Hi. After hearing Marceline’s grief over the Data Panik support I thought I would share a Myspace exchange I have recently been part of. I admit to being a little surly with the ‘promoter’ concerned but it gets my goat. I’m not interested in naming and shaming so I have removed the promotion ‘company’s name but I’ll spill the beans if you want though I doubt anyone will have contact with them…

Enjoy.

PROMOTION COMPANY: “Hi. ****** *** Events are organising a massive all day gig on the 22nd of january at the The **** ****, ******** 2006 and wondered if you would be interested in playing this gig. There will be about 10 bands playing in all therefore a lot of potential exposure to new fans to broaden your fan base. As well as this there are other gigs available in January throughout the UK. 08th of january *** ******** , ******** 15th of january The **********, ******* 21st of january *** *********,************ 22nd of january *** **** **** ******** 29th of january *** ***** ****, ********* All you have to do to seal a place on this gig is to tell us what address to send tickets to for you to sell! We give all bands 30 tickets in which we get the money for the first 20 and they get the money for the rest! Tickets are to be sold for £5 each giving you a potential profit of £50 I hope you are interested in this offer and look forward to hearing from you soon. ****** *** Events”

ME: “Many thanks for the offer but promoting gigs is your job, not mine. I just play.”

PROMOTION COMPANY: “What? We are event organisers, also how do you promote a show that sees bands playing with no fan base? We are helping bands out here. ”

ME: “”All you have to do to seal a place on this gig is to tell us what address to send tickets to for you to sell! We give all bands 30 tickets in which we get the money for the first 20 and they get the money for the rest! Tickets are to be sold for £5 each giving you a potential profit of £50″
Like I said, I play music, you sell tickets. Its a promoter/performer role kind of thing. I am also a promoter in Nottingham. If I suggested to a band that they should be paid for their efforts based on them effectively doing my job for me I would expect nothing less than for them to tell me to get screwed.
Perpetuating that kind of deal where bands are somehow responsible for the turnout at gigs helps no one, it creates a world of opportunist, lazy promoters and bands destined to play to 20 of their mates week in week out.
Maybe it’s what some folks want but there’s quicker ways to the top in the music world.
It just involves developing a strong tolerance for the taste of cock.
Best, Chris ”

PROMOTION COMPANY: “I am afraid that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
If you could tell me how to promote a band with no fanbase but their friends then please do, no matter how many fliers you send out no one will come to see a band they have never heard of. The way we do it is 10 bands each bring 20 people which unless I am wrong is 200 people which is 10 times the amount of people they usually play to.
Do you understand that we have costs to cover?
This way we can guarantee a large turnout and money upfront. What could be better?
Who on earth would go to see YOU play if you did not find people. We dont know your fan base, you do. If you can safely say that if we “promote” the gig, using fliers posters etc that 200 people would buy tickets before the event began then ok, I am wrong.
But if not you have to do the hard work not us. We get the venue sorted, organise the gig and find the bands. We get it all sorted the bands sell the tickets as they are the ones playing the show. Bands mess you around too much saying that they can bring people but never do this way we are saving our backs.
I laugh at your remarks, why should we attempt to sell tickets for a unnamed band?”

ME: “”I laugh at your remarks, why should we attempt to sell tickets for a unnamed band?”
I give in. Because you’re a promoter?

Its all gone a bit quiet since. Awww fuck it. They’re called Silver Fox events. They’re on the world of the Myspace.

Or what I have been doing instead of being here

Listening To: Last Exit “Koln”, Soundgarden “Badmotorfinger”, The Harry Smith Anthology Of American Folk Music Volume 4, Charley Patton “Screamin and Hollerin The Blues”, John Fahey “City Of Refuge”, The White Stripes “Elephant”, Notorious Hi-Fi Killers “2 song demo”, Silver Jews “Tanglewood Numbers”, Bonnie Billy/Tortoise covers LP, No New York reissue and the usual Thin Lizzy/ZZ Top/ ACDC / Hendrix

Reading: Crosstown Traffic by Charles Shaar Murray

Working on: 2 Lords record sleeves, learning a Beatles song to record on Weds for the BBC, sorting a mortgage out, convincing my landlady to drop ten grand off her asking price, selling my Saab, buying a more economical car, getting an Echoplex, draught proofing my house, playing Last of the Real Hardmen song with a tape loop machine, making a solo record from collages, booking a tour

