26/04/02
The night of surprises
Handsome Dave wanted me to headline this review with 'Ben Eeebleee is the best guitarist in Oxford' but more about that later.
For the first time in ages, the support band blew everyone else offstage. Cat on Form were amazing. They looked too young to be allowed in a pub, but musically they are on a par with most of the great live bands around at the moment. The lazy way to describe their music would be basically like a younger version of ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, or a mix between Fugazi and Sonic Youth. While the lead vocalist was yelling his lyrics, the guitarist would use his vocals as an additional rhythm (almost like an instrument). It was great to see a girl behind the drums. The whole band were just great to watch, they just had so much energy.
It's been a year since I last saw X-1, they seemed to have got a lot more dirtier in sound since then, the whole set seemed to be a rumbling of guitars and bass, like in the orginal form of garage rock. It's a bit dissapointing to watch them really, most of their songs would start out quite interestingly, but somehow they would always end up taking the less exciting route, and the promising starts are never matched by the rest of the songs.
However Eeebleee have improved so much since the last time I saw them. Now that they have Ben on guitars, there seems to be an extra edge to them, and the group seem more like a group rather than a duo and an extra person. The extra angle that Ben has brought in is in his rock guitar riffs, trying to pull the songs in another direction. On paper it doesn't quite sound like it should work, but somehow the beats and the original twee lo fi style of the songs are just made more interesting by the new guitar lines.
Gig Count: 36
20/04/02
What do their throats feel like in the morning?
Watching Coma Kai and Jor tonight left me with one question. What do their throats feel like in the morning, after spending the evening before growling so much. Anyway, I don't think I'm suited to this rawk thing that much, at least I'm trying it out. All their songs sound pretty much the same, the heavy basslines with the aforementioned growling vocals. Imagine band rehersals. 'Hey! Let's reherse the song that goes 'growl growl growl' oh and then practice that other 'growl growl growl' song.'
Anyway I'll leave you with 2 reasons why rock music is so practical.
1) It's fashionable to wear long coats, so it's pretty handy to keep warm in the winter.
2) For punk bands, safety pins are used as a fashion item, but they can come in handy for example if your trousers split or something. You can keep them together, while still maintaining you're doing it for fashion.
Gig Count: 35
16/04/02
Now this deserves hype
Or not, as we all know anything that is hyped generally is shit. So let's keep this our little secret. The dj of Olympic Lifts was fantastic. Sampling from records by Michael Jackson, the Star Wars theme, Jackson 5, and so on he djed for about 10-15 minutes before the rest of the band came on. After him, the band were a bit of a let down, but they were still pretty good, in a hip hop sort of way. But at least they looked like they were enjoying being up there on the stage, there were more smiles on the stage at the Zodiac than I have seen for ages. And I haven't ever seen that many people dancing either, when Lo Fidelity Allstars came on. They played a pretty storming set, with the 70s Funk basslines pretty much making everyone dance/groove along to the tracks. The only lulls in the evening were when they were playing the more chilled out songs, which proved a bit harder to dance along to, but then the mood would pick up immediately as they started on the more up tempo ones. It's quite annoying how these bands who are doing someting interesting with their influences, picking up something from the 70s, and then pulling it into the current day, are only playing to half full venues, when other bands who are just copying bands before them (no names mentioned... ahem) are playing to a packed venue. Why do you want to listen to carbon copies of other bands, when you can enjoy bands doing something creative and new instead?
Gig Count: 34
14/04/02
Arrgh not again!
I'm pissed again. Anyway, the gig tonight was great. Jimmy Crosskey pretty much played the same set as the last time he played Trailer Park, but when the songs are so ace, who would complain? And he even played a cover of the Candyskins' Wembley! Anyway I'm looking forward to the band he's putting together in time for this summer's Truck. After Jimmy was the first of the two Goldrush sets. This seemed to feature mainly the singles that they've released as Goldrush, such as Love Is Here, and um I can't remember any others. Sorry, wasn't paying much attention through Rachel Dadd's set, but she sounded great. And then to the second Goldrush set. This time they played more rarer material, such as the B-side to their next single, that they reckon they'll never ever play live again, and also some songs of the forthcoming album. And then they played some early Goldrush/Whispering Bob songs too, like Hurricane, Don't Bring Me Down (which will also be the title of their album) and Joy is A High Window (though sadly without the flute solo). They did promise a request session, but I was quite disappointed with that, since they didn't play any of the requests, such as Pocket Socket Rocket, Sweet Child of Mine or any other covers.
