Saturday 12 May 2007

Sounds of Sweden, The Meritocracy, The Mexicos - RAFA

Tonight is The Sounds of Sweden 1st Birthday show, featuring The Mexicos and 'special guests', rumoured to be The Suburban Kids with Biblical Names. Dear God, not again. I love them dearly, but three times a week would kill me.

Yes, it really has been a year since Stacy and Richard started this, a whole year since we were crouched in the popular corner of the room watching Elias perform his jolly skiffle cover of Wonderwall, almost preempting it by hollering for a cover. How much has changed since then? My heart's a little blacker. My ebb now fathoms lower. The wounds are a little fresher. Thanks.

The RAFA has been decked out with party balloons, the free CD has four or five sweeties stuffed into it and some folk are wearing party hats. Familiar faces all around, so I'm squeezed into a dark corner to scribble alone. Gosh, there's the Mighty Ob' girls, small nods of recognition, has a been so long since I tried hassling them to do a video webcast thing and failed.

So onstage, the special guests are a motley crew consisting of Ally Cook and SOS Richard from Dot To Dot, that stubbly guy who plays with them sometimes, SOS Stacy and the girl from the bar t'other night. Rumour has it they're called the Merritocracy, but that could have just been a pun name they made up for the Stephen Merrit tribute night the other month, I'll stick with it, that's what they get for not being clear about their name.

They bumble through three Swedish covers:- Jens Lekman, and two other's that I didn't write down, the apologise for the standard, having spent hours and hours rehearsing at the last minute. It was competant and recognisable, and would have gone down okay no matter what they did, it just wasn't very imaginative. I've knocked out a few Swedish covers myself lately, Herman Dune, ABBA, Jens, Cardigans, Roxette, Broder Daniel, Hello Saferide, and I'm not even playing live.

Ally Cook stood centre stage, like a troubador. Is he trying to set himself up as Glasgow's answer to Jens?

They shuffle off, Stacy spins some more tunes, a few people dance, a few more faces turn up and The Mexicos hit the stage.

Did I mention the cake? There are lots of wee cup cakes knocking about, thick with frosting and some with little Swedish flags. And sweets, sweets everywhere.

I'd been listening to The Mexicos on Myspace all day, and their brand of glittery vocoda covers is great, slowed down a pace from iamchemist's version and slightly cheesier. Robbie says a poor man's Superstar, but well, Superstar hardly ever played covers. Playing covers is an art, you gotta have ahook and they chaps have it.

On their blog they have a really neat cover of Sweet Child of Mine, alas they didn't play it tonight, but they did segue B&S's Sleep the Clock Around into one of their tune which was neat.

They were enjoyable, but didn't really get the dancefloor pumping.

Unlike the Plimptons who are playing a free gig at The Box on Sauchiehall Street, perfect pre-Winchester entertainment for all the family.

Videos
here
here

Photies
here

Reviews
here

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

No, no. You misheard me. I said it sounded like Singstar, not Superstar. Actually it sounded like they'd taken their backing tracks from one of these web pages with hundreds of cheesy MIDI tunes. I know this having done it myself.