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Rock and roll is here so scream all you want
Crikey... I'd better write up this gig, or I'll have gone to another before I manage it. Which is a nice problem to have :)
I've never been to Scala before - it's a converted cinema near Kings Cross. In fact, interestingly, it was the cinema which showed A Clockwork Orange after it was withdrawn from UK distribution, and was promptly catastrophically sued for it. These days it's a strangely warren-like gig venue with delightful Art Deco oddments.
Having arrived in good time, we visited the bar (bah, shite beer as always in gig venues). The bar can't see the stage but has extraordinarily loud speakers. The first support band didn't sound very encouraging, but we figured we'd go and poke our noses at them. As it turned out, Dingus Khan were considerably more fun than the speaker system suggested. Eight blokes (including three drummers and three basses), one in a black velvet cloak and seven in white boiler suits.
They crashed through their songs, complete with choreographed camp dance routines and an impressive range of tambourines. They were, in a word, silly. Or, as ChrisC put it after they left the stage: Well. They were lightly mad.
I'm not sure I'm keen to own any albums by them, but they were very good entertainment value. Actually, the listenables online are rather more appealing than I'd expected.
They were followed by Scanners who I think I enjoyed rather more than the others I was with. There seemed to be an awful lot of them too - around half a dozen, although one bloke seemed to be someone's boyfriend and largely without much function.
Scanners are fronted by a female singer who really grabs your attention - and can sing in a way that suggests she learned alternately from Chrissie Hynde and PJ Harvey. Their sounds roams around between quite dark and gothy, pop, indie and almost rockabilly. Check out Salvation for the song that really stuck in my head.
I'm not sure, recorded, that the startling energy really comes across. I'd definitely be interested in seeing these guys again. For some reason I kept thinking they were the sort of band which would be on in the background in The Bronze in early seasons of Buffy.
The last time I saw Ultrasound[*] was following their reunion in 2010 (they'd split up in 1999). At the time, I noted that they were working on new material. Well, they took their time and the record got delayed and blah blah blah, but this was the album launch.
Although the album's been out for a while. I dunno. Dates kept changing. I got confused.
Anyway, ChrisC put a copy of Play For Today (the new album, no relation to the Cure song of the same name) on the stereo a few weeks back. I, in another room, was busily humming along vaguely wondering what it was. It's... what? An album I've never heard before? Surely not. Eventually I realised that I didn't know the songs, it just sounded so exactly like Ultrasound that it immediately slotted into my head as familiar.
I suspect, actually, that it's a little more listener-friendly than the last album. Lead single Welfare State manages to combine Tiny's rather gratey, waily voice with a rather poppy sound, and Sovereign (the other side of the double A side) is a bit turgid but never quite reaches proper out-and-out wankery.
Beyond that, not much has changed. Tiny still maintains a huge stage presence (in every sense), and exudes a likeable aura of incompetence that I slightly suspect might be carefully rehearsed. The keyboard player has apparently morphed into someone else, but I can't honestly say I had much idea what they keyboard player looked like anyway. Plugging their new album, I missed out on some of my tracks-of-choice from earlier days.
Watching the crowd (largely of an age to have been there first time around) dancing and singing along to old favourite Same Band and Stay Young it struck me how varied it was. People clearly in their fifties and sixties, braving the noise. People in suits straight from work. A sprinkling of the London goth scene. Indie girls in self-consioucsly dated tea-dresses. I've never been particularly sure what Ultrasound's demographic was, and now I know - they don't have one :)
[*] I observe that, last time, I titled my post Gary Glitter's gone to seed, so who will lead us now?, which is a line from Stay Young. This time, the line (predictably) found itself rewritten to refer to Jimmy Saville.
I've never been to Scala before - it's a converted cinema near Kings Cross. In fact, interestingly, it was the cinema which showed A Clockwork Orange after it was withdrawn from UK distribution, and was promptly catastrophically sued for it. These days it's a strangely warren-like gig venue with delightful Art Deco oddments.
Having arrived in good time, we visited the bar (bah, shite beer as always in gig venues). The bar can't see the stage but has extraordinarily loud speakers. The first support band didn't sound very encouraging, but we figured we'd go and poke our noses at them. As it turned out, Dingus Khan were considerably more fun than the speaker system suggested. Eight blokes (including three drummers and three basses), one in a black velvet cloak and seven in white boiler suits.
They crashed through their songs, complete with choreographed camp dance routines and an impressive range of tambourines. They were, in a word, silly. Or, as ChrisC put it after they left the stage: Well. They were lightly mad.
I'm not sure I'm keen to own any albums by them, but they were very good entertainment value. Actually, the listenables online are rather more appealing than I'd expected.
They were followed by Scanners who I think I enjoyed rather more than the others I was with. There seemed to be an awful lot of them too - around half a dozen, although one bloke seemed to be someone's boyfriend and largely without much function.
Scanners are fronted by a female singer who really grabs your attention - and can sing in a way that suggests she learned alternately from Chrissie Hynde and PJ Harvey. Their sounds roams around between quite dark and gothy, pop, indie and almost rockabilly. Check out Salvation for the song that really stuck in my head.
I'm not sure, recorded, that the startling energy really comes across. I'd definitely be interested in seeing these guys again. For some reason I kept thinking they were the sort of band which would be on in the background in The Bronze in early seasons of Buffy.
The last time I saw Ultrasound[*] was following their reunion in 2010 (they'd split up in 1999). At the time, I noted that they were working on new material. Well, they took their time and the record got delayed and blah blah blah, but this was the album launch.
Although the album's been out for a while. I dunno. Dates kept changing. I got confused.
Anyway, ChrisC put a copy of Play For Today (the new album, no relation to the Cure song of the same name) on the stereo a few weeks back. I, in another room, was busily humming along vaguely wondering what it was. It's... what? An album I've never heard before? Surely not. Eventually I realised that I didn't know the songs, it just sounded so exactly like Ultrasound that it immediately slotted into my head as familiar.
I suspect, actually, that it's a little more listener-friendly than the last album. Lead single Welfare State manages to combine Tiny's rather gratey, waily voice with a rather poppy sound, and Sovereign (the other side of the double A side) is a bit turgid but never quite reaches proper out-and-out wankery.
Beyond that, not much has changed. Tiny still maintains a huge stage presence (in every sense), and exudes a likeable aura of incompetence that I slightly suspect might be carefully rehearsed. The keyboard player has apparently morphed into someone else, but I can't honestly say I had much idea what they keyboard player looked like anyway. Plugging their new album, I missed out on some of my tracks-of-choice from earlier days.
Watching the crowd (largely of an age to have been there first time around) dancing and singing along to old favourite Same Band and Stay Young it struck me how varied it was. People clearly in their fifties and sixties, braving the noise. People in suits straight from work. A sprinkling of the London goth scene. Indie girls in self-consioucsly dated tea-dresses. I've never been particularly sure what Ultrasound's demographic was, and now I know - they don't have one :)
[*] I observe that, last time, I titled my post Gary Glitter's gone to seed, so who will lead us now?, which is a line from Stay Young. This time, the line (predictably) found itself rewritten to refer to Jimmy Saville.
no subject
Ooh - very nice! :-D
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