Boards
Bands to avoid!
On Saturday and Sunday I attended two gigs respectively, and saw seven bands, five of whom were great and two of those five were outstanding. However, the other two, one at Water Rats and the other at King Edward Inn, need to be named and shamed, and avoided.
Water Rats: Sadly, it seems the fashion on a bill to include someone who is just friends with the right people (perhaps his mummy and daddy own the building?) Between Arthur and Martha and Mahogany there occurred a grotesque, bizarre, unfathomable spectacle called Grosvenor. He sung, played guitar licks and fiddled on his keyboard. Such behaviour isn't unusual. However, what is unuusual, and quite disturbing, is that he appeared to think that it was 1975 and that he was in a New York club and that he was there to make people disco-dance and romance the ladies. Imagine a Benny Hill skit of The Commodores. Further, the guy, visually, would have easily passed as a member of Chas 'N' Dave. I was waiting for him to stop the music and start telling ironic jokes, but he kept going, reminding everyone that it was Saturday, and describing how he was "working" a girl - meaning chatting her up. His presence in the bar area prior to the gig should have been informative as a guide to his mental state since, while grinning at everyone, he was bedecked in knee-length fat-american shorts. The whole experience was removed from any reality.
King Edward Inn: A fine gig reaching its denouement with the mighty Io, except for one aberration: The second band to play, You, Me, Dominoes have, clearly, decided that, partly due to not having enough friends to play other intruments, they would posit a duo who pretended to be multi-instrumentalists with further instrumentation pre-recorded, and then whine on as a duet with acoustic guitars strummed vaguely. Such an approach works if the band possess the talent of, say, Owen Pallett, or if there is an unpretentious and acknowledged lo-fi shambling. However, in both cases, songs exist. You, Me, Dominoes have no songs, or talent, but fail to notice these omissions, and thus meander about pointlessly, mixing the worst Simon and Garfunkel open mic tribute with thumping rhythmless beats. "Why?" is the only question that could be put to this band.