Gig Count: 33
13/04/02
Hype, hype and more hype
Tonight, the Zodiac was packed, and it was a shame that the audience didn't get that good bands for their money (why can't they turn up for all the good bands?). Walking in halfway through The Libertines' set, they were nothing special, and didn't really drag me out of the bar. To be honest, The Vines weren't as bad as I expected, I'd read all the shite reviews, but why should there be so much hype about them? Their slow songs were bloody dull, and all their fast songs seemed to end up in yelling or sounded like their single Highly Evolved, in fact the best song of their set was Highly Evolved. There are so many bands around who sound exactly like them. They sounded like some strange agglomeration of Oasis, Weezer and even Gomez at times. There were moments when they actually reminded me of the Buffseeds, and seem to be coming from the same approach as Crackout. This showed especially in their choice of covers, Miss Jackson by Outcast. They made it into the blandest, least exciting song ever. Compare with what Crackout managed with their cover of Caught Out There, and there's the proof that there should be better bands to hype up. But maybe this is the problem, exciting music doesn't sell, while bland and dull bands are more marketable.
More exciting for me (if you've read some of my rants before) was that *shock horror* the djs at the club afterwards played some decent music. As well as songs by new bands (that aren't so good, but hey it's a start) they've also started playing bootlegs! And they seemed to go down pretty well, so hopefully they'll stay on.. it only took them a couple of months to catch up with the current trend...
Gig Count: 32
08/04/02
| The Cellar & Alcohol Don't Mix |
07/04/02
Revolution Rock
Blink 182 have a lot to answer for. Firebrand were just a clone of them. The only vaguely interesting thing to say about them was that one of their songs seemed to feature the guitar hook of Boys Don't Cry by the Cure. The surprise of the evening were Winnebago Deal, who would have been Spinal Tap, if they had the shells and stonehenge on stage. They turned it up to 11, proved the reason for the existence of the mullet (to fill the stage with hair of course) and provided the most noise on stage by a duo since the White Stripes.
Then it went all political. Looptroop were a hip hop group, like Mark B and Blade, but with a political message. Each of their songs were dedicated to things like CCTV cameras, capitalism and the police. The (International) Noise Conspiracy carried on the political theme, but without pushing the message through so much. They came across as a hybrid of ...Trail of Dead and Rocket From the Crypt, with the hair and image of the former and the showmanship of the latter. However some of what they did seem to be a bit hypocritical. In the middle of their set, they plugged their current single, which was all about how evil the capitalist world is, but yet they want us to buy it. See the contradiction in that?
Gig Count: 30
04/04/02
Do they actually want to be in the audience more?
It started pretty normally. New band Me Against Them were Ok. They sounded like a cross between Oasis (earlier Rock and Roll stuff), T-Rex and The Rolling Stones, and they weren't too bad by the end. It was a pretty ragged show for Dustball, they've played better. But no doubt the technical problems didn't help, Ben's guitar pedals weren't working, and hey! Jamie broke a string, just like the old Dustball days. They played some new songs that sound even rockier than the current set of songs they're playing, which can only be a good thing. Gallon Drunk didn't seem to be at their best either. Their lead singer, like Jamie Dustball, decided to spend part of the set wondering around in front of the stage instead. The more interesting songs in their set were the more rocky, bluesier tracks, that if they kept on going would have been quite amusing. However they just kept on interupting those with more slower songs that didn't work quite as well. More amusingly was the end of the set, no one quite knew when it was coming. First one band member decided to come off stage, and went to the bar for a pint instead, then for their final song, they seemed to end on this mouth organ solo, that faded away, and everyone thought it was over, but no, they came back for more.
Gig Count: 29