BTRL / M3L / David Cameron Diaz / 7 Day Conspiracy
Posted by jamie on Apr 24, 2012
Our dawgs at Shufflecore have told us about this show they’re putting on. It looks ace!
Anyway, just letting you know that I’ve got another gig coming up with some quality ska punk - Beat The Red Light, 7 Day Conspiracy, My Third Leg and David Cameron Diaz are playing on Friday 4th May.
Leo says:
Pretty excited about this one, would you be up for sharing it through bananatown? I’d be really grateful if you could!
No problems, dude. We’re here for all good DIY promoters.
Artwork: the wonderful AnaSera Chambers
See it on facebook here.
Like Bananatown on facebook here.
Popes of Chillitown, the Snare, My Third Leg: IOE, London
Posted by jamie on Feb 26, 2012
Popes of Chillitown, the Snare, My Third Leg
IOE, London
24th February, 2012
Jamie
As Popes of Chillitown took tonight by the scruff of its neck, there was one brief moment where Austen Cruickshank paused for reflection, and informed us:
“You know, IOE, I wasn’t sure how this gig was going to go, but right now, I’m very fucking impressed”.
Impressed is the word, but, to put that remark in to context, this wasn’t exactly your ordinary gig. The University of London’s Institute of Education, or the IOE, is a postgraduate campus for student teachers, where many of the students are international.
It’s a pretty positive and welcoming place once you’ve navigated your way down to the Union (I’m pretty sure I came in the wrong way), but, tucked away in a corner between the bar and the patio, this show quickly outgrew its boundaries, meaning a few confused non-skankers had to pick their way through, often with big ring binders and other assorted classroom paraphernalia.
It’s not what any of us are used to, but, thanks to that positive and open-minded atmosphere, it just works. For a while I scribbled down notes next to a middle-aged Spanish man sleeping inside the Evening Standard, but by the end he was the only one not taking part, and had, at least, woken up.
We’d stumbled on the “You are here” sign in the street a few minutes too late, and got lost again inside the building: perhaps for the best, the bar seemed to be the only place that wasn’t signposted. It meant that we missed all but the very end of My Third Leg’s customarily high-speed, ratatat-tat ska-punk set. They seem to go down well, despite a few issues with the drums: “I had to re-write most of the drum lines”, Paul admitted afterwards, “during the songs”.
They’d certainly made a few friends, all the same, though, and had got the night off to a good start.
The Snare, on next, are a first-time-see for me. They’re a boisterously energetic, horn-powered, seven-piece two-tone band. Visually, as well as musically, they’re almost a caricature of what a ska band might be like as imagined by The Beano, or a Punch and Judy show, and I mean that in a very good way: theirs is a tried and tested brand of party-starting brass-heavy two-tone ska.
They waste no time getting started: from the word go, they’re straight in to their stride – bouncing up and down in time on stage, their singers taking every opportunity to step down in to the crowd where there’s more room to swing their legs around in a springy, gangly sort of skank: I’ve seen some moves in my time but sometimes these guys’ legs seem to have minds of their own.
It all goes down a storm: an initially nervous crowd quickly get the hang of it, start to shuffle, and soon there are smiles and sing-alongs all around.
In to all of this, then, step the Popes of Chillitown. It’s still new territory, of course, but, if anything, this just seems to spur them on: opener Blame Game is well received, and then, as that becomes the theme from Hawaii 5.0, the place goes absolutely nuts.
From here on, the floor just gets crazier, with all manner of moves coming out: the floor gets fuller and fuller, and, all of a sudden, you wouldn’t notice that the sliding doors out to the patio are open right behind the stage: it’s actually muggy in here – not baking hot, but the air is heavy with sweat. Matt’s lost his shirt and Austen is actually dripping a bit – his new white Popes t-shirt, the dog one, grey with that sweat and smeared with snakebite and not, as we had worried, his or someone’s blood.
As is usually the case with this lot, the night gets more surreal as it goes on, Austen and Matt eventually having a little argument as to whether or not we on the dancefloor should be leaving through those back doors to drag the smokers and shirkers in for a dance. In the end a few of them go, as the band move in to Tooting Ska Moon, and Austen’s actually behind the stage, as far as his mic cable will let him, ushering bewildered punters in while the band are actually playing.
