Formed in 1976 by husband and wife duo Lux Interior and Poison Ivy, The Cramps pioneered a ghoulish new brand of rock 'n' roll known as psychobilly. They took all the best elements of rockabilly, garage and surf music and steeped them in fetishism, Horror, 50's kitsch and B-movie clichés.
They covered rockabilly standards and masterfully subverted them with lashings of leather, blood curdling screams and the eerily distinctive sound of the psychobilly guitar.
With one foot in the past and one foot in the rock 'n' roll apocalypse they resurrected ? Mark & the Mysterians garage classic 96 Tears in the monstrous form of Human Fly...
...and turned Fever, originally made famous by Peggy Lee, into a haunting graveyard anthem.
With song titles like Bikini Girls With Machine Guns and I Was A Teenage Werewolf The Cramps inhabited a lusty, transgressive, go-go dancing world.
Unfortunately, lead singer, Lux Interior passed away in February of this year but I'm sure that if you look hard enough you'll still be able to find his spirit gyrating at a Zombie Dance somewhere this Halloween....
I'm looking at my gig notes from last night. When I say 'notes' I mean a few words scribbled on a Ticketmaster envelope. Across the top of the envelope my Felice Brothers gig companion has written 'Born fifty years too late'. Her argument is that this is rehashed Dylan 'for the kids' and that The Felice Brothers don't speak from the heart but instead draw upon tired old clichés of whiskey soaked men on the run. Now although lead singer, Ian Felice, has a voice more than a little similar to Dylan's and the influences of The Band, Woody Guthrie and Townes Van Zandt are all patently clear, I think there is certainly a place for The Felice Brothers in the here and now.
My friend argues that Ian Felice does not delve into himself in his writing. She explains that he is simply living out tired old outlaw fantasies. He writes lyrics such as, 'my teenage daughter’s knocked up' and what would a scrawny twenty year old know about such things?
Conversely, what I love about The Felice Brothers is their ability to deliver lyrically rich songs which address themes that are universal and timeless. Yes there are the usual references to poverty, prison and infidelity but when do those themes stop being relevant? As long as life involves struggle there will always be a place for music like this. Frankie's Gun is a deathbed song about a man who has been shot by his friend, Frankie. Clearly, this is a fictional narrative but it's rich with idiom, 'There's ten or twenty dollars and there ain't no lesser, that's for to take my sister to the picture show.'
and some brilliantly evoked detail about the friendship between the two men,
'Frankie, you're a friend of mine, got me off a bender after long-legged Brenda died'
They are five piece outfit with only two actual Felice brothers. Ian Felice is on lead vocals and lead guitar and James Felice is on accordion and keyboard. They are joined by David Turbeville on drums, a man called Christmas on bass and Greg Farley, a slightly over enthusiastic Marky Mark-esque character, on fiddle and washboard. Their performance at The Shepherd's Bush Empire was passionate and energetic. They were joined on stage mid-way through their set by support act (and Ian Felice's best friend), the wonderful A.A. Bondy.
Perhaps the set was a tad long and could have been broken up with a bit more interaction with the crowd and a more spaced out encore but they delivered an astounding array of songs from their vast catalogue. The set included the blush inducing Ballad of Lou the Welterweight which my friend strongly objected to on the basis of its crude content and lack of relation to personal experience but which I love because of the sepia drenched image of a fallen boxer it evokes in my mind,
'Before the bell would ring he had a way like Errol Flynn as he sauntered to the ring'
They ended with a cover of Two Hands by Townes Van Zandt. This choice seemed perhaps a little too earnest but it definitely ended the gig on an uplifting note.
A.A. Bondy's support set was one of the highlights of evening. He wandered on to the stage, with his harmonica and guitar, sleeves rolled like a young Springsteen. In a dreamy state, eyes barely open he began with the gorgeous Mightiest of Guns
The rest of the set was filled with beautiful and fragile songs such as When The Devil's Loose. At times the floating quality of the music transformed The Shepherd's Bush Empire into a ship on choppy waters. He joked about Alabama having no culture and explained that when people asked whether he'd been to The Tate on his London visit he replied,
'We just sit in our hotel room and watch YouTubes'
Monday night saw me treading the beer soaked carpets of The Stags Head once more, for a transatlantic rock 'n' roll feast. On the bill were Hygiene, Rock 'n' Roll Adventure Kids, The Okmoniks and last but not least the formidable Nobunny
Forget about Thumper, Peter Rabbit, Bugs and all the other innocuous bunnies of last century. Those halcyon days are over people. Was it was myxomatosis that heralded the birth of a new breed of sinister rabbits? I don't know but Nobunny is certainly no huggable fluffy carrot muncher. Think Joey Ramone crossed with Donnie Darko wearing nothing but a pair of red underpants and you're starting to get the picture.
