The Mighty 590

It must be a nightmare if you’ve just started your own band and you’re trying to make a name for yourselves, especially if London’s the place where you wanna make it happen.

Why? Because there are gonna be literally thousands of likeminded souls in the same boat, and only those who can offer something very special will rise above trawling around the proverbial toilet circuit for the rest of their days.

That’s why I ask you to spare a thought for GAUDI and BLOFELD, the former being responsible for opening tonight’s showcase, and the latter having the unenviable job of following the Mighty 590 and closing the evening’s entertainment.

It’s not that either band were bad, in the technical sense of musicianship anyway. In fact they both sounded rather competent at what they did.

It’s just that there must be a million and one other bands doing the Bluetones-type Britpop thing (see Gaudi) while Blofeld are yet more Rolling Stones / Strokes clones in crappy second hand threads and that’s something we can all do without.

Thank the lord then for THE MIGHTY 590, who aside from being the only band whose efforts roused any type of moshpit action, also looked like they were the only band on show that hadn’t studied what’s cool and what’s not, and instead concentrated on that one ingredient severely lacking from a lot of today’s overrated and overpaid wannabe heroes – entertainment.

In frontman Ross McDonough, they possess a five foot tall pocket dynamo whose onstage behaviour veers between that of rock star, stand-up comedian and Olympic gymnast. All at the same time.

Then you have his elder brother Sean on bass, keeping one eye on his instrument and the other on his mischievous sibling in a kind of big-brother-becomes-weary-godparent-scenario.

And of course, they've got the tunes, of which there are plenty.

‘A Little Competition’ and ‘We Know Where You Live’ are excitably pulsating numbers that make you want to jump up and down like a teenager who’s just experienced the joys of masturbation for the first time, while ‘No More Superheroes’ raises the roof to new levels above those on the 25th floor of King’s Reach Towers and it’s despicable occupants, none of whom can be bothered to attend tonight’s show, which is a travesty in itself considering the proximity of the Water Rats in relation to their den of inequity.

The Mighty 590 recall the happy-go-lucky spirit of The Wonder Stuff whilst combining the charm of the Pixies with the melodies of Ash to create a sound of their own.

It’s not my job (or anyone else’s for that matter) to herald a "next big thing", but if you let The Mighty 590 slip into obscurity without so much as a passing glance, you only have yourselves to blame, and I wouldn’t want that tarnishing my conscience.

Would you?