Hard Skin, The Stupids, Shitty Limits

I am in SOUTH London! Blimey! and not the Windmill! I am at the Grosvenor which is a proper pub with hang-out crusties and dolies and stuff and a back room with a big fuck off pa that can be gert loud. It is a punk show. I'm helping on the door and can remember if people have paid or not by identifying their t-shirts (Restarts, Ramones, Misfits (two different types!) etc) rather than trying to figure out people's faces (cos everyone DOES look the same). Shitty Limits turn up about 20 minutes after they're due on but it's okay - they play a song which I think might be a half-remembered tune but I think it's actually a quick line-check cos the rest of their set is loads better. I saw them before and thought they were a bit slow and dirgey but this time I could hear them properly and i TAKE BACK WHAT I THOUGHT! they have some quite good pop songs played punker style. bless.
I used to see The Stupids when I was little. Skaters used to zoom up and down at the back. That was the best bit. At this gig there are no skaters which is sad. Apparently the drummer still skates. Cool. I wish there had been some skating tricks between songs. They are very good and fast and punk but they play too long (like most bands in the whole universe).
Hard Skin pack the room out with people trailing out of the door like a little tail of people that just had to get in one last drink before seeing the band. I hide behind the merch table and peer (somewhat in vain) over people's heads...All the lyrics are funny but sometimes real too and it's just funny watching people singing along with ACAC (all coppers are cunts) and a song called (i think) We're All Wankers which makes you want to be in that gang. All the songs are interspersed with piss-taking, goding the audience and generally slagging off crusties (quite a few in the audience). Ben guitarist LOVES his guitar! 'Listen to this' he says 'SPRANG!' he goes. 'Keith Richards' says Elvina. It's kinda If The Kids Were United but more like If The Middle Aged Punks Had A Couple Of Beers And Went To A Gig They'd Still Have Fun.
Afterwards I play some records. The audience floods out. I'm playing Buzzcocks and Undertones and Ramones and stuff. But apparently punks don't like punks. Some people come back when I play old rock'n'roll singles and Mud. Punks like rock'n'roll. And Elvis impersonators in white suits.
It takes me about 3 days to get home on a bus that someone has been sick in. I see a man sit in the sick and I almost go to tell him 'hey don't sit in the sick' but I think if he's drunk enough to sit in sick maybe I'll just leave him to it....I hope his mum doesn't still do his washing.

Oh Dear x 2

Oh Dear x 1: My new band has it's third gig (with me...they've been going quite a while without me...). Our celllist/percussionist/singer can't make it so we're playing it as a five-piece (with synths, multiple singers, guitar, bass, percussion....and two drummers.). We're playing at the Water Rats. We're on at 7.30pm. Our soundcheck finishes at 7.20pm. At 7.25pm the promoters are hustling us back on stage. But where is our second drummer and our singer? Gone walkies....It's up to us...play without them or don't play. So we think...hmmmm...we'll start with a kinda droney/improv style song and they'll come running up and join in! So off we go...but they are still missing and not in action anywhere to be heard. At least half of the songs are started by the other drummer so I'm a bit confuddle-ated but I do my best looking at the ceiling. As we carry our equipment off stage the drummer and singer return. What happened to you? we ask. We didn't think 7.30 MEANT 7.30 they say. um. But it was still quite fun. band is here. Myspace.com/nowtheband
Oh Dear x 2: I got made redundant. Well - my place of work PROPOSED I got made redundant. But I have a feeling this is going to amount to the same thing. Oh dear. Look out for me outside Starbucks with a rat chewed polystyrene cup asking for change any day now...Or maybe as the next Mayor of London. One or the other.

The Boys

are an old-school punk band who're playing another 'this is the last time' type show at ULU in London. I only know 2 Boys songs (brickfield nights and the first time actually...that i remember) and a Yobs album but have heard Good Things about the rest of their songs so
am giving it a go.
When we first get to ULU it's a bit empty and a band called Mybe are trying their best to a shuffling few who won't go anywhere withing 10 foot of the stage... I like them best when they're talking and joking around but it must be hard to get any sort of atmosphere going in a perky punky style with the rather sombre face the audience has turned towards them.
By the time The Boys come quite a few more people have dragged their manky jeaned arses to the venue and are looking (crikey!) quite enthusiastic!
Hurray! It's great! There are wee teens in the audience lurching about, some euro-punks, the occasional crusty punk with a mohican with a big bald spot in the middle and one chap celebrating this 71st birthday. so quite a mix. But a really nice happy one helping the band sing all the choruses, carefully picking up slipping pogo-ers when a sloppy cider precipitates a potential casualty and generally playing lets work up the good atmosphere.
And yes they do have lots of good songs.

