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Last night's gig...

Me & Georgina went and checked out this warehouse gig last night in Manor House (London). We were mainly going to see Drunk Granny play, cos I’ve never seen them, though my friend Sara who lived in Cardiff when they did too posted their ep to New Zealand a few years ago, which was awesome, and I’ve been hoping to catch them ever since I got to London. Now relocated to Bristol, Drunk Granny, in particular the lead singer Debi, was described to me as “pure punk” by Sara when she saw them in Wales. Despite Debi being ill last night, Drunk Granny were just what I hoped for. She and her bandmate Sam (on drums) play noise-oriented, kinda dark grrrl punk with total energy, and I loved that they had such an enthusiastic, hardcore fan crew going who knew all the words to their songs.

We were lucky cos also playing last night was Chaps who I’ve been minorly obsessed with ever since seeing them play with the Corey Orbisons last year in London. Chaps I reckon I can safely describe as a more hardcore/screamo Mika Miko, totally born from that post-riot grrrl, Portland/Olympia punk sound, but, you know, English and stuff. Chaps did not disappoint, and I remain obsessed. I’ve heard a release from them is forthcoming…

The new discovery of the night was Trash Kit who I will definitely be checking out again. Band members Rachel A & Rachel H evoked a tribal post-punk kinda sound, without the derivative nostalgia, but completely reminiscent of bands like the Raincoats and Pulsallama with their rhythmic and repetitive, pared down, playing-in-the-kitchen sound, and young and raw vocals. I was excited.

Anyway, if you are in London on 21st February, Chaps & Drunk Granny will be playing @ the Red Rose with another of my favourite English queer punk bands of the moment, Husbands ,who are two wonderful boys who sound like pure chaos. Husbands & Drunk Granny have a split 7” out by the way, for your queer listening pleasure:

Posted Feb 16, 04:46 AM | By Melissa | Comment [1]
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Bush Tetras, Oct 17 @ Corsica Studios, Elephant & Castle


This review is mega late (it’s for a show in October), as seems to be the way on Fast Hearts, but then this band is one that spans nearly 30 years, so I guess it doesn’t really matter!
The show was the legendary Bush Tetras, playing one London date only, at the Corsica Studios in Elephant & Castle.

Forming in the early 80s around the time of the burgeoning no wave & post punk scene in New York, members included ex- Contortions guitarist Pat Place, Cynthia Sley on vocals, Dee Pop on drums and Laura Kennedy on bass. An early incarnation of the band also featured Adele Bertei, who went on to form all-female band The Bloods, as well as appearing in the Lizzie Borden feminist film Born in Flames. Most recently Julia Murphy replaced Laura Kennedy who now has some pretty serious health problems: in September the Bush Tetras, James Chance and more put on a benefit gig to raise money for a liver transplant that she requires.

In interviews, Cynthia Sley has variously described the Bush Tetras’ influences as including bands such as the Clash and Pere Ubu, as well as reggae, hip hop and African music. In a 1980 NME article, Laura Kennedy described the Bush Tetras as a “rhythm and paranoia band”. When I first heard their song “Too Many Creeps”, I was a bit confused for a while, cos I thought it was the Slits, this was before I knew about the Bush Tetras. They don’t really sound much like the Slits at all actually, I guess it was just the early 80s sound, the female vocals and the funky beat, that had me initially confused (I guess I fell into the trap of using the Slits as a mile marker, as lots of people do, as if there could only have been one mostly all-female band playing music incorporating reggae and funk at that time!!). Bush Tetras never seemed to quite hit the level of fame or notoriety that a band, say, like the Slits did, but they were an intrinsic part of the New York art/music scene that included such dance funk bands as ESG, and their influence, particularly Pat Place’s guitar playing both in the Bush Tetras and the Contortions is widely acknowledged and respected:

“The Bush Tetras were funky. It was Pat Place, she was the show. She had the credibility because she’d put the funk into the Contortions. “Too Many Creeps” was a club hit. You heard it all the time”. (Richard McGuire from Liquid Liquid in Rip it Up and Start Again).