Looking forward to: some rest

I didn’t get to see Bob Dylan. There seemed to be about 20 gigs on in Nottingham on one night and even though I tried to lay plans to get into the fortress that is the Ice Arena, Bob doesn’t do guest lists for anybody apparently – let alone me pretending to be someone I am not in order to sneak in.
Next door to the Ice Arena is Bunkers Hill where Yelp Of Sords is playing. When the Dylan crowd begins pouring out of the Ice Arena at 9.30 I can only assume that he’s either reinvented himself again so comprehensively as to drive away his fan base, or that he wants to get packed up in time to pop in and see the Bunkers gig. It is unfortunately neither.
The bar downstairs at Bunkers is rammed with Dylan fans. There are a lot of folks who enjoy the mythology of music as much as the music itself. When you ask them what their favourite album is they quote reviews back at you. So it’s hardly surprising that someone who self mythologizes and invents as much as Dylan has such a huge fan base. Or that their interest in the words and opinions of others means they assume that the rest of the world is just as interested in theirs. So the bar is rammed with failed music journalists shouting their personal reviews of the show at no one in particular.
“A good bar band spoiled by a guy on the side of the stage playing out of tune piano and mumbling” was one. “I had to stop him (points at friend) from leaving” was another. A work colleague told me it was “bizarre”.
It seems quite apt to me that Dylan is in town as, in terms of truly popular culture, he was the first person to really actively seek to undercut an audience’s expectations or to drag an audience to where he wanted them to be – regardless of whether or not they wanted to be dragged. His electric conversion sounds positively pleasant to us these days but back then it was viewed as nothing short of total war by the folk crowd that hung on his every word (nowadays he seems to divide crowds in equal measure for different reasons).
Audience comfort level is something that’s at the forefront of my mind when watching Yelp Of Sords, the solo guise of Dan who previously played in Brighton’s Cat On Form. I don’t think any of COF would object to me saying that their sound was related closely to old school (mainly American) emo. YOS stretches this even further into territory so cathartic and stripped that it raises all kinds of questions as to exactly what the purpose of the music is in a live setting and I all I can conclude is that either Dan wants us to feel as awkward as he presumably does or he hasn’t considered the audience in the first place.
We’re all happy and comfortable to hear a person pour their heart out onstage: what used to be considered to be ’emo’ is pretty much mainstream pop these days and even the more extreme examples of the genre (Moss Icon, Indian Summer, Navio Forge) are relatively palatable due to the osmosis of that ‘twinkly-guitar-with-loud-bits’ style into mainstream chart music. But strip it down to a man with an acoustic guitar screaming his guts out and contorting in his chair and you have to concede that YOS at least proves there are ways of making ’emo’ music that are still too uncomfortable for most folks to handle.
Melbourne, Australia’s Justice Yeldham has a similar effect on his crowd. Yeldham’s live performance consists of grinding his face into a sheet of mic’d up plate glass. It is hideous for a variety of reasons.
One is that the transparency of the glass means you get to view his face all squished up against the other side of the glass like a kid on a special bus wiping his nose down the window as you overtake them on the motorway. Another reason is the sound really is quite nasty. The resonant properties of the glass means as he yells onto/into it and then pulls and squeezes at the sheet, the pitch of his voice wildly varies and wavers and this in turn is run through some truly ugly processing that makes it sound like a Dalek in it’s death throes.
I also have a real aversion to Savlon antiseptic cream too so I was pretty freaked out just 15 seconds after he took to the stage at Cabaret and elaborately squeezed half of a family sized tube of the stuff into his mouth in preparation for his performance.
Quite often, involving objects that have their own subtext in a live performance is gimmicky to the extreme. What I mean is that it could be considered fairly wild to play a guitar with, say, a baby’s head. It would be less wild to play it with a cauliflower. The wildness comes from the object being a signifier of other things – not from the sound created, as the sonic properties of both objects are pretty similar. I could be wrong but it seems to me that maybe Yeldham made a decision to use glass for sonic reasons first and foremost and that the finale of smashing his already bloody face through it is some sort of logical conclusion to his work in the field. I mean this in comparison to deciding outright that itwould be wild to smash glass on your face regardless of what it sounded like – purely for shock effect.
Because after all, we’re in the realm of sonics here right? This is a ‘gig’ even if it’s a strange one. Jonny, who promoted the night, said he was disappointed that more people didn’t turn out and it made me think about what Justice Yeldham’s set really was. It is sonic exploration and improvisation but it also performance art and the performance art has a definite, pre-determined conclusion (that he will smash his face through the glass – I guess the only undetermined part is when it will happen). I guess Yeldham sees what he does in the non-gimmicky category. Otherwise,why mic it up at all? Why not just smash the glass over your face?
Someone I work with said something interesting when they asked me what I did last night and I told them about this gig. They seemed very unsurprised by what I recounted and just said
“Oh, right. Like the Jim Rose Circus?*”
And I thought, well, yes it was – ultimately.
And the weird thing is if you just advertise it as
“TONIGHT A MAN IS GOING TO SMASH HIS FACE INTO A SHEET OF GLASS – £4”
– I reckon the turn out would be colossal. But is that what the guy wants? But even those there (who have an interest in free noise and avant garde music) were there for the pay off – the spectacle of watching this guy injure himself. The gore. How is that different to watching a man pump his own stomach or stick pins in himself?
I guess for him the physical part of things is a partly cathartic process, like performing his songs is for Dan in Yelp Of Sords. It seems with Yelp Of Sords that Dan wants to let out some primal scream style energy release. In fact he says as much when describing the reasons for one song (strangely the one song where he sang conventionally) as being connected to expressing the death of a loved one in a pure release of energy.
So even though they’re unconnected and on different bills if you look at it, Yelp Of Sords and Justice Yeldham have a lot in common – as an audience member at least. In terms of challenging an audience and provoking a reaction I found it fascinating that Yelp Of Sords was harder to watch and deal with than a man bleeding from his face and screaming. And what’s even more fascinating is that, because he plays guitar and sings, Yelp Of Sords is the ‘conventional act’ whereas Yeldham is the ‘left field’ act. But in actual fact the sonic aspect of Yeldham’s performance is more considered and crucial than that of Yelp Of Sords (because it’s what stops Yeldham being purely a freak show) and in turn the cathartic release that you’d think would make up Yeldhams show in it’s entirety is harder hitting from Yelp Of Sords.

