SECRET GARDEN PARTY 2010

start soundbite:

‘Mirror Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?’

‘Wow, he’s rockin that violin”

‘Her voice is great’

‘CD’s for a pound folks, and this one’s on it.’

‘Open your heart and look to the sky and sweep those hands round.’

‘You can’t grind on a hill man, I learned my lesson last year.’

‘Nice tent and that outfit is just amazing on you.’

‘He’s so hot, he’s like, my ideal man.’

‘Isn’t that Where’s Wally?’

‘Oh my god, heeeey. I havn’t seen you for years.’

‘Horace Andy man’

‘Horace Andy was the shit’

‘Horace Andy dude’

‘Isn’t that my violin?’

‘Ah, I’m from Stoke Newington too.’

‘Who sang that in the first place?’

‘Is that really the Gorillaz up there?’

‘I could really hang for a beer right now, any offers.’

‘They re-mix shit’

‘Brighton, cool.’

‘Why the hell are they cycling to make smoothies?’

‘I lost my stick, I was Gandalf’

‘Even God pays for drinks at this festival’

‘One Taste is the best stage, for sure’

‘I’ve seen some real pickeys hanging out dude.’

‘God is everywhere here.’

‘If only Radiohead played, it would be just like Glastonbury was back in the day.’

‘Wow, this stage is so cute’

‘I really love his violin and those lyrics, he’s really got something.’

‘How many of them are actually on stage?’

‘I mean, she thinks she’s a hippy but we all know she’s not’

‘If I give you this roll up, can I go on the shit ride?’

‘We got in for free, that’s how it should be right, I mean everything’s crap anyway’.

‘There’s some sexy pagan version of this maypole dance at 8. Come.’

‘It’s just so chilled.’

‘It’s like one huge MGMT video.’

‘Samba, at 10am, I mean who the fuck wants that?’

‘I’ve got a white shirt, but today I just thought blue.’

‘I love the electric uke’

‘Did you see her Rose Garland?’

‘They didn’t tell anyone their name! Who the fuck are they..’

‘Chill.’

‘Everyone and everything is beautiful here.’

End Soundbite.

Wavves: Cargo 23/07/10

Wavves frontman Nathan Williams is back and this time he’s packing Jay Reatard’s drummer and guitarist with him.  Although I read about it, I didn’t anticipate the magnitude of this alliance.  I imagined that Jay’s boys would adapt to Nathan’s music but what has actually happened is that they’ve stepped in and shot a big load of garage punk all over it.  The result is exhilarating. 

Did I ever imagine I’d see people crowd surfing, stage diving and going wild in the moshpit at Wavves gig?  No sir.  But Friday night proved to be full of surprises.  

Wavves are band who really need to pull out some aces and thankfully on Friday they did exactly that.  On the Facebook events page for this gig someone had posted,

can’t wait til this lo-fi bullshit fucks off wavves can fuck off and die, why do you still book him?  [sic]

Why do they still book him?  Because although he might be an insecure little kid trying so hard to be cool that it’s car crash he is also a bloody brilliant musician.  It’s a shame they let him talk.  It’s a shame they let the band talk.  The drummer dressed like Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia says ridiculously cringe worthy things like ‘Shut the fuck up.  We’re here to rock man’ and ‘this microphone smells of cum.’

They also started the set by pleading for weed from the crowd in an embarrassing ’Hey kids, we’re cool.  We do drugs,’ kind of way.  Basically, it all smacks of the kind of overwhelming bravado that comes from chronic insecurity.  Anyway, who gives a toss if the band are wieners?  Surely it’s all about the music?  It seems to me that some people can’t separate the two things.  As long as you’re not Gary Glitter, if the music sounds good I don’t really care how much of a dick you are.  In Wavves’s case the music sounded so good it hurt. 

In real life Nathan Williams looks a tad too small and pasty for his self-allocated moniker King of the Beach but on Friday night he was most certainly King of Cargo.  AB

1234 Festival: Shoreditch Park 24/07/10

There are times in life when you are a participant and there are times in life when you are an observer. Lately I haven’t felt like a participant. I’ve been standing on the sidelines watching things unfold. Never more so than yesterday at the 1234 Festival in Shoreditch Park.

Catching part of S.C.U.M. I couldn’t help but yawn at the Andy Warhol, Placebo-esque, emo-goth-punk they were pedalling. Dazed and Confused yah? More like poncey and glum. Get yourselves some vitamin D kids.