Odd as it seems, though, it all just works: just like the night as a whole, it’s not something many of us would ever have imagined, but it goes down a treat. The band play Brave, and then Lazy Sunday and Dalking Man, and everyone, dragged in or not, is having a cheeky skank. Unless they’re actually dancing salsa, or breakdance, or some crazy foxtrot stuff that had a circle cleared around it at some point. This lot can dance, and, if they haven’t been to a punk show before, they just dance however they feel they want to. We’re all just doing our own thing down here, and it sort of just goes together. It’s surreal, and definitely totally unique, but it fits together perfectly.
Badman is last, before a mock encore (the band couldn’t actually leave the stage, but we all agreed we’d pretend) of the Outhere Brothers’ Boom Boom Boom.
I don’t know how they did it, but our international collection of teaching students found another level: gleefully racing through whatever moves they could find as the Popes cheekily dismantle the song, rebuilding it as they go along in to a high-speed ragga/punk riot that growls where it used to rap and runs around until it’s pushed just to breathe.
The response is rapturous. Everybody wants more, but the show is sadly finished. At IOE, the students vote as to whether each band is allowed back. This strange coming together will surely be cheered back on this evidence.
Claypigeon: free London show
Posted by jamie on Nov 14, 2011
ClayPigeon, play the Bird’s Nest, on Church Street, Deptford next Friday, 25th of November. You also get My Third Leg, Call Me Malcolm and the Plan.
Entry is free. See the whole thing on facebook here. Super-exciting, free, and shareable on the internet. How excellent.
[spunge] / My Third Leg: London show
Posted by jamie on Oct 4, 2011
Gravesend ska-punk nut-jobs My Third Leg will support [spunge] at Camden Barfly on 14th October. To celebrate they have tickets for sale at just £5. Contact them here to get involved and to get yourself in for a fiver.
See it on facebook here.
M3L, Truebeat, Popes: Gravesend, 20th May
Posted by jamie on May 18, 2011
Good-time Gravesend ska-punkers My Third Leg have joined Truebeat and the Popes of Chillitown on the Krakatoa show at Gravesend’s Red Lion on Friday.
See it on facebook here.
True Beat, Popes, My Third Leg, Chapter 11: Nambucca
Posted by jamie on Apr 27, 2011
True Beat, Popes of Chillitown, My Third Leg, Chapter Eleven
Nambucca, Holloway Road (London)
16th April, 2011
Jamie
First things first, lest I forget later on: thank you to I Heart Promotions for the pictures tonight, and apologies to Love Spuds for not having hung around to see them.
Nambucca is a sleek looking indie bar in an otherwise unremarkable stretch of Holloway Road in North London. Despite having street-mapped it, the nondescript nature of this part of road meant that before I’d walked anywhere near far enough down a straight road I was already starting to question my map reading skills. Thankfully I used to win awards in the Scouts, and my belly found its own gravitational pull to a little cafe where openers Chapter Eleven were grabbing last minute burgers and hips. They looked really good, actually.
Once at the door, there’s a bit of confusion as to when the gig starts. Chapter Eleven were getting antsy before the show as they’d been telling all their friends that doors were at 8pm, only to arrive and find out they were playing at 8. Cue a flurry of text messages and a minor panic. As soon as we all got inside, it turned out that they were in fact due to play at 8.30 after all. There was no float to take admission costs, so it’s a good job nobody missed the start waiting for their stamp, and that all those folk arrived for doors after 8pm.
Whether it was the confusion or the change in stage time that was caused by the promoter apparently being upstairs watching the highlights of Manchester City getting lucky in the FA Cup semi-final we’ll probably never know, but it all turned out to the good: almost everybody arrived on time, and, at exactly 8.30 in the evening, we were welcomed to “the biggest show Chapter Eleven had ever played”. Yup, all twenty of us.
As a relatively late addition to the bill, it’s unsurprising that the place is just starting to fill up as the first band start their set. Slightly more surprising is the repeated use of a venue’s smoke machine during a candid and strikingly sincere acoustic set. It’s probably a bit out of place, but it did give Hassan something to chatter about. Just in case there was any need. It’s a short opening set of just seven songs, but what for those few minutes it’s a wonderfully moving set of beautifully crafted acoustic folk/reggae songs that win the growing crowd over with their perfectly arranged twin vocals, thought-provoking lyrics and the heartfelt sincerity of their performance. This is one of their very first live performances, but in the main it’s an assured, confident performance interrupted only by indecision over the setlist and Hassan’s intermittent arguments with the fog machine. One short song is a rare moment of comedy in a setlist that’s otherwise more focused on social commentary and cathartic release of frustration for its songwriters, but it’s all enjoyable nonetheless, and those of us early enough to join the double horseshoe of hushed folk around the front have been treated to something of rare beauty.