Taking to the stage in a mangy rabbit mask and the aforementioned red briefs Nobunny delivered a set of good old fashioned punk rock with liberal smatterings of garage and psychobilly. With tremendous hooks, brilliant drums and some sweet-ass riffs Nobunny transformed his audience into a whooping, beer soaked, crowd surfing mess.
There is definitely something about donning a mask that gives a man licence to put on a no holds barred performance and Nobunny certainly let rip. Like the Duracell Bunny gone bad he hopped, skipped and hollered and, at one point, he even placed the microphone down his red pants. The evening climaxed with an encore of I am a Girlfriend spliced with I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend by The Ramones.
Little is known of the elusive Nobunny apart from the fact that he hails from Tuscon, Arizona and cites The Ramones, Hasil Adkins and The Cramps as some of his influences but if last night is anything to go by we'll probably be seeing a lot more of him (literally).
I've been trying to make up my mind about Bat for Lashes for a while now. I feel like I should like her. After all, she is a quirky female artist with a great voice and some badass leotard and sequined cape combos, and yet, her performance last night at The Roundhouse has confirmed that I don't. There is something about her non-threatening brand of wholesome sexuality that I find incredibly irritating. I prefer my female artists with a little more fire in their bellies. I like dangerous women like Karen O, Debbie Harry and Patti Smith. Although there is no denying that Bat for Lashes (aka Natasha Khan) is extremely talented she lacks the unknown quantity that I look for in a female solo artist.
Prancing around the stage barefoot and covered in glitter, she behaves like a sixteen year old girl on the cusp of discovering her sexuality but she is, in fact, a twenty nine year old woman. It's as if she inhabits some kind of twee fantasy world where it's acceptable to use a phrase like 'spewing comets' as a sexual metaphor.
If she achieves stellar success, which I'm sure she will, I could see her riding on stage on life size My Little Pony. Everything about her is cutesy, quirky, girl next door and the songs just melded into one big blur mediocrity.
She's been compared to artists such as Kate Bush and PJ Harvey and the influences are clear but with sentimental lyrics like 'heaven is a feeling I get in your arms' and 'I found a home in your eyes' I get the impression that she's never been haunted by the hounds of love or ever had to throw her bad fortune off the top of a tall building. Everything is just too sweet and one dimensional and as much as I'd like to join her in her glitter dipped paradise, I'm afraid I live in the real world.
Supporting Bat for Lashes were Yeasayer who you may have heard me banging on about recently. I was extremely excited about seeing them live but their short support set left me feeling a tad disappointed. Although the old material was brilliant the new material seemed to have taken on a strange new electro direction.
It's funny how when you've been listening to an album for a while you form an idea in your head about what the band will be like live. However, I was thrown by the fact that lead singer, Anand Wilder, danced a little like Ian Curtis crossed with Pee Wee Herman. Something about them just didn't sit right with me but I'll reserve judgement until I've heard the new album and seen a longer set.
In between Yeasayer and Bat for Lashes was Marques Toliver, a charming young man who commanded the stage with just his voice and a violin. Like Bat for Lashes, a little too nice to be really interesting but talented none the less. Look out for him.
I remember the first time I heard Debaser, Kim Deal's rumbling bassline combined with Frank Black's screaming vocals just made me want to explode. It was almost as if the feelings this song evoked in me were just too much to contain. I'm the kind person who gets obsessed with a song, listens to it ad nauseam and then goes off it but I have never tired of Debaser and it still the one song that is always guaranteed to get me on the dance floor. In spite of my undying love for the Pixies, Sunday's gig at the SECC was the first time I'd ever seen them live. The first time around my eleven year old self was too busy listening to the Shoop Shoop Song. When they reformed my adult self felt sceptical about paying to see a band (with a well documented history of not being able to stand each other) blatantly milking the cash cow. However, when they announced a tour in honour of Doolittle's twentieth birthday I decided it would be down right rude not to go along and celebrate this fantastic album's conception.
Sunday's show opened with footage from the film that inspired the song Debaser, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's Un Chien Andalou. I could hear mumbles of 'what the hell is this?' from the crowd but I think it was more a case of fascination than disgust. The dark and surreal visuals put the music into context and set the scene brilliantly. I knew that they would be playing Doolittle in its entirety so I expected them to go straight in to Debaser but instead they started with a Doolittle related b-side Dancing The Manta Ray. This was a great way to inject an element of surprise into the performance as playing an album in order definitely lacks the anticipation department.
After a few more b-sides Weird At My School, Bailey's Walk, Manta Ray they finally launched into Doolittle. The set went by in a flash because I was effectively just listening to an album that I already know inside out. The performance was slick but as is often the case at big arena gigs, I could hardly see the band and found myself watching the visuals on the screen instead of watching the barely visible band. I had a sinking feeling that I could have saved myself thirty quid and listened to the album at home. There were a few quips from Kim but Frank didn't speak to the crowd once and they just plowed through the album with little variation from the original recording.
