A Gig, In Miniature

Tuesday 1st March: I’m at Stereo tonight, to see a band from Scotland playing York for the first time and it might be the fact that it is their debut that leads to the elephant in the room. Not, of course, that there was an actual elephant and, as I’m going to talk about it, it’s not really a normal use of the phrase. However, it does provide me with the opportunity to say, “if there was an elephant in the room, it would have had plenty of space to move about…” You see, apart from me, the only other people in the audience were either the two support acts or people associated with one of the support acts. Admittedly, it was a cold Tuesday night and, as we are constantly being told, money is tight these days but I understand that, across town, Fibbers was sold out, so there were people going out to enjoy live music despite the weather (and the current government…) I admit I was only there due to a unique set of circumstances and I couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for all the acts, especially the headliners who probably hadn’t expected their English tour to end with such a poor turnout.

First to take the stage (and, being a solo artist, having the biggest audience) was Sophie McDonnell, who doesn’t seem to have her own page to provide a link to, but she does play and sing in Hot Fudge, a ska, reggae, funk band. Tonight, however, Sophie provided a variation on the man-and-guitar act by, well being a girl with a guitar. Two Hot Fudge songs, Feeling Torn and Lay Down, Play Dead, featured in the set, complete with vocal renditions of the trumpet solos, as did a covers of VV Brown’s Shark In The Water and Amy Winehouse’s You Know I’m No Good (if memory serves). I assume the other three, Iron Man, All These Things I’ve Done and one that I missed the title off, were originals. The variety in the songs was nice and Sophie has a good voice and a winning smile and she plays with confidence and more than a touch of humour, which made for an entertaining opening set.

Tonight is the third time I’ve seen The Blueprints in a relatively short time but tonight, perhaps because they were essentially playing to the other bands and their friends, they decided to have a bit of fun and play around with the set-list a bit, which freshened it up a bit. Starting with their “normal” three songs – one I still haven’t caught the title of, Three Minutes and Staring At The Sun – there followed a short interval, during which Stuart changed his guitar and the band launched into Layla (a song Stuart, apparently, hates). Back to the serious stuff and we got the superb City Skylines, a cover of Ryan Adams’ Two (which may just have inspired me to try some of his material), Spectrum Vs Commodore, No Melancholy and a song I don’t think I’ve heard before which may have been called Walk Away. As usual, The Blueprints gave a very entertaining performance of some striking songs. In fact, each time I see them I find myself liking them more.

Thankfully, both support acts hung around to see Miniature Dinosaurs, a young band from Stirling who were touring to promote their second EP, Off The Radio. After the first song, vocalist Barry Maclean thanked everybody for staying around and said that a wise man had once told him that whether there was one person or a thousand in the audience you put on the same show. And what a show. Occasionally breaking the set up by asking the audience whether they knew answers to a pop quiz, Barry showed an easy camaraderie (and sound-man Andy a nice humourous touch with the lighting when he briefly sent the band to hell…) The music is indie-pop with a touch of 80’s electro-pop both from the keyboards of Craig Ferrie and Barry’s vocals and the performance deserved a much bigger audience than it got tonight. We were treated to songs from both EP’s, including Off The Radio, (I Want To Watch) Top Gear, Alligator (a personal favourite of mine), Cold Shoulder, Light Speed, Fight Or Flight and two others and all were played brilliantly. As a rule, I don’t dance but my feet were certainly tapping tonight.

After the set, I had a chat with Alban Dickson, the Dinosaurs’ bass-player. We covered a variety of topics including football, the Stirling music scene, the band itself and my lack of passion for the EP format. Alban was very pragmatic about the small turnout, telling me that it was something that, being a new band, they had to accept and that the next time they play York, they would hope to play to five more people and ten more the time after, building a following. I can only say that, if they do come back, I will definitely make every effort to see them. Highly recommended.

