HMV’s Next Big Thing initiative is crawling out across the capital over the next two weeks and offers a pretty tasty deal for fans, with three bands a night for a tenner, leading up to a Valentine’s day climax at The Borderline and featuring up-and-comers like Paloma Faith, Wave Pictures and Band of Skulls. For once, we left our studs and leather in The Crobar next door and braved the non-dingy dungeon to check out Electro’s latest great white hopes Chew Lips.
Monthly Archives: February 2010
We Review The London Steampunk Spectacular
25 CommentsFebruary 2, 2010 – 10:13 pm
Ahhh, steampunk. If being a goth doesn’t get you enough fingers pointed at you, try out this sub sub genre involving alternate histories, victoriana and cogs. To be honest it holds its wonderfully geeky charms and has attracted enough people for a proper shindig in the Cross Kings in Kings Cross. As I am a big ol’ geek too, I’m there.
Pedal To The Metal -The Best Rock Star Bass Players
5 CommentsFebruary 2, 2010 – 5:11 pm
Let’s be honest, no one wants to be a bass player.
If your nickname at school hadn’t been awkward dork, you’d be a frontman, blowing the clothes off the nearest member of the opposite sex with your tight leather pants and matching lungs.
If you could handle 6 strings without your fingers falling off you’d be a guitar hero, super talented and super sexy.
The bass is where the dorky boring member goes, eschewing even the rage of the drummer for a life of A pedal anonymity. Look at AC/DC. One of the tightest, finest exponents of hot rocking ever to stride the face of the earth, but Cliff Williams seemed to have lost his personality along with his leather wristband in 1976. He stands at the back. He plays an E. Admittedly he makes millions of pounds a year but it can’t be the most creatively satisfying career can it?
Despite this there are a few hardy souls who buck the trend, bass players who appear to be there by mistake. Tweaking the nose of treble clef superiority with their subsonic superpowers, they’re the leanest,meanest and coolest guys in the band – Check ‘em out:
Bodebrixen+Lost Infantry: The Lexington, N1
0 CommentsFebruary 1, 2010 – 12:12 pm
Tonight’s sparse crowd isn’t helped by The Lexington’s weird décor – a mix of Auntie Mabel wallpaper and Bowells of a Steam Ship that still manages to boast a decent stage area and a thunderous PA playing Devo –certainly enough to engage our hipster radars from the get-go.
Plenty of pre-gig buggering about on our part means we miss openers Grave Architects, (but check ‘em out here anyway!) so are initially put in a bad mood by the trying too hard indie antics of Lost Infantry.
First rule of stagecraft: Treat the audience like the dogs they are. They aren’t interested in your in-jokes and self effacing banter. Second rule? Well, not mixing Yes guitar lines with a Dexy’s influence is probably a good one…