Dum Dum Girls pounded out the glamour and ripped out the hipster boys’ hearts. When I saw them perform at The Lexington and at Primevera they had the style without the substance but this time they’ve upped their game. If ever there was a chick with the licks it was the Dum Dum Girl’s drummer yesterday who injected their set with some desperately needed raw garage energy.

Next up was the contentious issue of the day, Peter Hook performing Unknown Pleasures. My favourite quote relating to the event so far has got to be ‘Ian Curtis is dead. Why kill him anymore?’ I can see how people might have been appalled by the vision of a cocksure, avuncular, bassist dad-rocking his way through the seminal Joy Division album. Yes there were some horrifically cringe making moments but I can’t deny the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed it. His voice was surprisingly well suited to the songs he sang and I got goosebumps when I heard Shadowplay . Happy Monday’s favourite Rowetta was adorable when she joined Hook on stage to sing the vocals for Insight and New Dawn Fades and her voice is still astounding. I did have to close my eyes to a few things, for instance, the barf-making moment when he turned to his co-bassist son and said ‘that’s my boy, I’m dead proud’ or when he hoisted one arm in the air and straddle the amp but overall it genuinely moved me.

Ian Curtis is dead. He’s been dead for thirty years. You can’t kill him anymore, so let’s celebrate his legacy. I adore that album and I wasn’t alive to see Ian perform it so seeing another member of Joy Division perform it is as close as I’m ever going to get. I’m not sure why Hook is being vilified. Is there something I missed? You wouldn’t object to a Joy Division covers band so what’s wrong with a member of Joy Division covering Joy Division songs?

From one hate figure to another, Wavves followed Peter Hook on the main stage. Unfortunately, the sound was terrible and the set was short. The drummer was mouthy and the crowd were unforgiving. They completely and utterly blew me away at Cargo on Friday but Saturday’s 1234 gig is not going to win them back any followers. I could feel the crowd willing them to fail. ‘Yes the music is good but he’s an arrogant little shit,’ was one line I overheard. Nathan Williams still has a long way to go if he wants to win back the respect of disillusioned fans. I suggest gaffer taping the drummer’s mouth would be a step in the right direction. You’re a drummer. Not Bill Hicks. Now shut the hell up.

After being slightly bored by those Vivian Girls I caught half of The Silver Machine. Snake-hipped swoonmeister Bobby Gillespie covering garage classics with Glen Matlock and Zak Starkey. The song choices were sublime. I Want You Right Now and Sister Anne by the MC5, The Count Five’s Psychotic Reaction, The Gun Club’s Fire of Love and Action Woman by The Litter. I could have burst with joy but the rest of the people around me seemed nonplussed. Weren’t they familiar with these vintage nuggets of treasure?

Overall, it seemed like a tough crowd to please. Everyone too cool for school, standing there with a fag in one hand and an overpriced bottle pear crap in the other. ‘Come on motherfuckers impress me,’ was the motto of the day.

Last up, Fucked Up. A mess fest of blood, sweat and beer. Wild ass front man in the crowd, on the crowd, surfing the crowd, hugging the crowd and sweating like a hairy bitch. It sounded good. It sounded loud. It put the icing on the cake. My camera is covered in beer, I have 50% hearing in my left ear and my liver hurts. You fucked me up Fucked Up. Thank you. AB

 

MMMM, POTATO

Getting better. We all want that. Chips for the Poor have done it, they got better.

It is with great relief to report that the new 7’’ titled ‘I am a warrior’ brings Chips for the Poor into a more balanced place, with a developed sound, that takes some of the heat off the frantic lyrical poetry, spat out in 2005’s previous release, ‘LSD Who Said That’. 

Musically menacing, it takes frantic to the edge of conceptual and borrows some New York Noise and Manchester Verve.  However, your not gonna like Chips for the Poor unless you agree to engage with the narrative madness that remains the driving force of the sound. This is none more evident than on B-Sides ‘Weather Channel’ and ‘C*ck, C*nt, P*nis, T*ny Blair, T*na Turner’, which are far less stomach able than the titled track.

But, I guess you can’t have your chips and eat them. At least you got Chips.

THE DOLLAR V THE UNDERGROUND

‘Do you like, er wanna come back to my warehouse’

‘Well, I’m in the group…..’

It could only have ended in the way it began, and I’m not sure the police had much to do with the beginning but fuck it, it sounds good so I’ll say it.

Like moths to the underground light, swarms of musicians/music lovers/mourners, dressed up and turned out for the final evening of the underground venue. It’s line up boasting the world tour heading Male Bonding whose career I am sure they would have in some way credited to the energy Barden’s inspired in the local music scene. Had they ever played of course.