Designs On Piracy

Friday 21st January: Three weeks into 2011 and tonight should have seen the whole gang making their way to Fibbers for our first gig of the year. Sadly Andy's engine decided to blow up, resulting in him missing a cracking night out. As is usual, I arrived first - except this time, it wasn't just first of the four of us. Apart from band members and staff, I was the first person through the doors and, therefore, could get a better impression of exactly how soulless an empty Fibbers actually is. Granted, it's not meant to be experienced in that way and, I guess, most people don't actually turn up to a gig on their own.

First to take to the stage, after a greeting and a brief chat, was GT Turbo (again under his Boss Caine guise - I suspect so as not to confuse anybody who might be tempted into buying one of his excellent CDs). Being on first is never easy and GT had to contend with the usual swell of noise as the crowd started to grow. Despite a concerted effort from some of the other acts, few people seemed interested in listening, standing instead at the back and catching up with people that they probably hadn't seen for an hour or so. LOUDLY! By now, you probably realise that I'm a big fan and tonight's set, with it's mixture of old - Dead Man's Suit, The Kind of Loving (I'm still guessing at the title of this one...) - and newer - Dean Street Devils, Murder On My Mind, Father Time - was one of the strongest I've seen him perform, even if he was struggling with the sound and general apathy. There was even a brand new song, which may have been called Down On Your Knees, which was introduced as something that he has "big plans" for, and another (which I didn't get the title of) but which was an epic booze and drug-filled "real life" love song. Highlight for me, though, was the first live performance I have heard of The Life In Your Years in what was, I think, a change to the original set-list. For non-regulars, this superb, heart-rending autobiographical song was my favourite of 2010 and I even got a shout-out from the stage when it was played.

I had been telling people that, of the four acts on tonight, I had only seen two before. However, I soon realised that I had, in fact, seen The Blueprints back at the beginning of December, at Stereo. Tonight's set was quite similar to that one, with the first song being performed without Tom Williams on keyboard, before he joined them for the rest of the set. Song-titles I picked up included Breaking Walls, Three Minutes (with its dark opening eventually turning into a more dancey number), Staring At The Sun, the superb City Skylines and Walk Away. As last time, there was a degree of cheekiness, epitomised by vocalist Stuart Allan's mischievous grin, in their playing and a lot of fun on stage and, for some reason, I found myself enjoying their music a lot more tonight that I did last time. If infectious indie pop is your thing, you could do a lot worse than to see these guys.

Last time I saw 98Pages I was a little disappointed - despite being the headliners that night, they performed a very short set which came across as a bit underwhelming. Tonight, however, they were on very top form, proving once again that, however good their debut album - Broken Homes And The Halfway House - is, they excel themselves with their energetic live performances. I'm afraid I have no idea what the first song they performed was, but it had a very definite Led Zeppelin feel, thanks to the riffs. Nor did I recognise the second song, while the third was the band's "anthem", Goodbye Jojo, from the album. I also recognised Only Let You Down, but I'm fairly certain that the rest of the set was new music. Extremely good new music, some of which will, hopefully, be released on a second album soon. (There was also talk of some EP releases, but I'm not a big fan of that format - no sooner have you put one on and sat down than you have to get up to change the CD...) As usual, there wasn't a great deal of interaction with the audience (hence the lack of titles above) as the band let the music do the talking. And a very interesting monologue it was.

So to the only band on tonight's bill that I hadn't see before, The Buccaneers. Perhaps best described as rhythm and blues for the indie generation, they provided the longest set of the evening, with their eleven, mostly fast-paced, songs including Out Of Sight, Singing The Blues (with its rather abrupt ending), Take My Soul, Ride with it's superb solo and slightly more rock 'n' roll sound, the very repetitive Don't Break Down, a nice cover of blues standard Baby Please Don't Go and, best song of the set, The Pistol's Warm (it's your groove that's killing me) - the video for which can be seen on YouTube - with it's metallic sounding guitars and slightly chaotic ending.