Weird.

And even weirder is that whereas Dan and Justice managed to confuse a handful of people with their art, Dylan seemed to piss off several thousand people without injuring himself, or even trying. Seems if challenging your audience is the most important thing then the originator is still the king.

“I don’t get it. Is this a happy ending or a sad ending?”
“It’s an ending”

* Touring freak show from the early 90s featuring Mr Lifto, The Human Pin Cushion and the legendary Bile Beer.

In my job I work sporadically. I occasionally work really hard. I then take a well deserved break and email people. These emails exchanges are often profound, really. On Friday we did one of those crappy Myspace 20 questions things and I want to share the mundanity of it all with everyone.

The people are:

ROBERT CLULEY – ‘Bob’ works in some cushy office in Leicester in a job his Mum got him training graduates to do something or other. He is singer and mainman behind The Fabulous Foxes.

GARETH HARDWICK – Works for the Dept For Agriculture in some map logging role. I think. He is also my housemate and makes music as a solo artiste and in the amusingly named Bologna Pony. The night before this he vomited in the hallway of the house I share with him after busting into my room at 4.30 am in his pants. Amazingly, he made it to work at 8am.

MATTHEW NEWNHAM – Works for Experian and knows everything about you. He runs Gringo Records. He is my neighbour and colleague in the Damn You! empire.

IAN SCANLON – Is busy curing cancer in Surrey. He is a member of Hey Colossus, Black Horse and Econoline. He is a grumpy old man.

CHRIS SUMMERLIN – Is me. And I work for Nottingham City Council.

I stole the questions from another website, spelling is the interviewees own.

Is the glass half empty or half full?

RC: At the minute, after a fruitless night on opposite ends of a sofa with a girl, it’s definitely half empty.
GH: half full
MN: I am working. No time to answer questions.
IS: Half empty, and what’s left is sour! That certainly used to be the case, over the past two years though, it has become half full, and the best bit is left.
CS: As I realise the only thing that is for certain is my own death I begrudgingly accept the glass is half empty

Of what?

RC: Guiness, red wine, lust and hope.
GH: at the minute, water
IS: Today I am thinking about mortality the glass is half full of the rest of my life. I reckon I am just about halfway through.
CS: Cum

What makes you angry?

RC: Mainly, stupidity, which is ironic because my flatmate is the most stupid perosn I’ve ever met. Although thinking about it, Ben makes me angrier than anyone so it makes sense. Other than Ben, public transport, pikeys, people in cars who shout things or throw things, jobsworths, bad manners (eg you hold a door open for someone and they don’t say thank you), when you’re walking behind someone in town and they suddenly stop right in front of you, that really gets my goat. You could pretty much categorise everything that makes me angry as “other people”.
GH: noisy neighbours, dogshit on the pavement outside my house
IS: Wasting time.
CS: Internet message boards and the stupid supposed ethical and moral rules that are somehow enforced by a mythical higher power. You can say you hated a band so much you wanted them to drown but I can’t tell you that if I ever meet you I’ll kick your face onto the backside of your head and somehow one thing is allowed and the other is evidence to get me barred from the ‘community’ concerned. The internet has somehow given the right for people to be personally offensive about everyone’s artistic endeavours, even if the artist never wanted anyone’s opinion anyway. To quote Neil Johnson “the internet needs to walk into a pub in Arnold sometime and start talking about what’s right and wrong”

What makes you laugh?

RC: Jokes, other peoples’ misfortune, Homer Simpson. Stupidity. My friends. My stupid friends. The life of Will Green.
GH: dumber and dumberest with Noddy Holder
IS: bitterly, some of the things people tell me; heartily some of the other things people tell me
CS: The Simpsons. My friends. Trading Places with Dan Ackroyd and Eddie Murphy. Other people’s misfortune. Bad taste jokes.

Who’s your favourite singer?

RC: Bob Dylan of course!
GH: DC Berman
IS: Neil Young/ Stevie Wonder
CS: Will Oldham/Captain Beefheart

And what’s your favourite line from a song?

RC:I haven’t a clue.
GH: ‘In 1984, i was hospitalised for approaching perfection’
IS: “Music is a world within itself
With a language we all understand
With an equal opportunity
For all to sing, dance and clap their hands”
Sir Duke by Stevie Wonder
CS: At the moment it is
“I would rather live in a trash can
Than see you happy with another man”
I’m sure it will change but it does tend to flit from one Silver Jews song to another.

Which song do you wish you had written?

