “real” camera. I was previously using “credit card” Sony camera, but upgraded to a Four Third Olympus camera. Which was okay, at the time, but looking back, I think the photos are pretty bad. The other thing is that this was mid-November, which was very close to my hibernation period. I generally won’t go out from November until March, the following year.

English rock band The Heavy was riding high on their hit single, “How Do You Like Me Now?” The song was used in various commercials, and was used in the film The Fighter. It is such a great song, featuring a horns section, and a great hook. Prior to this hit songs, their other singles, “Coleen” and “That Kind of Man” didn’t do so well… at least in the American market.

The band took advantage of their sudden rise to fame that they book their first American tour. The band did a few big dates (festivals) in the Summer of 2010, but their real tour didn’t kick off until late October. Their first Minneapolis appearance was at the Fine Line Music Café on November 12th.

I was invited to the show from their support act, a DJ/Production/music project Wallpaper. (note the period). I’d been following their work, thanks to the very catchy remix of Das Racist’s “Combination Pizza Hut & Taco Bell”. In fact, once I heard the Wallpaper.’s remix, I can’t stand to listen to other mixes of that song.

The problem was the guestlist wasn’t turned in. I tried to convince the door person at the Fine Line, but I didn’t have internet on my phone back then. I relied mostly on text messages. So, after texting for help, I hadn’t heard back, so I started walking back to my car as the snow started to fall. On my drive home, I got an apology text and said that I was just added. I was about half way home at this point, and I debated about going back. Since it was a Friday night, and I didn’t have to wake up early to go to work, I thought, ‘hey, I’m already out now, might as well go back.’

I was only gone for 30 minutes, but unfortunately, in that short time frame, Wallpaper., had just finished their set.

I knew that The Heavy only had one hit song, so I knew that they probably will save it for last, or at least the encore. Of course, I was right, they did end their set with “How Do You Like Me Now?”. The encore was a song from their forthcoming single… which I had to look up was called “Oh No! Not You Again!!”

I did see The Heavy about six years later. By 2016, the band is bigger than ever, having sold-out First Avenue show in September 2016. This time around, their hit song was the encore finale, but that’s fine, fans were happy to stick around. What’s really cool about this 2016 show was that there was a marriage proposal from two fans who met at The Heavy show four years earlier.

Marriage proposal at First Avenue, Minneapolis (19 September 2016)

We wrote, “The three song encore began with Swaby’s ode to fatherhood in ‘Slave to Your Love’ and continued with the call-and-response of hit ‘What Makes a Good Man?’ after which, Swaby decided to show the crowd what makes a good man by calling fan Steven Fike onstage to take the mic. Somewhat choking up, he asked his girlfriend, who he met at The Heavy show at the Fine Line four years ago, to come up to the stage then bent down on one knee, to propose to her in front of the crowd …and she said yes. Clearly pleased, Swaby regained the mic, saying “this dude must be thinking like this right now” and “…who knows this song?!” before launching into ‘How You Like Me Now?’, familiar both from their 2009 album as well a Kia Super Bowl commercial and a handful of movies. As Swaby approached the chorus, he held out his old style microphone to have the crowd sing it back to him, before they exploded on cue, into a pogo-ing, cheering mass.”