It's been a long long time since I last went to a gig in Finsbury park. Not since the police shut down the Sir George Robey in its final drug-drenched days to leave it to stand as a rotting shell to remind us all of how drugs are bad and we should all go do something better instead.
Silver Bullets is a cool small bar in the bus station with a stage that has the shells of 3 Marshall stacks as the backdrop at the back of the stage. Those 3 stacks pretty much fill the back wall.
This night was meant to feature 4 bands but due to cancellations and problems with work it ended up being 3 acts. The first, JAMES A-TRAIN was a late addition to the bill. He took one look at where everyone was sitting towards the back of the bar and instead of performing on stage and being ignored took the brave move of instead wandering over with his acoustic guitar and singing and playing very softly by the tables and chairs and managing to shut everyone up in well under a song. That song being Beneath The Silvery Sky: the first in a nice set of gospel blues that wasn't at all in keeping with the bill he was on.
Born and Raised on A Crest of A Wave had a nice lilt to it and good plaintive lyrics and I Was There When Jesus Saved Me wouldn't have sounded out of place round the corner at what used to be the Rainbow Theatre. The former Rainbow is now a huge church although at the volume James was working at he would have had trouble being heard 6 rows back. I really liked his final song, Splintering Ship, it sounded like it ought to have an awful lot of cymbals crashing behind it.
Next on and this time using the stage were NO CARS who are normally a Japanese all Girl trio but for this gig were two Japanese girls and replacing the bass player they had a French bloke on guitar. Haruna Komatsu spent much of the set in between songs chiding him for his Frenchness!
They started with 30 second Line Check, which had the French bloke mystified till it was explained it was just a line check that they sing along to and it worked out fine as they sounded pretty good and raw. The first proper song was Piccadilly Line in tribute to the station you could see out of the window. As they normally call this song Northern line and the lyrics are a repeated chant of Piccadilly Line and as many stations from the line as Haruna could remember, they sounded like a mix of Shonen Knife and Frank Chickens having an argument with the Voodoo Queens and Wesley Willis.
The Lo-fi then went a touch surreal on Geisha Girl In A Sentimental Mood. It had some good guitar picking going on along with the basic strumming. Black Cat stripped it back to basics with loads of repeats of "Black cat black cat" and loads of Meowing from the stage and then from the audience. It was great fun and they seem to attract a very well connected crowd as I noticed several promoters practically drooling at them as were the band's doting photographer and video cameraman. Octopus kept to the scratchy faux naive blueprint but my favourite song of the set was Sellotape: a great paean to sticky back plastic if ever you need one.
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Banana Song was good fun and they then did a cover of a Japanese song that sounded like Donotku and I'd guess it was a TV theme song or something similar. They then did the band's theme Tune No Cars. It would be a great set opener but was in fact the penultimate number as they finished with another song in Japanese that sounded like Ichini Rock, but I'm afraid I have almost no Japanese so I could well be wide of the mark. Either way they were great fun and give the odd glimpse to the fact that they are far better musicians than they are letting on. I'd like to see them with the full female line up as I'm sure the dynamic will change having a bass player rather than two guitarists.
Then, headlining instead of being second on the bill were CLINKER who I haven't seen in quite a while. Tonight they were performing as a stripped back duo of Pete Jordan and Tomoko and they opened with a new song Something To Behold (Bouncing song): a good funky disco number with baggy edges like it could have been played by The Farm. Slide was next once they sorted out the on stage sound levels and got to hear what was coming out of Tomoko's sampler, which we needed to hear on Mire for certain as they went nicely bonkers and again sounded good and baggy. Pete seemed to struggle to remember all the words of Innocence and Sensibility another new song but it sounded pretty good out front.
Searching For A New World sounded less spacy than it has previously but that was probably due to the smaller band. It didn't quite take me as out there as it normally does. Your Number's Up could be directed at any number of targets currently and the fact that it doesn't sound that twisted and bitter is no bad thing as it got everyone going ready for the final assault of Searching For Hallucinogens. It went all spacey and as far out as they could make it and certainly the most psychedelic they had sounded all set.
This was a pretty good night but I would have like to see Pete's other band The Sunlight Services Group who should have headlined. Oh well, next time.
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