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ATHLETE: Thoroughly enjoyed seeing these blokes from Britain live and up-close Thursday night at T.T. The Bears in Cambridge. And lead singer Joel Pott made sure everyone had a good time, despite the fact that the band had endured a tough 24 hours. Their sound engineer wound up in the hospital with nut allergies. Their bus, which was supposed to pick them up in NYC at 3 p.m. Wednesday after a cross-Atlantic flight, didn't show until 4 a.m. Thursday -- so they were weary before going onstage. Then they encountered technical difficulties during the set. Yet Pott kept the spirits light with his chatty, happy attitude.

"This is our very first own gig in Boston," Pott said. Later, he asked the crowd to "bear with me while I hand out instructions." He took a request from the crowd to play "Vehicles & Animals," even though it meant having Steve the drummer and Carey the bass player take a seat, which Pott said "makes them look like complete nobs. You're not nobs, though!" Pott chatted with the crowd between just about every song. When some of Steve's equipment went kaput, Pott asked for a beer (which he didn't receive until much, much later) then announced, "I'll tell you what. I'm going for a quick piss." He then jumped offstage and through the crowd to do just that. When he returned, the crowd applauded again, and Pott joked that there'd be no need for an encore now. "That'd just be stupid. It'd be embarrassing for us to walk offstage and come back now!"

Carey said that even though Athlete's first disc was up for UK's big Mercury Prize two years ago, the band has yet to break big on U.S. radio yet. Some of you may have heard them, as I did, thanks to a free iTunes download of "Wires" a few months ago. Maybe they'll get more of a listen this fall. They deserve it. You can catch audio and video footage either at Athlete's MySpace site or at their official site.