RC: For the wrong reasons Smells Like Teen Spirit, Creep, Song Two. For the right reasons It Takes a Lot to Laugh it Takes a Train to Cry by Dylan or The Hour That the Ship Comes In.
GH: The Artificial Arch Pine Song by Stars of the Lid
IS: Helpless by Neil Young or Queen of the savages by the Magnetic fields or
http://www.mamarocks.com/how_great_thou_art.htm just for the chorus
CS: I think Come In by Palace Brothers would be it, either that or Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles by Beefheart.

What could you not live without?

RC: I don’t feel I can answer this truthfully. I had to go two weeks with only £4.30 to my name once, that taught me that I can’t live very happily without money and food, or at least money for food. Other than that, the hope that one day I won’t work in a rubbish office job keeps me going, if I didn’t have that I don’t think it would be living. Looking forward to bank holidays and days off by the sea, with friends, beers, food, cricket on the beach, a test match on tv, a beer festival in the evening with some proper English folk music, a smoke, a stroll to get ice cream and a king sized double bed.
GH: Oxygen, food & water
IS: the few people I actually like
CS: The love and affection of a good woman.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given?

RC: I used to have loads of little adages that people told me and I’d try to stick to but it’s not really worked out for the best, so now I go with Evelyn Waugh who said that advice is something a wise man doesn’t need it and fool doesn’t listen to.
GH: Most things aren’t worth worrying about
IS: Go for it, take good care of your gums
CS: Don’t shit where you eat.

What makes you tick?

RC: What motives me? I’m not sure.
GH: Good company & good music
IS: Hate and just occasionally love.
CS: Heels

If you weren’t you, who would you be?

RC: I’d like to be someone who is naturally good enough at a sport to be a top level professional without having to try. Preferably, this sport would be cricket or golf for the gentle-paced lifestyle and travelling, or football or basketball for the chicks. Not rugby though, it’s for gays.
GH: No idea
IS: Superman or one of Girls Aloud
CS: Robert Crumb

What would you kill for?

RC: That’s a loaded question, kill what? I’d kill a spider for a girl but I wouldn’t kill another person, unless the girl was really hot.
GH: LOVE
IS: Food, shelter, survival, conveniance
CS: My children or my wife if I was married or I was a father. I am neither so: nothing.

What is your favourite work of art?

RC: I like the early works of Palozzi. The ones where he just cut out pictures before he got into making patterns and junk sculptures.
GH: Vir heroicus sublimins by Barnett Newman
IS: gravity’s rainbow by Thomas Pynchon or the rabbit books by John Updike.. if we’re talking visual art..hmmm composition VII by Kandinsky or seurat’s The circus, or maybe Picasso’s Guernica
CS: The white horse sculpture in the window of the first floor flat above the E. Ploton shop on the A1 road into Highbury in London. I would maybe kill for that, actually. Or I would certainly pay a lot of my money to own it.

What is the best drug?

RC: I don’t know. A free one. No, in fact the best drug is the one you can’t quite get. When I was younger we’d go round someone’s house for a smoke, and the excitement trying to get hold of some gear was such that when youc ouldn’t get any you’d swear blind that you’d missed out on the best drug. If that makes sense.
GH: DRUGS ARE BAD
IS: Penicillin, an oldie but a goodie.. newer ones like herceptin and Sorafenib are doing good
CS: Love. Actually, that’s a lie. I’d say cocaine seems to do the job it’s supposed to do with most efficiency but I don’t have much experience in the field.

How would you like to be remembered?

RC: Just being remembered would be nice. But really being thought of as the thinking man’s punk rocker is what I’d like.
GH: A good guy
IS: By my grandchildren as a good chap
CS: Fondly

What is your earliest memory?

RC: Timescales get pretty messed up when I reminisce so I’m not sure if it’s my earliest memory but I can remember some birthday parties with cakes made to look like hedgehogs, family Christmas before my Auntie died (something which somewhat trumatised my family I think) and school.
GH: falling asleep on the living room sofa after playschool
IS: Clear memory, My brother opening the door of our house in Hereford in 1981 and the snow being up to my shoulder coincidentally that was just after I got my glasses which explains why up ’til the age of 5 I have no visual memories just sensations of it being dark or bright and sounds I remember being terrified by one sound, that was war of the worlds by Jeff wayne NO
SHIT.
CS: I think my Mum telling the teachers at nursery that I had a crush on a girl playing on the trampoline called Charlotte. I’m sure I remember something earlier but I can’t place it.

Who would you have paint your portrait?

RC: I have no idea.
GH: Would anyone want to?
IS: My grandchildren (eventually), nowadays my nieces and nephews
CS: Crumb / Don Van Vliet

Favourite comic strip?

RC: Life in Hell.
GH: Modern Toss
IS: The Watchmen
CS: Anything by Crumb

What’s your favourite fairytale?

RC: The tortoise and the hare.
GH: Any Brothers Grimm
IS: Its a Wonderful Life
CS: Little Red Riding Hood

And favourite joke?

RC: At the minute: A penguin walks into a bar, orders a pint and says to the barman “I’m meeting my brother in here, has he been in yet?” The barman responds, “I don’t know, what does he look like?”
GH: When is bedtime at the Neverland ranch? When the big hand touches the little hand.
IS: chris summerlin
CS: The priest and the fucker fish

What is your biggest regret?

