Some folks like water, some folks like wine, I like the sound of The Incredible Staggers and The Vinyl Stitches

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: