Pete & the Pirates - Forum

Went to The Charlatans acoustic at Union Chapel. Some of their blander stuff of more recent years sounds great in this context which is what I hoped for but some songs were redone to the extent that the melody was entirely different, albeit with the lyrics of the original song. Fun for them maybe but not for me. Enjoyable evening in that it was a change to my normal fayre.

two wicked little gigs this weekend

Stiff Little Fingers at Forum which was immense
and Dive Dive with Chris T T and Retrospective Soundtrack Players - a rare treat where all the bands were fantastic

I hate dry ice I really do not get why you need it unless the show is massive and a show
in Lille The Futureheads had to stop their set as the machine pumped out so much you couldnt see the stage at all

back on topic
had a surprise gig turn into two
won tickets for Young Legionnaire at Barfly where I also saw Hawk Eyes (used to be called Chickenhawk)
Hawk Eyes have to be the most exciting band I have seen in ages
Young Legionnaire were also very good.
By chance a friend of mine was going to another gig just next door so I popped into the Monarch before hand to watch Club Smith
loads of my friends rate them however I cant see the appeal
however did catch up with Simon Kaiser so it was well worth going

next up is my mini Frank Turner tour cannot wait

I think I am in love
Frank I want your babies*
Leeds turned out to be a fantastic gig
Franz Nicolay is a grower everyone should check him out
esp if you like accordions







*this is not true

History of Apple Pie most enjoyable last thurs. Packed little gig room at the top of The Old Blue Last. Proper spit and sawdust spartan music venue. Sound quality was a bit average but to be expected. They were pretty raw and only have half a dozenish songs but really tick boxes for me. Looking forward to a second helping. Only pain was that they came on at 11pm.

The outdoor gig from Old 97s I attended this week was sponsored by a local radio station and the entire concert was filmed. Very hot and humid even after the sun went down but rocking nonetheless : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w9w6rVvv1M

One of the recent gigs I attended was wonderfully captured by the folks from the Austin Music Weekly website. My friends from Leatherbag had a brilliant album and EP release gig in late July. Audio and video both available here : http://www.austinmusicweekly.com/show/l … 07-28-2011

The Shutes at the Old Blue Last on Tuesday disappointed me, I thought they'd be much better. Definately got many of the ingredients needed in my opinion and good charisma/presence. Unfortunately though, the slower songs were really dull and dreary. Fair enough, I should have checked these bits better before I went but anyway, for me, if you are going to be slow and drawn out, be trippy and psychadelic, preferably but not compulsorily, with a f*ck off lazy groove underneath. Then i'll love you to bits. Not that i'm narrow in my requirements or anything. Though not doing this they could n should do. The lead singer was flat as a pancake as were one too many harmonies. Keep said front man in his range for starters and concentrate on the upbeat melodic stuff a la "who de lang" and fair dooooos they're ticking boxes.

Last edited by Neat Beats (2011-09-16 21:10:16)

I attended Austin City Limits Festival this past weekend. It's an outdoor festival held in Zilker Park which on the edge of downtown Austin. I wasn't personally excited about most of the lineup but did enjoy fine festival sets from Coldplay, Elbow, Kurt Vile and The Violators, and Gomez.

Laura Marling
I love her so and she was her usual amazing self at Westminster Central Hall
however I am weary of people who go to gigs to talk
seriously you only need to be quiet for an hour and sometimes up to two
is it really that hard to rest that cavern of a mouth and let your ears open instead

so I have some Frank gigs coming up and that is it
on a gig break

Young Knives on Saturday at The Lexington, where else, they seem to have all the good stuff these days. If i'm honest I'm not "all that" on their 3rd album but like almost everything else. Hoped there would be a large swathe of "back catalogue" but it didn't really happen. Had two newbies come along and they could understand what i'd been banging on about after the first few tracks but then it went all disappointingly average. Just when I thought all would be salvaged in the encore, some little scumbag had apparently nicked Henry's pedal and they couldn't do more than one. Still love them as an outfit but they've gone slightly less edgy, one track was like a standard funk track. Hoping for a return to form on the next.

You caught me at a rare moment. I actually had some decent sleep (as much as you can during SXSW anyway) and am relaxing a bit before heading out for another festival day. I haven't watched any news this week so I have not heard Obama adding any British slang to his vocabulary ;-).

I'm dealing with band overload so I admit I haven't done much new band exploring. A couple of the new (to me) bands I've seen didn't quite grab me : Django Django from Scotland and Camp Radio from Canada.

I admit I've been enjoying some older, more familiar bands this week. Last night I saw a documentary on the band, Big Star, which was shown as a work in progress (not the final cut). Wonderful piece of work so far - the screening was followed by a 2 hr tribute performance. I could feel my eyes start to well up when lone surviving Big Star member, Jody Stephens, sang "For You" from the Third/Sister Lovers album. Goosebumps.
An Austin band I enjoyed from the late 90s, Cotton Mather, recently reissued their '97 album, Kontiki and they've had a SXSW reunion (just for the fest, I'm afraid). A little trivia : CM got a fair bit of press in the UK and the Gallagher brothers have raved about the album. So I've been a giddy fangirl catching all the CM performances this week. Here's their performance from KUT FM : http://kut.org/2012/03/kut-at-the-four- … n-mather/.
Yesterday, I also saw 2 performances from my friend, Nic Armstrong, a Brit expat who has called Austin home since 2005. He played a solo set followed by a full band set later that afternoon. He's revived Nic Armstrong and The Thieves (with a new backing band full of some 20-something whippersnappers ;-) ) and it was flippin' glorious. It was 2005-2006 all over again. No new album yet but they did play some new tunes.

On a non-SXSW note (and a shameless plug), you can follow my mostly local Austin picks on the music blog, Side One Track One : http://www.sideonetrackone.com. A local band I saw this week had some advanced copies of their album available so I snagged one while I had the opportunity. A lo-fi garage rock band called The Zoltars. It's quite catchy and poppy too. The album is called "Should I Try Once More" ? Sample some tunes here : http://thezoltars.bandcamp.com/