Ha ha! I win!
Dec. 8th, 2005 12:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shermaramaSo all of you who didn't come along last night, hey, no worries. I'd never been to the Purple Turtle before but it has a number of appealing features ('I wish I had that barmaid's figure' someone says to me and you know, so do I. Hem.) including a stage I like and good sound. An' a pinball machine. Yeah.
So there was Candy Panic Attack, who kept telling us off any time we applauded; "Save it for the other bands," she says, "they're much better than us." And, well, yeah, technically they're a bit rubbish but they have something else that makes everyone like them anyway. It's bedroom punk with an earnest girl toiling on the drums and a skinny lad staring at his bass and these monotone lyrics with occasional shrieking and a Christmas song (with sleigh bells) about being out of work. I can't capture the sort of gentle charm of it. They seem like they're making the most of tiny pieces of fun. It's good.
And then we did our thing, which went well last night, we managed to get everything kind of balanced. At the end The Smears jumped on stage to congratulate us and Jodie signed a record number of people up to the mailing list. We've finally got a practice next week to get some new songs up and running, but all these gigs recently have got this set working nicely.
The Smears are ace and if at all possible I think we're going to try touring with them next year. The singer admitted, beforehand, to having borrowed a lot from L7 but you know, she'd used it wisely. The drumming was great, fast stuff and drops to a proper swinging half speed, and the backing vocals and bass were great, and I can't even describe this properly because it was all just very pleasing.
After all this, the headliners were a glam-rock band called Dirty Love, who I imagine are used to delighting packed pubs in London's orbital towns. They were polished and loud and rock and all sorts but ultimately, rather bland. That seems like an insult to the extremely characterful singer and her female bassist and backing vocalist, the obvious front people of the band, but. The three backline blokes, hairy and muscly and black-clad, seemed by then to be unnecessary cliches, you know? A drummer flinging his hair about and pulling rock faces wasn't impressing anyone by then, we'd just been watching a blonde lass in evening-wear doing it with not much more than some thoughtful expressions. They appeared to be playing such carefully crafted roles it didn't seem to offer anything, I dunno.
Overall a splendid night, though, and the brain is already contemplating how we can get this tour idea up and running. Yeah. Feel free to miss that too, but it'll be your loss.
So there was Candy Panic Attack, who kept telling us off any time we applauded; "Save it for the other bands," she says, "they're much better than us." And, well, yeah, technically they're a bit rubbish but they have something else that makes everyone like them anyway. It's bedroom punk with an earnest girl toiling on the drums and a skinny lad staring at his bass and these monotone lyrics with occasional shrieking and a Christmas song (with sleigh bells) about being out of work. I can't capture the sort of gentle charm of it. They seem like they're making the most of tiny pieces of fun. It's good.
And then we did our thing, which went well last night, we managed to get everything kind of balanced. At the end The Smears jumped on stage to congratulate us and Jodie signed a record number of people up to the mailing list. We've finally got a practice next week to get some new songs up and running, but all these gigs recently have got this set working nicely.
The Smears are ace and if at all possible I think we're going to try touring with them next year. The singer admitted, beforehand, to having borrowed a lot from L7 but you know, she'd used it wisely. The drumming was great, fast stuff and drops to a proper swinging half speed, and the backing vocals and bass were great, and I can't even describe this properly because it was all just very pleasing.
After all this, the headliners were a glam-rock band called Dirty Love, who I imagine are used to delighting packed pubs in London's orbital towns. They were polished and loud and rock and all sorts but ultimately, rather bland. That seems like an insult to the extremely characterful singer and her female bassist and backing vocalist, the obvious front people of the band, but. The three backline blokes, hairy and muscly and black-clad, seemed by then to be unnecessary cliches, you know? A drummer flinging his hair about and pulling rock faces wasn't impressing anyone by then, we'd just been watching a blonde lass in evening-wear doing it with not much more than some thoughtful expressions. They appeared to be playing such carefully crafted roles it didn't seem to offer anything, I dunno.
Overall a splendid night, though, and the brain is already contemplating how we can get this tour idea up and running. Yeah. Feel free to miss that too, but it'll be your loss.