I’m pretty sure her first name wasn’t really Fanny nor her surname Pelmet but, baby, it was cold outside and fringes are always cute so being enticed into the basement of the 13th Note seemed perfectly reasonable. Perfectly understandable too when I reflect on my inherent shallowness. Small fault in a good man and all that.
So with a yeah and verily, Fanny Pelmet and The Bastard Suits demonstrated that they had the love for garage rock and indeed, for British sixties style rhythm and blues reinterpretation too. Not shy with the tasty guitar licks and holding it all together like few Glasgow bands even bother to do, this was a band that makes little sense in these celebrity obsessed days. Substance over style was the name of the game here and Fanny Pelmet and The Bastard Suits played like they should be worshipped. Or at least they would be on a planet that understood what talent actually meant.
On to the Plimptons. A legend in their own Tetley tea break, having sold nearly dozens of albums and being the only band on the planet to have written a meaningful song about Motherwell, this band’s anarchic post punk power pop hybrid was almost too much to review. Therefore, I shall instead relate a parable. It is the year 2312 and the human race has been overrun by robotic invaders. Consigned to “awareness camps” for referring to our new fascist masters as “toasters” and asking them “I know you can do pan bread but can you handle a muffin?” all looks bleak. Then one Saturday night, the chromed camp commandant struts into said “awareness camp”, hears the party sounds of The Plimptons echoing around the bare barracks and exclaims “Wot is this shit? It is giving me the boke.” “Hey, Metal Mickey, do not disrespect the magnificence of The Plimptons” comes the reply from the assembled masses, “for, with that, you have gone too far and, shortly, the remains of your mechanised master race will fit inside a frakking crisp bag!” So it was that the revolution began and the human race once again battled amongst the stars for their inevitable freedom. It was, and always will be, down to The Plimptons.
I think I shall have to start writing about barmaids again. Either that or the men in white coats will put me back on the industrial strength medication. Again.