RC: I have three joint ones. Firstly, not playing cricket in my youth. Secondly, wasting years being a wimp. I have a supportive family who’d have been happy for me to have a go doing something I loved but for some reason I’ve drifted doing things I didn’t mind. Three, Josie Faulkner.
GH: Going to university
IS: Being too interested in being a “proper” rock careerist to either pay attention to being good at chemistry, or practicing/ gigging enough to be any good t music/ also not actually getting involved in the DIY scene when i was young enough to really get stuck in and tour/ go to europe and not have to worry about “real” life/ jobs.
CS: That I am not living in Australia right now.

Has your heart ever been broken?

RC: Sadly, yes it has. By girls and family.
GH: Yes
IS: yes on a number of occasions but never irrevocably
CS: comprehensively

Where was your best-received gig?

RC: That I played? Leicester.
GH: Q-Arts Derby, June 2005
IS: econoline groningen the Vera, Jet Johnson Brighton Freebutt , cash cow the laurel tree camden, hey colossus Brighton freebutt, Last of the real hardmen bardens!
CS: Wolves Of Greece, Radio One

What would your last meal consist of?

RC: Meat and plenty of it. For a drink, possibly human blood and LSD.
GH: Bangers and mash
IS: I would be allowed to cook it and it would be roasted squash, goat’s cheese, and forest mushroom rissotto with rocket salad
CS: Brie and mushroom parcels with sweet chilli sauce.
Steak with some sort of mustard sauce and loads of chips.
Apple Strudel with ice cream exactly like my old neighbour Polish Katie made.
A pint of beer.

OK, you’re facing the firing squad. Any last requests?

RC: A pardon. Or that a vampire would bite me, that way I’d become an immortal undead, spending nights rocking out in goth clubs and partying. Having to kill and drink blood would be a downside but if I stuck to pikeys, hippies and goths I think I’d be doing the world a favour in an odd way.
GH: Can I go now?
IS: Can I shoot a few people first. I have a list.
CS: That they don’t shoot me. Failing that, I would like Ron Asheton to play the opening riff to TV Eye by The Stooges really loud through a wall of amps as the process takes place.

Young man, early 20s, goes to see semi-popular American touring band. Said band offer up partly improvised music: noisy, rhythmical and a total assault on the senses. Two of the members of the band are dressed as koi carp.
This is officially a

and is

and

In fact, it’s almost too much to take on board. So our man doesn’t take it all on board. In fact he only takes the surface in at all. The equipment, the sounds and the omnipresent bullshit gimmicks that the Yanks keep laying on our asses EVERY FUCKING TIME. He adds this up and comes to the conclusion this band are speaking vitally to him and about him and the human condition he empathises with because that is, after all, what liking a band is about -understanding them and feeling they understand you – right?

Our young man places an advert on the modern internet. It says

BAND MEMBERS WANTED

It talks about noise, freedom, Voivod, Wolf Eyes and the burgeoning London Grime scene (because our man is open to all culture – he’s no narrow minded punk rocker no way no how).
He finds a bunch of other like minded souls. They form a band called

and they garner between 3 and 4 hundred friends on the Myspace. They book their first show before they’ve even rehearsed and lots of people have bright pink badges on their coats, shirts and knapsacks with the image of an erect penis on it. The words COLLISION! PANTHER! NOW! are arcing out of the wee hole.

They finally get their shit together to rehearse a couple of days before their first show, at Bardens in Stoke Newington, opening for

from Rhode Island.

No one really knows what to play at the rehearsal. They realise that in fact they have 4 guitarists and nothing else. But it’s cool, they have some little mini mixers and some contact mics and before you know it they’re all strapping mics to their ball bags and screaming into Electro Harmonix filter pedals that have gaffa tape over the logo that reads

RADICAL ACTION BASTARD

They do this for about 20 mins and it doesn’t seem enough. One of the guys suggests they dress up and you know what? They’ve all seen bands do that too and it’s been

and

and

so they all go and buy matching orange tie dye leggings and hotpants and sort of crazy turban styled headgear they make from towelling nappies. They are ready.

ULTIMATE / (HORSE) DESTRUCTION? : ! are quite a draw and by the time of COLLISION! PANTHER! NOW!’s entry into the live arena there is a large crowd. COLLISION! PANTHER! NOW! take the stage by force and whip up severe terror on the crowd who are by and large loving it. They kind of peter out after 10 mins or so but one of the guys runs into the crowd brandishing his guitar like some kind of bayonet device, spilling pints wherever he goes but you know, fuck it, this is the NOW, dude and you have to live with it. If COLLISION! PANTHER! NOW! are too

for you then go to your stupid rock gig – loser!

No one really knows when the set is over, least of all the band members until the guy playing the white Fender Jaguar that his Mum and Dad bought him throws it face down onto the floor and the band run off, their towelling headgear falling off and onto the floor as they dash into the toilets. It is a wild success. Afterwards a guy who runs an internet webzine called MASSIVE MEAT SNAKE who is reviewing the gig asks our young guy what influences COLLISION! PANTHER! NOW!’s sound.

“Oh, you know, free noise, improv, danger, love, death, John Cage, Steve Reich, hip hop” they answer.