I might have switched the bill around slightly but, overall, this was a very enjoyable evening with four very strong acts. In terms of live music, a great start to the year.

Sonic Engineering

Tuesday 23rd November: On of the joys of going to gigs either on-spec or on somebody else's recommendation is that you occasionally come across a band that you wouldn't hesitate to see again. Hence tonight's solo outing to Stereo.

It's not often that I've seen a band from outside the UK play in York, so it was a bit of a surprise to find that Freaky Age, tonight's first support, were from Belgium. They play in the time-honoured choppy guitar style and their first song reminded me a bit of One Night Only. The start of their set was a bit disappointing. Despite having their own sound engineer the mix seemed all wrong. The vocals were drowned out by the guitars and the guitars themselves were almost indistinguishable behind the too loud drums. It wasn't until the third songs in, Never See The Sun, that I managed to catch a title, let alone any of the lyrics. The introduction to the next song was just guitar and vocals and, without the battle of the sounds, I started to make out that the vocalist did have a good voice. Throughout the first half of their set, some interesting guitar noises threatened to surface above the rapidly becoming tiresome drums and backing vocals were non-existent - you could see mouths moving, but could hear nothing. It was a bit of a relief when, starting with the sixth song, the drums faded a bit into the background, the guitars were allowed to come to the fore and I started to hear lyrics with some clarity. Where Do We Go Now spent four weeks as a Belgian number one in 2008 and was slightly more "pop" than the rest of the set. This was followed by a cover of Pinball Wizard and a final song which I didn't get the title of but was the best of the set. The band are all young - nineteen or so, but have already released two albums and toured across mainland Europe. There was a lot of enthusiasm and energy on stage. It's unfair to write them off on the basis of poor sound and the second half of an unusually long set for a support act was hugely enjoyable.

Second to take to the stage were York's own The Blueprints, who are billed as "alternative/indie/new wave", which either means all the same thing or that they don't quite have a distinct style. Their first song was light and airy while the second started off much darker and added keyboards to the mix before lightening up again for the main section. Staring At The Sun was, for me, just a tad too repetitive, Skylines was a much slower, less bouncy, more melodic song while the next was true rock and roll. Spectrum Versus Commodore must be the only rock song written for the 1980s geek generation while So Melancholy was anything but. Their final song was, again, the best - heavier and louder than the rest. There wasn't quite as much energy on stage, but there did seem to be what can only be described as in inherent "cheekiness" in the performance, helped by a small amount of barracking (and, in the end a minor stage invasion) from members of fellow York band The Buccaneers. Like many local bands, The Blueprints aren't exactly my type of thing, but are well worth seeing perform live.

Engineers aren't exactly a York band but I believe that Mark Peters does live here. They have had a major line-up change since I saw them at Fibbers last year. Mark has moved from bass to guitar and vocals (and is also the main songwriter), Daniel Land now plays bass and Matthew Linley plays the drums. Keyboards are provided by Ulrich Schnauss who is now a full time member after previously playing live with the band. Original member Simon Phipps, on vocals, guitar and bass, completes the current lineup. Despite the membership changes, their sound has stayed more or less the same. Engineers weave the individual instrument sounds together, crafting music that hangs in the air, music that you can almost touch, that envelops you and is almost hypnotic. So hypnotic, in fact, that I couldn't actually say how far into the set we were before a song was played that could actually have been said to liven things up. Most of their songs simply sit there, refusing to be moved, resonating in a bass-line that vibrates the floor. Despite touring to promote the third studio album, In Praise Of More, tonight's set comprised of songs from all three albums. One song, simply announced as "from our first album" opened almost discordantly and was a little jarring before it settled down, but this was the only blip in an otherwise superb set. Whether you describe their style as shoe-gazing, ambient or prog (they were recently covered in Classic Rock Presents Prog) there is no doubting that Engineers are excellent.