It’s always a bit of a worry going to see bands a number of years after their heyday that what you’ll end up seeing is a half-hearted attempt to recreate an earlier era, with the band churning out their “hits” but without any of the spark that originally made them so, ending up with a show that is faintly embarrassing…Bush Tetras were not like that at all! I’m not able to compare them with what they were like in earlier years, cos I wasn’t there, but I was impressed by their intensity and charisma. They still made you feel like you were seeing something new, their music not just comfortably slotting into the post punk revival (this was a group of stylish older women and men, not yr typical trendy haircut band), and yet their influence on those kinds of bands was quite clear. They looked cool. They sounded great. They made me want to hunt down all their old releases. The intimacy of the gig added to the feeling that you were really seeing “something”, I think it was this atmosphere that for example the recent X-Ray Spex show lacked. (This despite the fact Pat Place in Rip it Up and Start Again says that they used to play to crowds of up to 2000 in New York).

The support acts for the Bush Tetras and the Djs did well to set the scene, particularly the first band I saw, whose name I didn’t get, and I don’t think they were on the poster advertising the show. They were 3 gothed-out women on guitar, bass and drums, who swapped instruments throughout (and the drums were played standing up), reminiscent of Malaria! in the sense that they were quite serious and dark, and that 80s twistedness was evoked further by the bondage porn projected on a big screen behind them. If anyone else who went to this show knows who this band was, please get in contact and let me know!

Check out this 1982 video for the Bush Tetra’s “Too Many Creeps”:

Posted Nov 27, 06:11 AM | By Melissa | Comment
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X-Ray Spex Sat 6th Sept @ the Roundhouse


I felt kind of nervous going to the X-Ray Spex show at the Roundhouse in Camden last Saturday cos I was worried I’d be disappointed. No matter how hard I tried I wasn’t gonna get transported back to 1976, and I just hoped it would still be as amazing a spectacle as it was in my head (having only been born the year the first incarnation of X-Ray Spex broke up).

Mainly, I was going to see Poly Styrene and hear her voice in true life, that was how come it seemed ok to pay £30 for a ticket to see a band who was known for their anti-consumer lyrics (I mean, I paid only $20 or something to see the Slits, and they’d come all the way to New Zealand!). Poly Styrene, when she was young and wearing plastic bag dresses is my ultimate inspiration: so weird, and so astute and so strident. Plus she was multi-racial with braces and said things like “yammer yammer yammer, yammer yammer yammer, boredom boredom, boredom boredom!” which is a phrase that seems to be appropriate for so many situations. X Ray Spex was one of the most important bands of their era for punk music, but Poly transcends even that for me.

Anyway, to be honest it was a mixed show. I’m gonna start with the downside at the risk of being negative: the sound was bad, she sometimes sang way out of time and had to drop whole lyrics to catch up and at times the band seem to be falling apart, which seems like it’d be just the ticket for X Ray Spex fans, but it just didn’t have the same charm or riotous rebellion it would’ve had in ’76 when played in some shitty punk club…No, this was the Roundhouse, there were coloured lights and a big stage and lots of people, so it was a bit weird. Also, Poly was dressed pretty conventional and a couple of songs were performed twice, which was odd.

Though, in all honesty I was glad Oh Bondage! was played twice, because they opened with it and it took me by surprise so I didn’t have time to take it in. When they played it the second time Poly Styrene’s daughter joined her on stage which was so great (her daughter’s band opened that night, but unfortunately I missed them). It reminded me of when the Slits played and various “daughters” played with the original members. Aside from the dodgy technical stuff (I can’t believe I really even cared about all that actually) I was having these weird brain flips thinking, oh my god, that is the Poly Styrene I’m looking at, and her actual voice singing those songs: it was just one of those moments that I thought could never happen just cos I wasn’t born in time, but there it was right in front of me, and I know I’m gonna sound like a hippy, but it was pretty magical to have that occur.

They pretty much played all their songs off Germ Free Adolescents, apart from Plastic Bag. I think I probably enjoyed I Can’t Do Anything the most, as it was my first favourite X Ray Spex song ever (“Freddie tried to strangle me,with my plastic popper beads, but I hit him back with my pet rat!”), and she really sang that song like she meant it (whatever it means!?). All in all the show was great, at times a little like a family sing-a-long combined with moments of pure punk abandon, and I felt very privileged to have been able to go.

Posted Sep 13, 12:16 AM | By Melissa | Comment [1]
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Long overdue review....

