Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Old Getting Older
There's something about going up to someone in the band at the end of the gig to say hello and having their eyes open wide when they see your t-shirt. That it "goes back a very long way, that goes back a very long way!" is undoubtedly true, but there's nothing wrong with that, and there's an observation about that t-shirt being older than a good number of the people in that crowd just begging to be made.
So, the gig. John Q Public are a mildly amusing punk outfit with a handy feel for the internal song dynamic that makes the likes of Green Day poppishly successful. With an amusing interplay between the bassist and singer, and a guitarist in an ill-advised bandana and more silly faces than Nigel Tufnell, I'm more impressed than I might have been with both the songs and the performance, and the way the singer reminds me of Mark Lyons from Chuck.
Performance is something the main draw for me this evening knows all about. The Grip remain one of the best live bands I've ever seen, and where for some people it's the first time they saw KISS or the first time they heard AC/DC, there's a small number of slightly lesser known bands who first swept me off my feet with the power of rock, and showed me that it was possible to do more than just stand on the stage and reproduce the album. This also has a lot to do with how I grew up to be much more a fan of British bands who I could go and see for myself, with the odd long distance stay-away exception like Journey*!
* next on tour in the UK in June 2011 with the mighty Styx
And it shows how all that stuff has stuck with me, that this revisit to someone I first saw on a stage far longer ago than he'd prefer I say in public is sandwiched between renewing my acquaintance with Chrome Molly earlier this year, and next week's trip to see Wolfsbane yet again. Old rockers never die, they just get a bit less hairy and wear stupid glasses...
The first three tracks are familiar ones - mp3 failure meant I hadn't reminded myself over the course of the day how the first album goes, but I had had it on at home the day before. As with Frobisher's Last Stand, there is more than a hint of Jellyfish's majestic pop-rock genius in some of the newer material. I'll be honest, I was hardly taking pictures at gigs back in the 80s, and with Willie Dowling modelling a fine pair of Elvis-type glasses I was working hard at getting a few decent pictures - I'm happy enough with what I got in the conditions.
Guy James has a remarkably strong voice when he briefly takes the mike on his own, and the rest of the band do a fine job of doing their jobs to allow Willie's star quality and songwriting mastery to come through. I'd have loved it no matter what they played, and I was delighted to visit a new venue and come away with change from £30 having paid to get in and bought the two Jackdaw4 CDs I didn't already have.
Barring THAT single and its lower profile follow up, I don't knowingly know anything by or about headliners Electric Six. But there's no denying a band with a few years under their collective belt in full cry, and the singer does a fantastic job of referring to where we are and confirming that he knows it isn't England. And in between the banter, there's a steely core of musicianship underpinning roughly what you'd get if you stuck the pop sensibilites of Sparks in a blender with the singular madness of Cardiacs and turned it up to eleven. Again I'm impressed beyond expectation, and while I'm not about to run out chasing the entire back catalogue, I'd happily recommend them to anyone who wants a bit of slightly off-kilter rocking excitement.
That said, there's only one highlight of the evening for me and that's chatting to Willie in a t-shirt that I think I'm right in remembering that he went out to the van to get for me on the last occasion I saw The Grip, many many years before. Mark Keen's been dead something like eighteen years now, I think, but I'm not one for forgetting, especially the band in search of whose ep I even made a trip to long gone London record shop Shades.
The Ballad Of Vera Daydream is now back on the mp3 player, and shows little sign of losing its appeal. We may all be old getting older (happily the quotable title of a b-side track from way back when) but the power to rock remains undiminished, if occasionally a little more creaky!
_
So, the gig. John Q Public are a mildly amusing punk outfit with a handy feel for the internal song dynamic that makes the likes of Green Day poppishly successful. With an amusing interplay between the bassist and singer, and a guitarist in an ill-advised bandana and more silly faces than Nigel Tufnell, I'm more impressed than I might have been with both the songs and the performance, and the way the singer reminds me of Mark Lyons from Chuck.
Performance is something the main draw for me this evening knows all about. The Grip remain one of the best live bands I've ever seen, and where for some people it's the first time they saw KISS or the first time they heard AC/DC, there's a small number of slightly lesser known bands who first swept me off my feet with the power of rock, and showed me that it was possible to do more than just stand on the stage and reproduce the album. This also has a lot to do with how I grew up to be much more a fan of British bands who I could go and see for myself, with the odd long distance stay-away exception like Journey*!
* next on tour in the UK in June 2011 with the mighty Styx
And it shows how all that stuff has stuck with me, that this revisit to someone I first saw on a stage far longer ago than he'd prefer I say in public is sandwiched between renewing my acquaintance with Chrome Molly earlier this year, and next week's trip to see Wolfsbane yet again. Old rockers never die, they just get a bit less hairy and wear stupid glasses...
The first three tracks are familiar ones - mp3 failure meant I hadn't reminded myself over the course of the day how the first album goes, but I had had it on at home the day before. As with Frobisher's Last Stand, there is more than a hint of Jellyfish's majestic pop-rock genius in some of the newer material. I'll be honest, I was hardly taking pictures at gigs back in the 80s, and with Willie Dowling modelling a fine pair of Elvis-type glasses I was working hard at getting a few decent pictures - I'm happy enough with what I got in the conditions.
Guy James has a remarkably strong voice when he briefly takes the mike on his own, and the rest of the band do a fine job of doing their jobs to allow Willie's star quality and songwriting mastery to come through. I'd have loved it no matter what they played, and I was delighted to visit a new venue and come away with change from £30 having paid to get in and bought the two Jackdaw4 CDs I didn't already have.
Barring THAT single and its lower profile follow up, I don't knowingly know anything by or about headliners Electric Six. But there's no denying a band with a few years under their collective belt in full cry, and the singer does a fantastic job of referring to where we are and confirming that he knows it isn't England. And in between the banter, there's a steely core of musicianship underpinning roughly what you'd get if you stuck the pop sensibilites of Sparks in a blender with the singular madness of Cardiacs and turned it up to eleven. Again I'm impressed beyond expectation, and while I'm not about to run out chasing the entire back catalogue, I'd happily recommend them to anyone who wants a bit of slightly off-kilter rocking excitement.
That said, there's only one highlight of the evening for me and that's chatting to Willie in a t-shirt that I think I'm right in remembering that he went out to the van to get for me on the last occasion I saw The Grip, many many years before. Mark Keen's been dead something like eighteen years now, I think, but I'm not one for forgetting, especially the band in search of whose ep I even made a trip to long gone London record shop Shades.
The Ballad Of Vera Daydream is now back on the mp3 player, and shows little sign of losing its appeal. We may all be old getting older (happily the quotable title of a b-side track from way back when) but the power to rock remains undiminished, if occasionally a little more creaky!