Glam Chops mini-tour. Bringing the glam to the provinces

or bringing chaps in flares, platform boots and face-paint to Cardiff, Bath and London.

And did i mention the dancing girls?

Glam Chops are a stage-full of catsuit wearing 'hey'-ing chaps stomp-rocking their glitter-pop hearts out with the accompaniement of all-girl dance-troupe The Panther Girls in shiny tights and high kicks. It's kinda silly but then what glam band wasn't?
In Cardiff GC are warned to take their face-paint off before they hit the town - Cardiff doesn't like that sort of thing apparently (well not outside the confines of the venue anyway) - Cardiff is full of the nicest but also the maddest people. It's sort of like bedlam but only for insane cutie-pop fans.
In Bath Eddie Chop is born across the dance-floor by enthusiastic glam fans (until they drop him on his arse cos they are indie weedlings too). Glam Chops also record their extra-special version of Born In The USA sadly no longer called Born In The UK Hey due to Brucie baby not being a fan of having his lyrics messed with. The Big Wet. More on the prog-glam epic Tarzan's glam-rock adventure later.
In London it's another Guided Missile special with almost a deliberately mentalist bill featuring non-funny funny-man Ted Chippington, Brighton electro-slinky favourites Shrag and of course GC again.
A Panther Girl has persuaded Arec Chop that the best face paint for him will be a big dinner plate supplemented by knife and fork on his forehead. It does look rather special!
See underexposed.org.uk for some top photos!

Two weddings and an onstage funeral of song

Sorry - this post is all about me.
First Wedding: Two of Debbie 'banjo' Smith's friends are getting married and they have chosen their wedding band - lo! It shall be The Nuns! The all-girl Monks tribute band I play guitar for...We decide to go all-white rather than our usual all-black garb for the special occasion. Not sure how suitable Nuns hits such as 'I Hate You' and songs about Vietman and constipation are to a wedding but the bride and groom are happy if not their more sedate relatives. It's good to be educational though I think. And there was LOTS of cake!
Second Wedding: Somehow (through saying 'yes' too much without thinking) I am playing in a wedding band put together as a special one-off for the wedding of a sister of a friend. We drive miles and miles and miles out to the middle of nowhere. really really really nowhere....we are in a caravan park. Fine - we can play in a caravan park. But no....we are still lost....soon we find our real destination. The poshest stately home ever with croquet all set up ready to play on the lawn, chandeliers bigger than my living room and plenty of staff who keep bringing bottles of wine, cake, icecream, cake, weird food, cake....Our band finally get to the venue half an hour before stage time. Did i mention that we've never all met and played together before? 29 minutes before stage time and i am fizzy with panic, stressing over the fact that the laidback guitarist has just decided to change the key of one of the songs and we still haven't decided how many verses to do of other songs.
EVentually we are playing. I am pushing as hard as I can for an out of body experience so I can be somewhere else....but! people are dancing! people like it! blimey! even really old people like it and are twisting and doing proper old-people dancing to Beatles and Monkees and Chiffons songs! I have decided I really like posh people.
Onstage Funeral: My newest band 'Now' have been booked to play Skill Wizard club night at Old Blue Last. We are kinda gentle kraut-pop drone mantra double-drummered synth and percussion joys. I wasn't really sure we were a Skill Wizard band when they booked us...but let's give it a go...and go they do...the audience that is....Oh dear. Sometimes it's good being a drummer cos you get to hide at the back.

Brick Lane - the over-dressed armpit of London

There's a festival in Shoreditch/Brick Lane area today (last Friday I mean). I'm primarily concerned with catching the Wild Beasts show - they are always splendid and like nothing else even in the face of diversity (ie lots of shrieking drunk people).
Today they're playing to more people than i've ever seen them play to before - and the people are sneaking closer and closer to them and getting more and more appreciative...
They put us all into a dreamy fugue state and we smile gently to ourselves at their slightly eerie otherworldly pop songs about ghosts and devil's art utensils.

