Oh. (Russ L going to and fro in the Earth)

There have been two gigs in the past week that I haven’t waffled about yet, and both of them (in different ways) annoyed me greatly.

Bedouin Soundclash played at The Academy 2 on sunday the 22nd. The Academy is now charging £3.05 for the watered-down Carling they sell. Three pound and bloody five! Ridiculous. I have vowed never to buy another drink in the place (unless they have a round of price-cuts). I will stand there without one. If, incidentaly, you’re also someone who feels strongly about matters like this then come and vote in this survey.

Vernon Maytone supported, with Bedouin Soundclash themselves as his backing band. Several threads of confusion all became neatly tied up and sorted out through this - I’d wandered who did the original version of “Money Worries” on the Bedouin Soundclash album, and I was thinking that this Vernon Maytone who added vocals to it sounded familiar. In retrospect I slap my forhead at my own dur-brain-ed-ness - it was by The Maytones, of course. Vernon Maytone is the former singer of… yeah.

Great set, anyway. The Academy 2 is a terrible place for reggae (well, it’s a terrible place for anything, but you know what I mean) and I would have preferred a more traditionaly rub-a-dub styled backing band than Bedouin Soundclash (some brass would have been gorgeous), but you can’t keep a good man down. Really sweet rocksteady/lovers rock type stuff, with a beautiful voice and some great songs. It was interesting to see the majority of the crowd (seemingly primarily punk/indie fans) start off slightly dubious and end up loving him.

Bedouin Soundclash said they would be back ‘in fifteen minutes,’ but it took them half an hour. Bah. I’m having trouble (as usual, no change) remembering a lot about their set over a week later, but they opened with an absolutely stonking ‘Living In Jungles’ with the crowd shouting along with the ‘Blood upon your shouldah’ (how did it get up there?) and “You nuh ready for this yet boy!” parts. ‘Gyassi Went Home’ was great, too, but the highlight was a dubbed out and extended version of ‘Criminal.’ They did do absolutely loads and loads of covers and medleys of other songs (someone else described it as “Getting a bit Jive Bunny’s Mastermix by the end”), which although generally good detracted slightly, but never mind. Fantastic set, with the songs from the new album coming out later this year sounding good too. I can’t wait for that one.

Nuts to the Academy, though.

~ Russ L

I’m getting really behind with this (yet again), so I’d better write something. I promise I’ll stop using that as a title from now on.

Last tuesday (17th) I went up to Wolves, and mercy mercy me was I looking forward to it. Corrosion Of Conformity and Clutch playing together sounded like the gig of the century to me. Add the fact that Stinking Lizaveta were supporting (I’d never bothered to listen to them until about a week before the gig due to the ‘orrible name, but when I did I quite liked them. It seems that the name ‘Lizaveta’ is from Dostoevsky. I was not aware of that. I’ve only read ‘Crime And Punishment,’ that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. I seem to have digressed…) and this gig had all the potential in the world.

Over to Wolves, then, quick pint in the Wetherspoons and on to the Wulfrun. A lot of people were rocking the ‘Bill Bailey’ look. It was quite disturbing.

Stinking Lizaveta were fan-bloody-tastic. They’re vaguely, distantly reminiscent of an instrumental Sabbath, but spacey in places, jazzy in others, and always rocking. They’re also fun to watch, with some great poses from the cavething on guitar. The whatever-it-was playing upright fretless bass was fantastic, grabbing all four strings at once and wrenching them together. Really good stuff, now I need albums.

Clutch are probably the best rock band practicing at the moment, as far as I’m concerned. This gig only added to that impression. They groove so well, to the point where the fact that they don’t seem to play their best songs very often barely seems to matter. I can see their jamming putting people off, and I’m not usually a massive fan of that sort of thing myself, but I think they do it well. The most important thing is that they never lose sight of the aformentioned groove, but even with that aside - the jamming might not go anywhere but it always tends to lead somewhere.

