Oxford life. Thirtysomething challenges. Music leanings. Anything really.
Monday, October 31, 2005
The Swills
Tonight was band numbers nine and ten in an unprecedented three-week, fourteen-band frenzy for Andy.
Headliners: The Kills. Scuzzy White Stripe-a-likes. Wonderfully dirty albums and no need for a drummer for these two. The drum machine is enough, as they cavort on speakers, all lanky limbs and fags and died black hair, PJ Harvey in a big fight with Souxsie and The Banshees*
That's what it says in theory. The big risk, though, is that in middle of a Halloween gig that is fraying the very edges of my jeans, the drum machine breaks. Like a pair of lost children, the two don't know what to do, but apologise and look helpless.
Four roadies, a stage manager and some other random bod prod the buttons on the drum machine, but how the hell do you fix a broken drum machine? It's not like the good old analogue world of guitar strings and drum sticks.
They resort to putting a fan on the table next to the kit, but it only saves the machine for one more song, and off they go, early, and dejected.
Shame, really. Great band, great tracks, great grimey, mucky music, like cavorting in a pile of mud and grease while high on heroin, I guess.
Tankfully, the night was saved by Be Your Own Pet, the support. Slovenly teenage punks led by Jemina Pearl (great name), dancing like a rubber sex doll with 10,000 volts shooting through her, full of bile and bitterness, bitching at the crowd and her own band members.
It was shockingly close to the 80s cheese-fest that was Transvision Vamp, but then, she's not really trying to impress a 33yr old like me who remembers that far back, is she?
* PJ would so win that fight...
Headliners: The Kills. Scuzzy White Stripe-a-likes. Wonderfully dirty albums and no need for a drummer for these two. The drum machine is enough, as they cavort on speakers, all lanky limbs and fags and died black hair, PJ Harvey in a big fight with Souxsie and The Banshees*
That's what it says in theory. The big risk, though, is that in middle of a Halloween gig that is fraying the very edges of my jeans, the drum machine breaks. Like a pair of lost children, the two don't know what to do, but apologise and look helpless.
Four roadies, a stage manager and some other random bod prod the buttons on the drum machine, but how the hell do you fix a broken drum machine? It's not like the good old analogue world of guitar strings and drum sticks.
They resort to putting a fan on the table next to the kit, but it only saves the machine for one more song, and off they go, early, and dejected.
Shame, really. Great band, great tracks, great grimey, mucky music, like cavorting in a pile of mud and grease while high on heroin, I guess.
Tankfully, the night was saved by Be Your Own Pet, the support. Slovenly teenage punks led by Jemina Pearl (great name), dancing like a rubber sex doll with 10,000 volts shooting through her, full of bile and bitterness, bitching at the crowd and her own band members.
It was shockingly close to the 80s cheese-fest that was Transvision Vamp, but then, she's not really trying to impress a 33yr old like me who remembers that far back, is she?
* PJ would so win that fight...
// posted by Andy @ 10:50 pm 