The mood changes dramatically when, after a brief pause, My Third Leg take the stage. They’re a fun bunch of lads and are understandably in good spirits after playing a barnstorming set in support of evergreen scene-stalwarts [spunge] just down the road during the week. Before they put the room through its paces, their drummer Paul had to come and apologise to me: “we wanted to give you a CD to review, but we’ve sold out completely. Twice. We pressed a load of extras for the [spunge] show but that was an amazing show so we got rid of all of them as well”. So I don’t know how good the CD is, but, perhaps inevitably in the circumstances, there’s an album on the way and we’ll surely get our hands on that eventually. Watch this space for that.
In the mean time, My Third Leg step up to take control of this sleepy pocket of North London and put it through its paces. They’re a four-piece, with two guitars and all bar Paul on sticks joining in on vocals to give a ballsy, bigger-than-usual take on the conventional ska-punk thing, unsurprisingly driven mainly by those dual guitars. There’s plenty of upstrokes for skanking, and plenty of legs obediently skank to them like as many yo-yos running on momentum, yet still at the whim of some sort of omnipotent master-being, in this case four lads from Gravesend.
One lad called Ben is having his birthday here and gets his share of wishes from the band during their set, which is a lively affair powered by short, spiky songs and notable for a high-speed cover of Sublime’s Date Rape.
A few minutes’ peace are spectacularly shattered when The Popes of Chillitown take the stage in a room that’s filled up as the sun started to go don outside. Instantly, they get the party started (again) : that little semicircle opens up in front of the stage between bands proves convenient, and, rather than bringing us all two steps forward a la My Third Leg, Austen just steps over the monitors and jumps right in to it on his own. During the first song. Blame Game kicks the set off with a bang, and there’s precious little time (or even room) to look back after that: pretty soon in to Dalking Man, up next, that space is gone, and, as it gets more and more hectic down here, Austen’s forced to retreat back on to the stage. Probably safer.
The Popes play the ska/punk thing with a lot more going on in it: they’re a six-piece, with Liz the only horn player here. Newcomers to the level of depth and variety in their music could perhaps be forgiven for being a little taken aback at what they’re witnessing: it’s pretty eclectic, and a little bit bonkers. At the same time, though, it’s instinctively engaging and catchy, and tonight the songs are performed so insistently that all the evidence suggests it’s impossible not to throw yourself right in. Buy One, Get One Free and Tooting-Ska-Moon, as ever, are particular highlights, but this is a live show that fits together pretty seamlessly, gliding quickly up through the gears and then racing through the songs as well. It’s bedlam by the end of it: Howl is a riot, and first one and then two Popes join us on the dancefloor for Holding Out for More and finally Badman. These guys have got the moves as well.
Our last train leaves early, so I didn’t get to watch the final act, Love Spuds. In effect, then, for a clutch of us, True Beat were acting as headliners. They’re ideal for the role, actually, as well: again they’re a four-piece with two guitars and no horns, but their sound’s a lot closer to the poppier end of two-tone than, for example, My Third Leg. True Beat have a lot of write catchy, skankable pop songs and pack them full of hooks: they know what buttons to push to make you have a good time, and they push them well and a lot.
A lot of their material tonight comes from last year’s album Back to Square One, but there’s room for a joyous romp through 54-46 and to finish with new single Shanty Town. In between they romp through their own peppy, catchy little songs with grins and an infectious kinetic energy that makes songs like I’ve Just Got Paid and Cherry Lips frankly irresistible.
If you’ve not seen these guys in concert before, it’s something of a surprise that the material from Back to Square One, for example, is performed with a rougher, punkier edge to it that makes good songs in to great fun. Maybe it’s personal taste, but I really enjoyed that and preferred it to the way they’ve recorded the same songs on what was already a very decent album.
It’s a polished, efficient set that goes down well with a delighted crowd, who, by now, are drunk on the first signs of summer as much the plastic pots of Strongbow, and True Beat are obviously having a good time as well.
That was it for me, and for a few of us who were here now, and a steady flow of folk made for the exits after Shanty Town. My apologies to Love Spuds and anyone who came here hoping to read about them: hopefully we’ll hook up another time.