A girl called FLAPJACK speaks to the band about putting a CDR out packaged in a sanitary towel on her label simply called

filled with water in which the drummer (who only plays 8 sets of hi hats), the bassist (playing an amplified cycle tyre) and the guitarist (who plays his 19 string guitar with a floret of broccoli) writhe around in while the singer pulls chunks of offal out of his pants and throws them into the crowd who are delighted to find the offal is contact mic’d and running through a filter bank.
By the time the set finishes lots of people have thrown caution to the wind and are in the paddling pool too. A series of rabid online photo bloggers are snapping the action on digital cameras in the hope that someone’s nipple falls out of their dress. People are really

Somewhere in the crowd, another young man is trying to take it all in. He decides to form a band, inspired by the events and the way they spoke to him. He understood them and they understood him. Even though no words were sung, shouted or spoken he feels the bands got through to him though he isn’t sure exactly what was said. It’s more of a feeling right?
The next day on his internet blog called

he reviews the gig and marvels at the freedom displayed, the choice of amazing sounds, the forward thinking, the improvised nature, the wonder, the revolutionary approach.

Later in the week he also reviews a show by The Unit Ama and he says they are

(Please note I am not calling this IGGY POP & THE STOOGES at the CARLING APOLLO)

I had a discussion last night coming back from Leeds about the validity of these Don’t Look Back shows. I’ve never made a record that anyone called a “classic” so I don’t know for sure how I would feel if someone asked me to play something I made in the past in its entirety. I think I might ask myself what was wrong with my current output. Surely it’s just like saying
“What you do now sucks so play what we like”.
Maybe it flatters a performers ego enough to be part of it? It makes me feel weird that’s all I know. Mudhoney (by their own admission) never made a good record until Tomorrow Hit Today. I wonder how they feel about playing Superfuzz Bigmuff? Or more precisely I wonder how they feel about pulling more people in for that than their normal shows? It’s a good idea don’t get me wrong. The average music fan who was a drunken teenager when Touch Me I’m Sick hit is probably earning enough in 2005 to have enough disposable income to be able to afford to relive their youth. But it seems like the nail in the coffin for a band to have to go backwards like this. To look back. The Blues Explosion’s Orange is by far my favourite record in their back catalogue. If I went to see them and they played every song off it I’d be beside myself but paying to see them do it (guaranteed) is a little like admitting what I already know and I don’t WANT to write them off. I want the next JSBX record to be killer because I am a fan. I wanted the last Mudhoney record to be killer and it WAS but there they are doing something nearly 20 years old. And the best Dinosaur show I ever saw was J Mascis & The Fog! There’s plenty of proof that these artists are making the best music of their lives but unfortunately the money is in nostalgia right now. But I do concede at least You’re Living All Over Me or Superfuzz could be considered classic albums but Cat Power’s Covers Record? Mum? Ocean Songs? Hmmm.

So anyway, never one to not be a hypocritical cocksucker, I took my 30 quid and bought a ticket for the Stooges.

I figure The Stooges is different. Mainly because Funhouse really is a classic record. And also because the Asheton Brothers never really got their dues. And because (as far as I know) The Stooges only played once in the UK originally and since then it’s just been festivals too big to enjoy and too pricey to get into. And also because Mike Watt is on bass.
But still, I never expected it to be anything other than good entertainment. This is because I know, despite being the real wild child etc etc, Iggy Pop would do anything for a tenner and any decision to reunite with the Ashetons (of whom he stated “they couldn’t put together a home aquarium”) is surely motivated by the payout. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not paying £30 to sneer, I just had a pre determined limit to how much I thought this gig was going to affect me.

Which makes me CAPTAIN FUCKING CHUMPY as this was probably the best gig I have witnessed.

No shit.

They take the stage guerrilla style, super quick and with no fanfare and blast into Down On The Street and the sound is just mindblowing. God knows how long they soundchecked for but it’s like Ron and Watt’s amps are strapped to your head. For a bunch of old guys this is shockingly, urgently loud and heavy. OK, it looks like Scott Asheton died in 1987 and has been brought back to life by Jim Henson’s puppet workshop but fuck it, the man is on form. They are tight as hell. Iggy leaps onto Watts cabs early on in Loose and the tasteful surroundings of the Odeon shake. As Iggy hits the
“LOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRDDDDD!!!!”
on the start of TV Eye, it’s like Ron Asheton’s entire life has built up to the moment where every person in the Odeon just waits for the riff to TV Eye and he obliges and it smacks everyone louder and harder than we could have ever dreamed. I admit it, I cried. I was just overwhelmed. That song is the most amazing , full-on beast in the rock cannon – anyone’s cannon. I have tried this song in every band I have ever played in, I have seen The Fog play it (brilliantly), I have seen The Stooges Project play it, I’ve seen Ron play it with J Mascis, I’ve seen Iggy play it on TV with some lame ass poodle rock backing band. Hell, I’m playing in a Stooges tribute band at Christmas JUST so I can play TV Eye through a massive amp stack but nothing’s going to top seeing the Stooges play it at the Odeon. Not even Mark Arm singing Kick Out The Jams with the MC5 (or MC3 as it was). Or Sabbath doing Into The Void at the Birmingham Hummingbird. I stood there and let myself recover from the riff before making an educated decision to go fucking apeshit like a 12 year old girl at a Robbie Williams concert. My gig partner Ian Scanlon had already been in the pit from the start and I’d seen his grinning head surface about 3 times so I decided to head in after him. I don’t like moshing or crowd surfing or pits but if they were all this gleeful I might change my mind.
1970 and Dirt pass in light speed and I have one of those wonderful moments of clarity where I realise that this really is a great gig and I’m in the middle of it. Steve Mackay comes on for Funhouse to blast sax (at stupid volume I might add) and by now I have been wormed to the front and Watt’s rig is blasting my face off. I wouldn’t want it any other way. I keep having these bizarre realisations that the guy leaning over screaming in my face is IGGY FUCKING POP. As if to confirm this he shouts

