Bad Sam + Real Life Version + SeeHearSpeak + A Werewolf! Live Review
Bad Sam + Real Life Version + SeeHearSpeak + A Werewolf!
Worcester, Firefly 20/02/04
Yeah. Yet more punk in Worcester. I kind of miss trawling all the way up to the bright lights of the greater West Midlands or down to that Brizl for gigs of late. I miss the thrill of parking somewhere badly-lit, where my car is highly likely to get absent-mindedly vandalised by passing urchins. But gigs like this are on my doorstep. And I have kids to worry about in the morning. So game on. Four bands. For a quid a pop. This is small-town DIY. Writ large.
Opening band A Werewolf! are simply guitar, drums, and four straight square feet of effects pedals. This was also their first live outing ever as a unit – notwithstanding the fact that both members play with about twelve other local acts such as Officer Down and We Used to Have Horses. Their math / post rock sound was tight and spiky: picture The Dillinger Escape Plan at their most listenable, and most, well, likeable. The humour and personality came through in the song titles – “Cut Yourself off at the knees and pretend to be Tom Cruise”, anyone? – and hey generated a lot of warmth in the room and amongst their attendant following. This frenzied, time-change driven style is not everyone’s cup of tea – but these boys had both poke and spunk. So this was not a bad way to start the evening. Apparently they have an EP out soon. Check it out.
Having multiple bands on the go at any one time seems to be a thing at the moment – as Slovenia’s SeeHearSpeak showed. Comprising the rhythm section of fellow South-Central Europeans Real Life Version and the vocalist / guitarist of Moonlee Records’ InxSane – this trio also more than any other I’ve yet heard rammed home how vibrant the punk scene actually is in Europe. With a remarkably mature emo/post hardcore sound – like a pokier, better-looking Against Me! – if this band actually were the native English speakers that they sound like, say from Oxford or Guildford – then the UK “alt” media would be all over them like an aggressive allergic rash. But they’re from a small town in the Balkans. So they are not. The UK alt media are fools.
Primary supports Real Life Version were out of the same stable, but with a more metallic quality to the guitars and occasional soaring to the vocals. By that moniker you could comfortably bracket this as emo-revival, bearing direct and favourable comparison with the current waves crashing in from America via labels like Tiny Engines – You Blew It!, Braided Veins and the rest, and more than a nod to The Get Up Kids of yore – yet way more interesting as these impossibly polite Slovenian boys have plenty of things to say about social issues, politics and such – one time mainstays of the punk movement. Whereas most of the whiny glut from the USA just like to sing about the weather. Or their ex-girlfriend. Or boats. Plea: Google Moonlee and Giljotina records. Right now. And buy their stuff. You will not regret it.
Speaking of politics… after all this, there was still Bad Sam. If the first three bands represented much of what is so exciting about the young blood coursing through the veins of the scene right now, then these gnarly fellows from the Valleys, featuring as they did Stewart Lee’s harder elder brother on lead and Grizzly Adams on drums – represented the enduring energy of the old school. Touring intermittently in support of their new album – the playfully titled “Working Class Holocaust”, and playing to the sizeable crew of older school crust-punkers also in attendance (for this show was also an exercise in bringing hardcore generations together into the bargain), things were expected of this lot.
With a political hardcore sound – echoes of the Dead Kennedys and all of Jello Biafra’s side projects could be heard at some point in the set – this band’s pedigree in political punk outfits like the mighty Cowboy Killers, and years swimming in the fluids of the vitriolic Newport skatepunk scene glistened forth like the sweat on frontman Beddis’ pinball smooth bald head. That was a laboured line. But you get the idea. And speaking of Beddis. This singular specimen of a man, who on stage is quite unhinged and almost totally unintelligible barring frequent extreme profanity, had and has the most intense and primal physical presence of any frontman I have ever seen in the flesh. This writer must confess to having been nose to nose with Henry Rollins. Back in the day. And Beddis – even pushing 50 as he is – makes the great Henry at his early 90s peak look like Josh Homme. He gibbered. He ranted. He pulled some Kung Fu moves. He had a little sit down at the back of the room on a chair. He clambered up the walls. He fucked off back to Wales. And life seemed somehow less terrifying and exciting.
They even sold novelty dildos as merch. Unspeakable.
Ed Ling
Pictures by Mark Hoy / www.inagoodlight.com
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