Probably not the best time I’ve seen them, anyway, but still great. Set of the month so far (although there’s still Nick Cave to go).

Corrosion Of Conformity were good, but slightly disappointing in only being ‘good.’ ‘Deliverance’ and ‘Wiseblood’ are two of my absolute favourite albums, but admittedly they are both from aroundabout a decade ago and so basing my hopes for modern-day live COC on them was a little unfair.

They rocked well enough, of course, but the soulful element you find on those albums just wasn’t present. Oh well. I don’t want to sound negative, because they were still a lot of fun - ‘Albatross’ was great, and ‘Clean My Wounds’ absolutely stonking.

~ Russ L

Over at www.TheCommunion.co.uk we’re doing a big survey of people’s opinions to create a league table of live music venues in the West Midlands. The more people take part in this the more reflective of people’s real opinions it’ll be, and it’ll be fascinating to see if any of the venues actually make any response to our findings. If you want to take part, just decide which venues you want to rate and act accordingly:

Give each venue a score for the following categories:

Sound: It’s pointless going to a gig if you can’t hear the band. The acoustics, the soundmen the venue tend to use, the PA etc. Mark out of ten.

Layout: It’s nice to be able to see them too. The way the venue is set up, the positioning of the stage and other structural features, the shape of the room etc. Mark out of ten.

Atmosphere and character: The sometimes easily definable and sometimes not things that make a place likeable. Does the place have charm of its own, is the lighting appropriate, is it clean or dirty (whichever you prefer) enough for your liking etc. Mark out of ten.

Location: Is the place easy to find/get to? Mark out of five.

Drinks: Prices, choice, quality etc. Mark out of five.

Staff: Friendliness and competency. Mark out of five.

Booking policy: Do you feel that any block-booking of the place by any one promoter is to its detriment? If they have some sort of in-house promotion, are they willing to give local/smaller bands a chance on their bills? Mark out of five.

Each lucky establishment, therefore, has a potential fifty marks. Feel free to add comments, an anonymous selection of which will be included in the survey.

Send your votes in to Venue_survey@yahoo.co.uk . You can vote for as many venues as you like. Any gig venue in the West Midlands is eligible, although I won’t include it in the survey unless a bare minimum of ten people vote regarding it.

Simple, eh? What are you waiting for then?

~ Russ L

One thing I do like a lot about this new blog is that I can see the pages that people came from if they followed a link to get here, and what their search criteria was if they arrived via a search engine. It’s hardly surprising that I haven’t had a huge amount of traffic from Google and the likes, but I wanted to post the seven that I have had purely because I’ve just seen one that made my week. Searches for Una Corda seem to be proving the most fecund ground, but check out the last one on this list and imagine my surprise and delight…

Pelican & Una Corda
“random hand” ska
una corda -piano -pedal “birmingham”
mapatazi
site:*.wordpress.com
pelican and una corda
Carina Round love interest

I’m speechless, but incredibly amused.

~ Russ L

Last time I wrote about Carina Round I spoke of the considerable changes that she seems to have undergone as an artist in the time she’s been away. I was probably trying a bit too hard to be positive, really - if I’m honest I’ll admit I had some degree of apprehension about her new major-label friendly direction. I’m not suggesting that I disliked it or that anything I said last time was untrue, but I did have some concerns that I didn’t really voice. That this new Carina wasn’t ‘my’ Carina anymore doesn’t really matter, but the fact that the new music was a lot less unique special-sounding probably does.

I think I’m going too far the other way now. It’s hard for me to strike the right balance when talking about someone who’s music has meant so very much to me these past few years. This is a massive simplification, but imagine your favourite artiste ever descending to the level of just ‘very good.’ No matter how much you enjoyed the new stuff and no matter what levels of love and interest you still held - you’d be perturbed, wouldn’t you? I could barely wait till her next gig to see if these thoughts persisted.

Spin on 29 days…

I met up at The Flapper with my old homemelonballer Matt Pratt. When we first went down to the gig room we were told that the soundchecks were still underway. Irritatingly, we then spent too long back upstairs and missed half of Dan Whitehouse’s set. Bah.

That’s especially a shame as this previously-unknown-to-me chap was very good indeed. Just your ordinary guitar (electric on some, acoustic on others) brandishing singer-songwriter in some ways, but with a powerful voice, some interesting-sounding songs (the one where he sang something along the lines of “what right have I to tell this boy not to cry?” was lovely), and he actually seemed to mean it. I’ve since found out that he doesn’t usually perform on his own and he fronts a band called Parade, who I’m now very eager to check out (Edit: Actually, I think might be a different Dan Whitehouse. Never mind…).

Murdoch were the main support, and even having seen them three times now (each time supporting Carina, funnily enough) I still can’t see anything in them. They play really ordinary sounding indie-pop-rock: a little bit Ash here, a little bit Strokes there, and more than a little bit dull all round.

As the room filled up to its customary Carina-gig-at-The-Flapper density, the apprehension began to set in. What would Carina bring this time? The set was even more new-stuff-centric than in Wolves - ‘Elegy’ was the only old song to be heard. Fittingly, perhaps, this performance of it was possibly the best I’ve seen and it certainly made for the highlight of the night - it came across as a lot more expansive-sounding than usual, almost edging into psychedelic territory.

Her bearing on stage has definitely changed. She’s been much more confident up there than she used to be for a good while now, but this has usually (even as recently as last month) been sort of underlaid by her customary nerves. It’s always been very endearing. If they were there at this gig, they weren’t shown. She’s in charge now. The quite forced-seeming onstage attempts to be sexy seen at the last gig were gone though, fortunately. That’s probably a good thing. It’s not like the girl needs to try, anyway…

The new tunes, then: all good, but as I said last time they’re much closer to straightforward rock songs than anything she’s ever done before. Very good rock songs, but it still feels like a crying shame. Never mind, though, nothing stays static. The two that especially stood out last time did so again - ‘Ready To Confess’ is one hell of an adrenaline rush, and ‘Down Slow’ is slinky, sexy fun. ‘Want More’ also really proved its mettle on this occasion, with another stonker of a chorus.

It seems safe to say that we have an all new Carina, then, and while not quite as amazing as the older model she’s still bloody good. You can’t blame an artist for changing if they feel that’s what they need to do. You don’t have to like it, of course, but thankfully we’re still a huge distance away from having to dislike anything to do with Miss Round.

~ Russ L

My end-of-the-year-blah article is now up and away at www.thecommunion.co.uk:

http://www.thecommunion.co.uk/editorials.php?id=13

You get a sparkling new blog and you don’t find yourself in the mood to write anything in it. Always the way, isn’t it? I lose count of the number of times that has happened to me. I’d hazard that a roughly accurate estimate would be ‘twice,’ if you include this time.

My first gig of the year, anyway, was last sunday (the 8th). I’ve decided that I like The Market Tavern in Digbeth (for there it was) a lot, as a pub and not just a venue. It’s a not a gorgeously beautiful place or anything (although it is still about 381 times classier than you would expect, given the location) but it has a nice atmosphere. It’s just a shame it’s so out of the way for me, really.

It was one of those gigs where the line-up changed repeatedly between it first being announced and the night, and as such I only had a rough idea of who was actually playing. The first band on were Platypud, a very young looking three-piece with apparently only a few gigs under their belt. That was remarkable, because apart from a couple of cock-ups they were very tight and together. I must admit that the cynic in me wasn’t expecting that when I saw them get onstage. Alkaline Trio-ish, anyway, not anything new but listenable.

Mapatazi Bob were on second. Amazingly I’d never seen this band before, despite them playing about fourteen gigs per week. To be fair I hadn’t ever been too keen on any of the recorded bits I’d heard but live they sound a bit grittier - a tiny little bit more streetpunk/oi-ish, perhaps, although still definitely fitting into melodic/poppy punk areas. Quite fun, again nothing I’d go massively out of my way for but not a bad way to pass the time.

Random Hand were the only non-local band in the end, from Bradford. They played a very Adequate 7-ish combo of skacore with little bits of funk, metal, rapping etc here and there. Very enjoyable indeed - their songs seemed catchy, they had loads of energy, and the frontman/singer/trombonist was hillariously funny between songs. Having had a little listen to the songs they have online they’re another band whose recorded stuff makes them sound a lot more humdrum than they are live, but they’re definitely worth going to see if you get the chance. Massive fun.

It dawned on me at aroundabout this point that this was one of those gigs where the bands get progressively better as the night goes on, and I didn’t expect that to alter for our headliners The Klopeks. It was right. This is one of these instances where I feel like I’ve written about a band a squintillion times before, and as such I’m bored of repeating myself. They are, nonetheless, blindingly good. Slightly swingy brass-and-keyboards-assisted rock ‘n’ roll, with a slight spooky edge at times and absolutely fantastic songs (a couple of new ones were part of this night’s set, both of them sounding as good as ever).

As an aside, I did have a bit of a personal revelation while they were playing and the band members’ larking about while playing spilled onto the floor. You know you watch altogether too much MMA when upon seeing two men miming copulation your first thought isn’t “Eeurgh,” but rather “Triangle! Triangle! TRIANGLE!”

I had to leave halfway through their set, anyway. Or so I thought. Like a couple of months ago in Wolves, I didn’t know that the last bus on a sunday now runs a bit later. Curses. It was especially galling considering that I could hear the sounds of “Taking The Money” (my favourite Klopeks tune)drifting across the backstreets of Digbeth as I left the pub, but there we go. I’ll know for next time.

~ Russ L

Here we are, then. I’ve spent the last few days transferring most of the posts over from my former blog, under the auspices of Diaryland.com. I’ve left a few out that didn’t seem worth bringing over, but even with that notwithstanding I’d like to make sure everyone is aware that my opinions then do not necessarily correspond to my opinions now.

The actual straw that broke the camel’s back with Diaryland (I didn’t bring that post over, but here’s an excerpt:“It seems that the brain-in-a-jar running Diaryland has taken it upon itself to alter various bits of punctuation to question marks in my older blog entries.
I would contact Diaryland and ask them wha’blow, but their tech support has proved about as useful as a fishnet condom in all of my previous attempts to communicate with them.”) turned out not to be their problem - I’ve since seen the same thing on a few websites, and it appears to be something to do with the Firefox browser I’ve now started using. I have had myriad little problems with them over the last couple of years, though, and I was thinking about switching to something with more features anyway.

Ta-Da.

The thing that I’m both intrigued about and dreading is the ‘comments’ feature over here. I’m also excedingly surprised that I’ve already had three people leave comments, non of whom I actually know. That was the last thing I expected. It seems that the days of this being read exclusively by 3-4 people I know (and then only on a semi-regular basis) is over. I think better writing is needed, and fast. I’ll work very hard from now on.

Ah, nuts to it.

~ Russ L

Originally posted on 29/12/5.

It’s that sad time of year when Christmas has been and gone. I don’t really bother with New Year’s Eve myself, so I always feel faintly nonplussed aroundabout now. I’m normally gearing up for the ‘another year with nothing achieved’ thoughts, too, but although as accurate as ever they don’t seem to be circling around my mind at the moment.

Christmas was lovely, anyway, attack of irritating tonsil-swelling aside. I didn’t do anything, but I don’t really see Christmas as a time for doing things.