“I AM IGGY FUCKING POP!”

between songs in case we had forgotten.

They segue into LA Blues like it was supposed to be on the record and whip up a shitstorm. At this point we’re only about 35 mins in and everyone is completely freaking out. Earlier on I swear we were standing next to Eric Clapton. If it was him I like to think that, at the point where Mackay and Ron Asheton battle the high notes at extreme volume while Iggy mounts the PA stack and dives in the crowd, old Slowhand made the decision to retire.
I would have gone home happy there but they rip into Skull Ring from Iggy’s new record and it’s beefy and in keeping and a damn convincing argument that if there’s one classic band that could make a new record it’s not The Pixies.
We get more than we could ask for in the majority of the first album too. For No Fun Iggy instigates a very controlled stage invasion but Watt still takes a tumble and gets up laughing as people mob him to kiss him as he plays. The receptionist dude from I’m Alan Partridge winds up with his arm around Iggy trying to take a pic on his phone as the rest of us in the crowd pelt him with beer cups and Iggy tries to worm his way loose. I Wanna Be Your Dog brings about a mass bonding experience and the weirdly friendly-yet-nuts moshpit erupts as Iggy goes in again. Even the Ashetons are grinning.
2 encores and Iggy comes back out. I think he would have played the whole thing again if they’d let him. The final encore consists of a victorious Iggy introducing the band – “The undisputed heavyweight champion of the world – Ron Asheton” being the one to raise the biggest cheer.
The highlight for me was the last person to be introduced. Old Watt stands back respectfully apart as Iggy introduces the Stooges and turns to leave as Iggy finally introduces himself. Iggy grabs his arm and proudly marches him to the front of the stage with his arm aloft and introduces him as
“From San Pedro, the Minuteman – Mike Watt”
to the biggest cheer of the evening and Watt looks on the verge of tears as Iggy gives him the spotlight as a genuine Stooge.
It was Watt and Mascis that brought the Ashetons back in the limelight and made a platform for this reunion and it’s so apt that a man so unfussy and humble as Watt (and not David Bowie for example) should be the one responsible for bringing someone like Iggy Pop what has to be his finest moment to date. It feels like a victory for the normal guy. As a Minuteman fan I feel part of it somehow, which I guess is the point of the Minutemen, even now, watching The Stooges.

Me and Ian sit on the train back to Sutton, piss drenched in sweat and yelling at each other over the insane whistling in our ears. We are two miserable old men but for that one evening I don’t think I could have been happier.