Glam Rock Disco - Proxy Music

Tonight it's back to the 70s. Back to art-school glam with more glitter than the glitter band and t.rex and The Sweet put together would probably have worn.
I have most of it on I think. I brought some glitter from the rock'n'roll jumble sale and applied liberally -later I will find out that this has stained my face in little red patches - something I will bear in mind if I ever want to bunk off school with 'chickenpox'.
It was a fight to get here through the tight jeans and pointy shoes and frantic staring eyes (is someone here more 'on trend' *URK!* (nasty phrase) than me!). But now we're at Catch ready to brave the tempermental PA. Proxy Music is Heidi Heelz and cohorts done up to the glam-nines and playing the (earlier) songs of Roxy Music and a bit of Brian Eno. Some look more like the originals than others...'Bryan' doesn't look that bad though I think maybe Mr Ferry didn't look so worried....'Brian' doesn't quite have the flowing locks but he has quite a cool lanky streak going on. Luckily Heidi looks nothing like Graham Simpson - a fact of which I'm sure she's very grateful.... The others resemble their alter-egos to varying degrees.
It's funny to watch Hoxton people getting excited about Mother Of Pearl and Do The STrand and Virginia Plain but also great. Later I win a prize for being a glam rock dancer. I don't know if this is good or possibly in certain circles should be thought of as somewhat embarassing... I think i'll go for proud and happy with my SIGNED! Roxy Music CD....

Fight Like Apes

Fuck Shoreditch/Hoxton is confusing. More venues in this wee area than the rest of London possibly England possibly the world put together - and they keep changing their name which doesn't help a jot either...
Anyway - Hoxton Bar & Grill - if you manage to get past the super-pouting bouncer and struggle through the braying drunken pub crowds you'll find behind a magicians secret blackout curtain a baby venue. Fight Like Apes are who we've come to see - Singer Kaymay with a voice that could easily be throwing power ballads at the higher echelons of the charts (though she would surely gob on the front row of Wembley Arena when she got therE) is instead fronting an angst-ridden punky synth-heavy and sod your manky guitars style band.Their set grows in front of you with building blocks of Vangelis style sweeping and soaring synths and bass and drums until it can't help but let loose the pure pop behind it all towards us - an unwitting audience tantalized and at the same time scared by the pots and pans throwing (yes really) band and lead singer Kaymay with her Grudge/Ring style presentation - crawling over monitors and amps towards you with her hair dangling menacingly - oh is she going to make that scary croaky strangly noise? no....it's alright. it's dulcet.

And Did I Mention My Bloody Valentine?

I used to seem them in the olden days - they were one of my favourite bands...back when they did Mary Mary and Sunny Sunday Smile and Lovely Sweet Darlene....the best noisy fuzz pop ever. Photos of me in my teens have me doing my best to look like Kevin but sadly failing mainly due to being a girl and half the height...(mini-me perhaps? ).
I still liked them when they went noise-exploring but kinda lost sight of them when they went biggy and played more expensive venues that my pocket money wouldn't stretch too...
and then this year they came back! All the advertisments had 20 year old photos on....did this mean they would now look like the portrait in Dorian Gray's attic?
On seeing them at the Roundhouse....no this meant that actually they were the Dorian Gray of this clever-clever thinking and all looked so much exactly the same that really there was no point taking a new photo. And musically? It was the same. But 20 million times louder!
Being at the front was like having an aeroplane take off in your face (or maybe land on your face...) if you shut your eyes it was like the sun going up but music...it wasn't hearing music it was feeling it - if you think of seeing speakers rattle when the volume goes up and then imagine your body as the speaker vibrating with pure noise. beautiful but as we leave you can see peoples mouths move but no sound comes out....
if there is a band worth going deaf for i think it's probably this one.

poppy & the jezebels/icarus line/ hippy drumming

today was going to be mellow - but then i think hmmmm and leg it to Rough Trade East to see Poppy & The Jezebels...there are lots of young uns with I Have Been To A Festival And Proud Of It Wrist Bands that say 'under age festival' . My Little Pony & My First Festival joys.
Poppy & The Jezebels are tired but still play whimsical/wistful pop mini-melodramas while the rain drizzles down the all-glass windows....damply i squidge off to the middle of nowhere (canning Town) where I have my first practise with a maybe new band i might be in maybe....I end up playing 29 minute long songs that go burble electro-kraut and samba-bosso-disco boogie. i think i am 'jamming'. then i fight the public transport system to get back home to lovely Kings Cross....passing Water Rats i'm lured inside by Icarus Line who I've never actually seen live....the wind machine blows their lovely girly hair all over the place in a perfect rawk video style. The music is Very Loud Blues and I do like the singers shirt.
Do not take your lightbulbs to a gig. I would follow this advice but I'd not meant to go to the show and was stocking up on 100 watters....(yah boo to the environment. warm that global!