Faux fur, faux sheepskin and faux blondes on one side. Women who don’t do cleavage and four percent lager drinking boys who carry their laptops everywhere on the other side. Would there be a clash of cultures? Well no, for the real battle tonight was between the sound guy and the bands.
The first band – whose name I couldn’t even make out – weren’t of the highest quality but were nonetheless brutalised by the sound muppet who made it his business to destroy what little chance they had of making an impact. They faded away to polite, and no doubt confused, applause.
Death by Misadventure were made of sterner stuff and put up a fight to avoid extermination by indifference. Somewhere in the distortion, there were vocals but you had to work at getting them. However, low slung guitars and pulsating bass can overcome most things especially if you can drag in the influence of the Mary Chain and a bit of the Prodigy to help you out. If I didn’t have a pathological hatred of all musicians who aren’t called Louise then I’d have felt sorry for this band but, on a better night, I suspect we would have become friends.
Breakglass Emergency made a valiant attempt at getting their hard edged indie rock sound across to the audience but it was, in truth, too late. The audience had for the most part wandered off no doubt wondering if everyone was singing in some unknown language. Even I had had enough.
I love the smell of kebab in the morning. It smells like breakfast to me. And fringes are still cute.