Nottingham’s Bologna Pony are interesting for 3 reasons:
1. They’re not bad
2. Their first record was their first practise which means they have evolved onstage over the course of the few gigs they have done and, as an audience member, watching a band evolve in front of you can be exciting
3. Their name throws up some eye opening shit if you type it into Google Image search.
Tonight the normally 2 piece Pony are 3 with the addition of drums and sometime accordion. The increase in quality is evident right off the bat. It isn’t so much that the drummer improves them, it was more that it seems to push them further towards what they rightfully are – a rock band – and so the guitar playing is more focused as a result and they seem to communicate slightly.
The only lull in the (long – for them) set is when the sound is stripped back to a single guitar in favour of some microphone feedback which only serves as some kind of reference to the type of band the Pony might want to be but aren’t. They don’t seem to know what they are or why they do it until it’s too late and their time is up. I don’t know if that’s a criticism.
But tonight when they let their uptightness go they are a thundering rock band. Imagine Sunn O))) without the schtick. Some people would say that’s the point of Sunn O))) but Bologna Pony seem to think otherwise, even if they haven’t worked it out yet.
Fuxa was supposed to play this evening but got involved in some government lockdown due to a lack of work visa, before being sent back to Detroit. Instead we get Sonic Boom doing his Experimental Audio Research solo work. I’ve seen him do it before and couldn’t immerse myself enough to dig it and I figure tonight will be no different, in the surroundings of The Social with me being very tired.
But it works. I think the reason is that he set up with his back to us so we could see what he was doing. If you’ve never seen EAR before then it’s worth saying here that Sonic uses oscillators and tone generating devices that are beyond my comprehension. On top of this add a circuit-bent Speak & Spell (actually a Speak & Maths I later found out) and what seems to be a reverb unit of some sort.
The reason I mention this is that when someone uses ‘magic boxes’ it throws up all kinds of complex questions about the validity of what they do and this can be applied to all 3 bands this evening. Is it ‘real’? How much involvement does the person have? I think this is because we analyse things that are musical on technical merit, even if we don’t mean to. There is still the question of spectacle in live performance – that is the spectacle of the virtuoso playing to the people and demonstrating a higher gift. So we don’t like people miming and sometimes the presence of ‘magic boxes’ makes things close to the mime.
Me? I just figure if it has human elements to it I don’t care if they’re miming or not.
Anyway, this relates to EAR, as by turning round you can see exactly what he is doing and rather than being fake because of the boxes seeming to play themselves it actually feels as if it were much more real somehow. I mean, drone music and music that uses tones as it’s basis is all about the ‘hang’ not the ‘attack’ so when guitars are used every effort is made to suppress that physical attack of a pick hitting a string and instead it concentrates on the point after that, the echo hanging in the air, the note left to linger. At that exact point, there is no human contact, it is the after effect of human contact you listen to.
So EAR is the purest form of this – it is just tones set up to oscillate against each other creating pulses and rhythms, it is the most direct drone, the most undiluted. It doesn’t matter that the visual side of things is non existent and you almost feel you need to move around when he plays, it’s just there and you get the feeling when the power is turned off the sounds are still there, trapped in the boxes until he lets them out next.
The Telescopes operate in the same field in that they work in the ‘hang’, although it’s tempered with the ‘attack’ more than with EAR. In fact they represent a half way house between the acts that open the evening. The type of pulses that subtly shift in and out of EAR’s set are used again but latched onto and built around until they become overpowering. The guitars linger for sure but at times it is at extremely loud volume.
The contrast between the 3 members gives it its vital human element. Steve appears wilder than the other 2 and constantly dissatisfied with the sounds being made, he seems itchy (and occasionally violent) in search of something he doesn’t have.
This contrasts perfectly with Jo, whose meditative guitar style adds a backbone to everything that happens around it and just shimmers throughout. Lorin exists somewhere between the 2 and it seems his activity defines the context that Steve and Jo are heard in. He batters bed springs, mics his projector, bows a bass in it’s stand and dances with a home made theramin. His role is that of the conductor, or better still – the translator.
It’d no doubt annoy them but in shaking free of the ‘shoegazing’ tag they have actually managed to condense the best parts of that genre into something new. I mentioned Sunn 0))) before and what their mission statement seems to be (condense metal into the rip of the power chord and the doom imagery) and it can be said to be the same here – except The Telescopes condense shoegazer music into a series of drifts, pulses, washes and fiery noise beats and clatters. They basically cut the chaff out of their own genre and in doing so now exist in this weird vacuum where old Telescopes fans are puzzled and people who might like what they do now wouldn’t necessarily think to seek out their music. Not that they care.
It’s worth pointing out that on the first night of the tour Lorin fell asleep at the wheel of the band car and ploughed into the central reservation of the M40 before executing several 360 degree spins and landing, with no lights, facing the oncoming traffic in a Ford Escort about 4 ft long and 2 ft wide. They all delighted in telling me how they thought they were going to die, how the doors to the car wouldn’t open and how they spent 2 hours wrapped in tin foil on the hard shoulder of the motorway. Steve was particularly impressed by the slow down calm of the car crashing itself. I think a recorded description of the event read by the band members needs to be played before each of their shows.
I reckon by accident (literally) The Telescopes may have found the perfect context for their music.

1. I hate students. Everyone says that but I hated them when I was one. Yes I know that means I hated myself. They are fucknuts, they don’t pay council tax and they make more mess than anyone else in this city because they need their parents to wipe their arses for them. If that sounds Tory then work in Lenton.

2. Tortoise are ace. I just got the new Burn To Shine DVD and the Tortoise song is the shit. Red Eyed Legends too.

3. A Hartke 4×10 bass cab weighs a lot which is something I discovered at 2.30am as I tripped up a kerb carrying one and left half my knee on the pavement.

4. T-Rex had some riffs.

5. I am freezing cold and my feet smell.

I joined a tribute band. Its only for one gig. Maybe two. I can’t decide if this is lame or not but I’m looking forward to it. My friend Phill is John Paul Jones in a Led Zep tribute and assures me it’s a blast. This conveniently allows me to inform anyone in or near Nottingham to keep December 20 free and then they can make their own minds up. Not only is it Gareth Hardwicks birthday it’s also Sneinton Stooges at Junktion 7. Plug over. And out.

See I was wearing Farahs and they ride up into your crotch when you sit down and anything in the pockets gets thrown out like lemmings on a cliff edge and so, it came to pass, that my long suffering mobile (that has been round the world with me twice) and me were separated last Thursday in a cab in Sneinton.
I thought “I don’t need a mobile, I lived for over 20 years without one for god’s sake” but alas, I cannot do it. I need to send puerile toilet humour to my friends via text message. I have spoken to my girlfriend twice in a fortnight and she lives round the corner!
SO! GIVE ME YOUR SPARE PHONES. I will swap it for something if you want, pay postage: whatever. Obviously, a camera phone would be shit hot but anything will do.