Cat On Form

Through my JD-goggles the sign by the door reads something like "Sorry, SOLD OUT". But I'm filthy rotten scum. My name's down. I'm in.

Noisescapes (word of the night!) are already pouring around the pub-come-venue. Crashed in from Nottingham, Seachange blast out their 2 parts Jetplane Landing-y rock annihilation, 1 part soothing strings and a fistful of mashed up 'Ladies and Gentlemen We're Floating in Space' pills. They're a sun-drenched road to nowhere with shade everywhere. Whatever. They're showering this room with rock debris from the school of sonic dimensions. Loudness but stroking us with violin strings. Brilliant live band. Wish I had caught the whole set. There'll be a next time...

Then it all goes wrong. I see the bar. I see another sign that says £2 a double and moments later I'm ranting at various people about who knows what. Stagewards, The Wolves of Greece have just started. Don't get it. It's just fuck off walls of noize for boys who want their music to sound like fire and terror. I can't even see them on the ankle high stage. I hit the bar (another double), and begin taunting an unfortunate member of Electric Soft Parade.

And then the main event: CAT ON FORM (read: Brighton's finest.). The sound of running down streets shouting and screaming at anything and everything. They're reformist extremists - they want things to matter. Never think of death. Lose it right inside the moment and not understand what happened until after the event. That's exactly the point. That is not what punk was about then but this is now, the new, updated, reissued, revised and what it needs to be but with lessons learnt, post-fugazi, post-post-modernism, post-mtv and pre-ww3.

All I remember from tonight is that it was grrrreat, and that the bare torso's onstage perspired like sumo wrestlers in leotards, shining all au natural. I remember they have a girl on drums (only notable cus there are clearly so few women in music just now - why is that?). And the crowd, just step away from this foursome-on-fire, bouncing into one another, unaware of spilling drinks, unaware of exactly what's happening til the numb-eared morning after when it all sinks in, out shoes still drenched in various fluids.

This is what gigs are all about, four people giving their all, spewing manifesto's out like junkies with blood. This is what rock'n'roll, punk and any music that's ever mattered is ALL about. "A fresh noize" that inspires the people it hits.

Tonight was about feeling a part of something to the point you're scarred, embossed with the date when the earth scorched in front of your blood-shot eyes, knowing that few things can match this, with each of us interpreting the intense outbursts onstage in our own ways.

Cat On Form are a sign of the times. I see apparitions of every ego-jerker from Mtv being burnt alive, like some bonfire guy, flesh bubbling, bones becoming dust like every compromise that ignited my naïve beliefs they could. Beside them is every coke-snorting culture hi-jacker, every scum-licking sell out music terrorist, purely doin' it for the dosh at the end of the line, those are the people that waste our time, giving us shite to wade through and quash out belief that a band could buck the system and change the world. Because given a chance, they maybe could.

How can a band make a difference then? The answers are all here, in the signs and context and mid-song rants. First, individually realising there's no point attaching any one person or name to anything, understanding that each on of us is an insignificant ant. To get out of other people's control (keep it indiependant), to lose control. Form collectives, allegiances, unbreakable relationships, then bring these parts together and then, and only then, will things (be it music, culture or global societies) change.