...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead and The Rock of Travolta @ the Zodiac, 5th December, 2000

When ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead played in April, it was to a room with less than 100 people. The Rock of Travolta played their first gig in a barn, to less than 100 people. It's amazing how quickly a good band can spread, tonight the Zodiac was packed.

The Rock of Travolta are probably the best suited local band to support at this gig. They seem to have come from the same musical influences as The Trail of Dead, and seem to be heading in the same way too. Death has left the band, but now, on loan from Whispering Bob, is the ubiquitous Joe Bennett, who seems to be playing with every single local band. TROT's approach is definately interesting, letting 'Handsome' Dave lead the melody with his guitar, instead of with vocals. Like with the Trail of Dead (as we shall see later), the band are multi-instrumentalists, with Phill, Ros and Joey playing between them the bass, keyboards, drums and cello, sometimes swopping instruments within the same song. But the highlight was possibly 'I am Your Father', already an excellent track, but made even better by the trumpet from Joe, another multi-instrumentalist.

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead seemed to have influenced The Rock of Travolta, if not directly, then just by getting them to dust off their old Sonic Youth records. The way the band (trail of dead) behaved deserved not merely the attention of the crowd at the Zodiac but a larger audience, for the first half of the set they just played songs, one running into another, but then as the set wore on something clicked within the band and they became livlier and started to interact with the audience more, telling us about their agrarian background in Texas, and even stopping a song mid-flow because someone in the front row yawned. The final 15 minutes were unbelievable, the band just threw themselves (literally) into the music, jumping around on stage and striking the rock poses to A Perfect Teenhood. Drummer/guitarist Jason was probably the strangest member of the band, playing the drums like a madman, and coming up with some pretty weird comments.

In fact the two bands tonight were probably the only bands who could pull off the art of rock posing successfully. To a small audience their behaviour may be worthy of cringing however tonight they both showed that they both deserve greater attention and adoration.