So obviously the plan was to review the bands that played at the Cherry Bomb Comics fourth birthday party last month…but unfortunately my memory of what went on is slightly hazy, not cos I was particularly drunk (thank god, that’s one way to really piss myself off, get too drunk to appreciate my favourite bands or even remember the show – one day I’ll tell the Lynee Breedlove in Rome story), but mainly it’s cos I then moved to the UK a few days later so a lot has happened in between to make me forget all but the most salient of details, so please forgive the very vague review!

I had never seen the Wind Ups before, but had heard heaps about this Wellington band from ardent fans, they’re the kind of band you hear about long before you see them I guess (unless you live in Welly) – their reputation precedes them. Apparently this was the first time they’d played in Auckland, and Cherry Bomb was lucky enough to be able to combine our party with their gig at the Wine Cellar. Rumours of their awesomeness were not wrong, and I guess this is why music reviewers write stuff down at the actual show so that they remember what to write beyond “they were cool” when it comes time for the review. Er, I didn’t do that, so here’s a link to their myspace page anyway, so you can have a listen . I never really trust my first impressions of a band enough to describe their sound anyway as I tend to initially get distracted by other aspects before I can really get a handle on what the music “is”, but I remember thinking the lead singer Beth was refreshingly strange in her vocal delivery, lending the garage-y sound a psycho edge, and plus that there’s nothing better than having a group of boys-with-good-taste dance adoringly to music made by a girls in an amazing band that you’ve never seen before. I missed Tank Black after that, but heard good things…Following them was Newtown, a Cherry Bomb favourite who have just made an album. Featuring two women who swap jobs on guitar and drums and vocals throughout, Newtown are the kind of band that inspires you, makes you remember you can DIY, and that love and punk combined is a beautiful thing (particularly in the song “Fetus Infetu”, which is the term given to when a fetus grows inside another one – that’s how close they wanna be to each other). Both members of Newtown have been in multiple bands (which is how it seems to be for most Wellingtonian musicians), but this band strikes a special chord in Cherry Bomb’s heart, harking back to bygone riot grrrl days we were too young to actually experience, mixed with the shambolic, anarchic excitement of sadly missed Auckland bands such as the Sound Laydee and the other Misfit Theatre-related projects. The gig ended with the Curfew Girls, another much talked about band who I hadn’t seen before (this was the 3rd time they’d played). The rumours surrounding Curfew Girls mainly related to people’s apprehension at the possible chaos that could ensue given certain members of the band (haha, I’m sure they know who they are), followed by 100% positive reviews of the previous two shows. I caught the last two songs (which I was told by some of the band were their best), and there was no chaos (wasn’t sure if I should be disappointed) but the music was great, and the make up of the band so – I want to use the word refreshing again, but I’m against using a word like that twice – but you get the idea. They weren’t 4 boys in tight pants or whatever, thank you god, and you couldn’t take your eyes off of them. Pity I probably won’t see any of these bands play again, now that I’m over in the dirty old UK, but if you get the chance, you should because afterwards I’m sure you’ll agree that you’ve actually seen something, for a change, and heard music that was new and not some fascimilied crap designed to reassure the audience they’re listening to something “good”.

So I guess the next instalment from me is probably gonna be something that happens in London, where I live now…X Ray Spex in September!!!

Posted Aug 9, 01:50 AM | By Melissa | Comment
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The Gossip played in Auckland!

I finally got to see the Gossip play on Sunday, and they were just so amazing! I had waited years for them to come to New Zealand and it was worth the wait. We were right up the front so I have bruises on my hips from being pushed against the stage, but we had the best view and such a good time. Kat had gone to see them in Wellington the night before, and had baked a cake for Beth, so she got lots of hugs from Beth during and after the show! I yelled out for the first Gossip song I ever heard, Swing Low and they played it. After the show I told Beth it was me who requested it and she gave me a hug and a kiss! I also got one of Hannah’s drum sticks but had to resort to a little bribery in order to get it. The highlight of the show was when they played Standing In The Way Of Control and more and more people were climbing up on stage to dance with them — the stage was so crowded and even though I didn’t get up there I was so happy because bands often don’t let people get up on stage with them. It was such an exciting night and the show was so so amazing! Here are some photos I took, the quality is pretty bad because I took them on my cellphone.

Posted Dec 11, 11:05 PM | By Katie | Comment
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