The wednesday before (the 21st) was the occasion of the Capsule Promotions Christmas Party gig, at The Medicine Bar. Meeting up with my old homesieve Matt Pratt, we prefaced the evening with a trip to Indian restaurant Manzils on Digbeth High Street. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but I’ve heard many-a good thing about it.

Nice enough, anyway - the obligatory bit of sabre-rattling came from the waiter when I ordered a lamb madras (”Have you had it here before? We make them very strong…”), but it wasn’t especially hot by madras standards. Pleasantly flavoured, though, with some lovely lamb in it (first bit of lamb I’ve had in ages that hasn’t been really fatty). I’ll go again.

A quick pint in that Irish pub halfway between Manzils and The Custard Factory (I forget the name. On the corner by the Barfly/Sanctuary) followed, and thence to the gig. There was free Christmas punch, which had run out by the time we got to it. DAMN AND BLAST! Free sweeties had to do instead.

Una Corda opened, a band I’d found to be just OK, quite good, and then just OK again on the three times I’d seen them before. At this gig I finally managed to like them as much as everyone else seems to. Theirs is a fairly typical rocky post-rock, but this time they had a hugely majestic swoop about them, grandly but violently descending from sonic heights. The thought occurs that the amount I like this band is always going to vary massively depending on the mood I’m in when I see them (it has so far, after all), but this time I found them to be absolutely wonderful.

The other thing I did like was the way they chose to deploy themselves on their allotted half a stage of space. Separated by the centrally-placed drummer, they decided to have their unnaturally thin fella and the normal-sized bloke on one flank, while both of the two big chunky geezers squeezed together and jostled for breathing space on the other. I assume this was done deliberately, although I couldn’t tell you whether their aim was comedy or Feng Shui.

Mistress were the main support, and with this set I’ve now seen them nineteen times. Maybe I should make some kind of effort to make the twentieth time special. Or maybe that’s just being silly. They’re always an effective live act, anyway; even in this instance when one guitar amp went kaput halfway through, they still conjure up a maelstrom of riffing fury.

This set seemed to feature more older stuff than I was expecting, which filled me with joy. “God Of Rock” was definitely the highlight of the night’s best set, although their balls-out metallic ramalama was never less than great - they combine angry intensity with fun in a way that very few bands manage.

With the local supports out of the way we had out touring American headliners Pelican, who have never been a band that have amazed me. I enjoyed (but wasn’t blown away by) the bit of their set that I saw last time they played at The Med Bar, but the recorded bits ‘n’ bobs I’ve heard have from them always sounded unnecessarily nice and polite. This gig actually bought them down in my estimation, if anything. Their music seems to yearn and beg for more dynamic range than it actually has - they build up, and build up, and build up, and you’re ready for the big sea change… and they just carry on doing more or less what they were doing to begin with. There are some really likeable moments scattered throughout their songs, but they seem too keen to work with a restricted palette. This isn’t to say I found them to be outright awful, but I’d be lying if I said they were significantly better than average.

I left before the end, as is customary at The Med Bar. Pelican were a little bit anti-climactic, but all told it was an extremely fun night.

~ Russ L

Originally posted on 24/12/4.

‘Twas my fourth gig in four nights (”that ain’t a marathon mate, this is a marathon…“), and I was surprisingly untired. Sunday the 18th of December, so it was, with The Pogues and the Dropkick Murphys at the NIA.

I’ve spoken before about how I don’t quite hate arenas as much as most sensible people. Even though everything about them is horrible, I generally get quite excited about the thought of going to the big concert, the proper event. This time that wasn’t really the case - my anticipation was purely for the bands I was due to see. I hope that this turns out to be a one-off ‘cos the thought of buying hugely overpriced drinks in an aircraft hanger offers little appeal otherwise.

Oh, that reminds me - this may be the first time I’ve seen The Pogues, but it was the fourth time I’ve seen the Murphys. Why has none of these times been in a venue where I’d trust the barstaff to poor me a pint of stout? Why, oh Lord and Lord’s son’s mother (this was an Irish-themed gig, we need to bring the Catholicism) do you mock me?