Punk rode high as Umit greeted each mourner personally with a stamp of approval, sets from The Human Race and Please, given with energy and vigour but still barely distinguishable lyrics. Will there ever be a poet at Barden’s? But, less we say that the difference between crowd and musicians was minimal and although punk, it was happily ridden and bobbed and surfed. No-one was in the mood to trash the place, sure as smoke.

So why is it closing? If you could get a party like that every Saturday night, you’d be getting bigger not closing down. Let’s say, for the same reason that I only managed to spend £12. No-one can afford it. The community it thrives, survive on minimal London income and live in an alternative scene, a lifestyle glamourised and poured over years later, but not devisive in surviving the gentrification looming with the Olympic Games. The audience can’t pay for beer all night and Barden’s can’t pay the rent, it’s that simple.

The Scottish Detective whom closed down the last shout at Barden’s, commented, “nice crowd, no problems, just too many numbers”. When Umit shook his hand, it hit me that it was over and all the enthusiasm transmitted into this happy, supportive and creative scene just wasn’t enough. The dollar won.

So, ladies and gentleman, the underground is moving. Get your heels on.  BB

LOVE, LOVE ME DO

Would you let your lover trash your drum kit? Would you care if he stole the sticks as you begged him to go slower? Would you let him invite his pant free friends into the room to play with you?

The answer is hell yeah, if you happen to be the musical sub drummer from ‘The Younger Lovers’, infact you and your maraca would be really goddam turned on, and you’d shake it like you had no control.

The Younger Lovers made Melodies run high from the ceiling and punk drip from the walls of Bardens Boudoir. The eclectically bunch rocked out the final night and around a stage, playing with slap dash raucous genius, dominated by the poster boy afro front man from CA. His most clearly cut and understandable lyrics were based on a raunchy encounter in a toilet with some boy in Leeds, edgy indeed.

 On a night where most musicians seemed to be forgetting how to play, they followed suit but kind of made it cute, and despite having no cohesive set to present, had a good time finding how to make eachother explode. When it worked, it sounded like The Pixies on heat, when it didn’t, it strayed into Sum 41.

It could only have ended with destruction, and the spent out look on the drummers face as his pant less friend picked him out her drums, summed up just how much went into the improv.

I’d sign up online for sure but I’d take a pass on buying the record.

BB

Wavves: King of the Beach

(Fat Possum, 2010)

Some males hit the age of twenty-two, grow beards, get chicks and most definitely become men.  Other males still inhabit a limbo-land somewhere between manhood and adolescence.  The promo shot for the new Wavves album King of the Beach depicts baby-faced Wavves frontman, Nathan Williams, wearing a Bugs Bunny t-shirt and Mickey Mouse reflector sunglasses.  Nathan Williams is a man-boy in a man’s world. 

Last year Williams famously had a breakdown on stage at Primavera Sound after ingesting a cocktail of Valium and ecstasy.  Black Lips’ Jared Swiley was quoted saying,

‘It wasn’t so much of a breakdown as it was him being a baby.  And that’s why I don’t like him.’

Tough words from a tough guy.  In a man’s world there’s no room for weakness but Williams’s music thrust him into a world that he just wasn’t ready for.  It can’t be easy for a suburban kid to go from making music in his bedroom to keeping pace with the hard drugging bad kids.  

The new Wavves album King of the Beach is a tale of a man-boy’s struggles to keep up with the big men.  Starting with the cocky ‘You’re never gonna stop me’ refrain of the title track, the album charts the euphoria of the highs and the crippling self-doubts of the lows. 

The album is a testament to Williams’s acute self-awareness, lyrically and musically addressing the state of prolonged adolescence that he finds himself in. Lyrics like ‘I’m not supposed to be a kid’ and ‘I’m not man enough’ serve to highlight this.  While musically he borrows intros from the Shangri-Las on When Will You Come and from The Crystals on Mickey Mouse.  This use of teenage girl bands is a deliberate attempt to create an adolescent sound.  Song titles like Super Soaker and Baseball Cards are other references to the trappings of childhood. 

With lyrics like ‘I hate myself but who is to blame’ in Take on the World there is a danger of plunging into the realms of angsty adolescent emo but this is offset by the infectious euphoric surf melodies.  The addictive ‘I’m just having fun with you’ hook of Post Acid shows that Wavves can still suck you in just as hard as they did with So Bored on the last album.

This is exactly the kind of self-flagellatory album that you would expect from someone who made a complete arse of himself on stage in front of hundreds of hipsters but Wavves does self-flagellation with finesse.  And boy, does it sound good. 

Doesn’t everyone deserve a shot at redemption?

AB