This album launch show was at the indie sweatbox currently known as The Bowery, but previously familiar The Fly and about a dozen other names too. Having managed to squeeze ourselves into a small space by the sound desk we proceeded to sweat profusely as did everyone else. This place was baking hot and it's still the middle of winter. I'd hate to go see someone there in the middle of summer!
Before the headliners was a short set by ROBERT ORTON who is apparently quite big on the York poetry scene. I found that hard to believe as he was a laconic, slightly self deprecating half stand up comedian half piss poor poet who didn't do quite enough to keep my interest in a 5 minute set. He had a few quite good lines but far too many head scratchers and lines that made me ask why he bothered.
Still, soon enough it was time for the rather ungainly titled THE MEN THAT WOULD BE BLAMED FOR NOTHING who I have wanted to see since finding out they are Jez Miller's other band, apart from being guitarist with Walter Lure when he plays in the UK, so the first surprise of the night was finding out Jez is this band's drummer! I already knew they played Steam Punk without being totally sure what that would sound like. In this case it is like mixing Chas and Dave with Splodgenessabounds throwing in some Slayer and mixing in a little bit of Dr.Feelgood while singing about Engineers of the Victorian era!
They opened with Charlie, a song about Charles Darwin off their now banned debut album Now That's What I Call Steampunk! Volume 1 as apparently EMI own the rights to the phrase Now that's what I call so they have forced the band to rename the album on any re-issues. Whatever, it's great to hear a song asking Charles Darwin what he's done in going against the Bible with the Origin of Species and then asks which one is wrong.
That's followed by a longish and funny intro into Steph(v)enson which is about the 4 famous Victorian Steph(v)ensons and how you tell them apart and what they achieved all over a rambunctious punk tune that got the packed house moshing like crazy. In between songs, they explained about the songs and the band's other careers as two of them are stand up comedians capable of selling out larger venues than this for the band they created for themsevles to dick around in. Ideal if you're going to sing Victori'as Secrets about dear Albert's piercings.
Still it was soon time to mount the Charabanc and have a trip Fhtagn Margate that seemed to be about the odd day off the hard working normal Victorian would get. Blood Red is all about the Imperial adventures of the British in putting everyone else under the cosh of our British Steel. That was followed by the ferocious Common Soldiery about how much they ordinary conscripts would hate the officers who would send them over the top to die and not care a jot unless you ruined things for them.
Doing It For The Whigs whad some marvelous Tory baiting in the lyrics and while it was about the Victorian political battles, it still ring true today. Then the singer in the Pith helmet who also played a mean saw picked up a old medical book to illustrate the lyrics to How Often Do You Masturbate: a song about the ills of that particular pastime and what the Victorians thought it caused. I'm sure some Republicans in America still do think this way. Boilerplate Daniel got a big cheer from the crowd who went nuts to this song about a kid abandoned age 2 in a foundry and brought up on the quiet by the workers. It's a great romp of a song.
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We then got onto one of my favourite victorians in The Stink all about Thomas Bazalgette and his marvellous invention of London's Sewer system that is still keeping us disease free to this day, even if it did kill off one of Londons top 10 tourist attractions of the day (the York House Watergate). It's actually still standing but is mainly ignored where once it pulled in thousands of visitors. Still, time for another great Engineer: this time Nicholas Tesla and his coil gets the full treatment and sounds great for it.
Then it was time for some Sci Fi on Moon about Jules Verne and HG Wells wanting to fly us to the moon and the dreaming that was needed to make that a reality. Then we went back to the Engineers for Brunel: a great song about Isambard Kingdom Brunel that actually got the whole place shouting out his name on the chorus like it was the most natural thing in the world.
They brought the show to a close with the band's almost theme song Goggles (at least a quarter of the audience had goggles either on there hats or round there necks) as it seems to be one of the uniform things all good steam punks own and wear and it got about the biggest pit of the night with most of the audience going for it. They then finished with Manners Maketh The Man: a phrase that was forcefully explained to me as a kid in Junior school by a teacher who made sure every kid understood that's how you should live and this song does the phrase justice.
This was a great gig and I look forward to hearing the new album the brilliantly over the top titled "This may be the reason why the men that will not be blamed for nothing cannot be killed by conventional weapons..." Yes, it really does have that mouthful of a title and is available in most formats including Wax Cylinder. Every good band knows music sounds hissier on a wax cylinder....
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