The crowd were not as I expected. Not only was the average age younger than one might have reasonably anticipated, but there weren’t hordes of students called ‘Tarquin’ and ‘Oliver’ from Solihull and Sutton bringing the irritating faux-Gaelic imitations either. That’s good, because I really was dreading that. I didn’t see a single inflatable pint of Guinness all night.

Dropkick Murphys, then. I could see both ‘em working and not working over the huge distances of the NIA. On one hand they do take a lot from the vibe of the crowd when they play, but on the other their songs are on the whole very anthemic and that sort of thing frequently comes across as better in the arenas. In the end, it was a bit of both - not the best time I’ve seen them and not the worst either, but a middling performance from the Dropkick Murphys is still a lot of fun. They managed to convey the energy they created to at least as far back as where I was, and as ever “Barroom Hero” is a tune-and-a-half (they didn’t finish with the customary “Skinhead on the MBTA,” though, which surprised me). They even did their ‘get a load of women out of the crowd to dance onstage’ spot, which I didn’t expect at this particular venue. I always like that, not for simple lechery but more to spot the girl who thought it was a good idea until she actually got up there and see what she does. There’s always one. It’s a bit cruel of me to be amused by it, I suppose.

When you think about it it’s crueller still to derive enjoyment from the state of Shane MacGowan. Obviously you expect it, but Lord o’ Mercy was he drunk. “Beerrrr sheeeeeerrrrrrrr gweeerrrrrrsssshhhh,” as he so wisely noted himself. Throughout he’d slur some little bon mot into the mic before wandering offstage for a bit, as though going for a whole ten minutes without a slug of whiskey would strip him of his magical powers. I’d have bought my drink onstage if I’d have been him, but our man MacGowan has too much self-respect for that. He’s a professional. That’s evident from the fact that even given the state he was in, he still wore a tie. It was draped around his neck and not tied up, but it’s the idea that counts.

I thought as many “what a character, what a card, I love him” thoughts as the next man, but if we stop to reflect it is chilling. Gaining our amusement from someone killing themselves doesn’t represent humankind’s finer instincts, but we do it all the time. I don’t really think that can be glibly justified simply with the fact that there have been and continue to be plenty willing to dance this danse macabre.

At Christmastime my thoughts naturally turn to ideas of redemption, and there’s possibly more than simple marketing or stupidity to the million rock ‘n’ roll bands who have adopted a mini-messianic pose for their fans to worship. Essentially, they destroy themselves so we don’t have to destroy ourselves: martyrdom for vices rather than sins. I once knew someone who became a very young alcoholic largely because people expected him to drink and play the drunken fool. That’s not the only reason, of course, but there are various ways that problems can be handled - I don’t think any of us would deliberately encourage someone towards a self-destructive method if we were aware of what we were doing. Why should things be different because the victim is in a position of greater public acclaim?

Dunno. They shouldn’t, I suppose. What can we do to change the situation? Again, I dunno.

I’m pretty confident that MacGowan is indestructible, anyway, so we don’t need to worry too much in his case. He was an odd one to spark of these maudling thoughts, really.

The Pogues, anyway, were absolutely excellent. “The Old Main Drag” was a highlight, Shane’s drunken slur adding a great deal to it (Hmmmm. What was I just saying about all this again?), and “Fairytale Of New York” was just great, with an appropriately feisty Kirsty Macoll substitute. The band other than Shane were tight as hell (I gather all the rest of them have sobered up), and rarity of rarities a bit of atmosphere descended over the NIA - a jumpin’ jiggin’ party sort of air. Lots and lots of fun was had.

* * *

It’s CHRISTMAS EVE~! I’m so excited. I’ve been very very good indeed, so I hope Santa will come.

Merry Christmas to one and all. Enjoy yourselves, my comrades.

~ Russ L