Although, I was feeling content about having finally seen the Pixies live I was definitely not as elated as I hoped I would be. I found myself desperate to hear songs from Surfa Rosa and Come on Pilgrim so I was a tad disappointed when they returned for an encore of Wave Of Mutilation (UK Surf) and Into The White. I mean, Wave of Mutilation is a great song but how many versions of it do you need in one set?
What I didn't anticipate was the second encore. This was where my beloved Pixies really delivered the goods. I expected them to take the cash and run so when the strode back on stage the most I was hoping for was Where is my Mind? Instead they played, The Holiday Song, Nimrod's Son, Caribou, Broken Face, Something Against You, Vamos, Isla De Encanta and finally, Where Is My Mind? The second encore completely blew me away and hearing my unexpected favourites Caribou and Broken Face live finally soothed my cynical soul. After twenty years Frank can still scream like tormented male banshee and Kim Deal is still the coolest woman ever to hold a bass guitar.
Tucked away somewhere off Kingsland Road is a pub called The Stag's Head. It's an authentic East End boozer smattered with the usual trappings of hipsterfication including an eighties jukebox, taxidermy stags and a threadbare barf design carpet. There's also a very small stage which last night played host to The Incredible Staggers and The Vinyl Stitches.
It was the Vinyl Stitches who lured me to the gig because I have a penchant for all things retrospective and I love their authentic sixties style. The lead singer, John-Claws, is a young Pete Townshend who has perfected the scream of Gerry Roslie from The Sonics. On bass there's Vinn-Sinister who has taken an Addams Family slant on The Monkees and on drums, the awesome Sam Bam, a lady drummer with a blonde beehive and enough eyeliner to put Dusty to shame.
One thing The Vinyl Stitches have succeeded in doing is perfecting the art of emulation. They've copied the masters and they've done a brilliant job of it but it would be great to hear them evolve their own sound. Throughout their set I kept getting the niggling feeling that I’d heard their songs somewhere before even though they were playing their own material. They started with a surf number which was a perfect homage to Link Wray. Later, the lead singer sang the line 'you're the best girl I've ever had' and it bugged the hell out of me until I realised it was a line lifted straight out of Psychotic Reaction. There were riffs lifted from Brand New Cadillac, Jean Genie and All Day and All of The Night to name but a few. It's hard to sound unique when you're also trying to recreate a sound that's been around for over forty years but I think that The Vinyl Stitches could be the toast of the garage scene if they managed to put their own stamp on garage rock sound that they're so good at recreating. They look great and they sure can play their instruments but they need to inject a healthy dose of originality in order to take their band to the next level. Having said that they put on a rocking show and are well worth the price of a gig ticket.
It is possible to stay true to the garage sound while putting your own stamp on things, as was deftly demonstrated by headline act The Staggers. The Staggers started their show playing from behind a worn out velvet curtain and from the minute they started playing it was obvious that the tiny stage The Stag's Head was not going to big enough to contain them. The curtains opened to reveal a small Austrian frontman with thick black rimmed glasses who strode confidently into the crowd shaking his tush like Lux Interior's schnitzel eating cousin. Initially I thought the Austrian thing was just a brilliant gimmick but I soon realised that they were the real deal. They played a blistering garage and surf set complete with dancing from a voluptuous Canadian go-go girl. The evening culminated in a brilliant cover of Screaming Lord Sutch's Jack The Ripper and some amp climbing and more tush shaking from frontman Wild Evel.
Check out The Vinyl Stitches here:
http://www.myspace.com/thevinylstitches
Check out The Incredible Staggers here:
http://www.myspace.com/staggers
Check out the original Jack The Ripper here:
And The Sonics who inspired The Vinyl Stitches here:
King Khan and The Shrines is what would happen if you stuck Captain Beefheart, James Brown and Little Richard in blender with a shaman, a seventies Bollywood heartthrob and a splash of the Brian Jonestown Massacre. King Khan strides on stage wearing a cream flared suit, a native American headdress and a shark tooth necklace. Judging by his rip-roaring performance he has also summoned the voodoo gods of funk, soul, garage, punk and kitsch.
King Khan is blessed with boundless energy and the rare ability to whip a crowd into a frenzy. The music is a heady mixture of all the best stuff with a splash of Khan's own personal panache. He's backed by the mighty Shrines, an 11-piece band including a blinding horns section, a drummer who has played with Curtis Mayfield, Ike and Tina and Stevie Wonder and a French maverick on the organ who has been known to climb on top of his instrument and teeter precariously above the crowd.
The set list includes a 'psychedelic erotic gospel' song about swimming inside a vagina, a rousing homage to transsexuals entitled I Want to be a Girl and as an encore, a belting cover of Suicide's Ghostrider.
Last night King Khan and the Shrines made Cargo shake with sheer magnitude of their performance. It's a unique and unmissiable show (albeit one not recommended for those easily offended or people of a nervous disposition). All hail King Khan and the Shrines!
