Off to King Tuts I went on a drab Tuesday night and a walk that should have taken two minutes took me fifteen. I had somehow forgotten where King Tuts actually is. Better late than never and all that.
When I finally got there, local band the Chomsky Allstars were on stage. The first thing I noticed was that their drummer was wearing a Margaret Thatcher mask. I only managed to catch the last three songs of their set but from what I heard they sounded like a punk band that had incorporated some funky guitar into their music and were clearly influenced by both Noam Chomsky and Joe Strummer. Finishing off their set with "The Big I Am", they seemed to have found a good balance between overtly political lyrics and punk rock power.
Next up was Zener Diode, an electro rock band headed by an eccentric lead singer named Doctor Otto. Now, I do have to admit I was fairly sceptical as electro rock isn't the type of music I normally go for but this band left me pleasantly surprised. The back story of the band is that they are a bunch of robots/units/aliens from outer space created by the good Doctor Otto himself and their mission is to bring great music to the people of earth through catchy songs like "Lost Connection" and "Radiowerk". It's kind of hard not to like this band. Dr Otto has got stage presence and entertained the audience with jokes and by constantly berating his band mates. Sonically, the band were like Kraftwerk meets The Cure and their performance ended with Doctor Otto miming to a sound byte from The Wizard of Oz whilst attempting to shoot the audience with a plastic ray gun. Bizarre…
Sound Of Guns are a band from Liverpool and were perhaps the least impressive of the night. It looked like they were suffering at the hands of a merciless sound engineer as the sound seemed to be really distorted. I'm not sure if it was just his style but lead singer Andy Metcalfe also appeared, from his demeanour, to be quite drunk. It would be worth checking out their music online though as it will give you a better idea of their potential.
Now, to the last act of the night. Bob Log III came out onstage wearing a full body cannonball man suit and a helmet wired to a telephone. When I think of a one man band, I think of someone who looks like Seasick Steve and not The Stig. His performance was - in one word - brilliant and the only time he stopped playing the guitar and beating his drum was to drink (and drinks that he managed to get the audience to give him, too). Although the lyrics were sometimes incomprehensible, his guitar playing was excellent and some of his jokes were pretty good too with the best of his one-liners being "I can hear you all looking at my ass". Classic stuff. To keep the party rolling, he called two female audience members up on stage and treated us to the aptly named "Boob Scotch", playing the song with both women on his knees while still managing to hit the drum and play the guitar. Needless to say, with that kind of approach, he went down really well with the crowd.
So, all in all, a good night except for the dodgy chicken kebab I had on the way home. But, hey, I'm not complaining as it was otherwise filled with good laughs and even better music.