Gronk and the Body Doubles - Fox and Duck

The missus and I were taking a pleasant drive in country, well, the banks of the mighty Thames down through Richmond. Its nice round there, big houses with high walls, winding roads, fields with cows. More like Cheshire than London.

Anyhoo, we stopped off at a pub called Duck and fox, it reminded me of the place I was a glass collect at in Manchester, 1995. Tonight we found there was a band playing, Gronk and The Body Doubles. A six-piece, three guitars, drums, bass and a trumpeter.

The bass player wore a cowboy hat, so I was wary. Some might say three guitars is two too many, but here it sounded okay.

Gronk, the lead singer, stood centre-stage, looked tiny, this was cos of his over-sized guitar and taller bandmates.

The songs are bluesy rock, at times a halfway house between Bruce Springsteen and Supergrass. There are nice friendly harmonies and some rather neat lead guitar noodles from at least two of the guitarists. The guitar especially gives them that FM Rick Rubin sound.

The audience seemed quite into them too, judging by the ages it was a friends and family sort of show, but folk were dancing and I was a little confused how people continued dancing even when they wandered outside for a smoke. That doesn't happen at the gigs I usually go to.

Not much on Songkick, just one of Gronk's gigs at The BarFly in Camden. From their website, they've played other gigs, but they're hardly the most prolific, or scenesterish, are they even part of a 'scene'?

Extra cheese points for using the line "Gonna take it down a little bit " before a slower number.

Ooh, trumpet takes it up to a whole nother level. I do like guitar bands with trumpets. More of that sort of thing.

Anyhoo, so Gronk is there centre stage, doing some fine blues, mincing a bit like he's practising in front of the mirror in his bedroom, but strangely he's relaxed as he's in front of a the crowd. Its a breath of fresh air, he's completely unaffected on stage, hardly up himself at all. I'll chalk that up as being another difference to the usual gigs I go to.

They ought to gig more.

Witness to the Beard - The Cavendish Arms

The Mighty Beard are mightily funked up tonight, with obligatory welcomes to friends and family who've travelled a long way to be hear tonight.

They're fast, they're urgent, they are storming. Tonight they are basement punk.

Less grunge than last time, more polished to, starting to come into their own, more confident. The sound of wearing wellies and jumping in muddy puddles.

"Come on strap, don't fail me now!"

The Beard Army in attendance whipped into their chant of "Witness! Witness! Witness!" Will one day Wembley echo with the same?

Aw man, Hayley, the drummer, singing a sultry cover of the Saved by the Bell theme tune, that's gotta go down in the history books of tv theme cover versions, with Clockwork Bear's cover of the Raccoons theme and The Red Bull Dozer's Littlest Hobo.

Kalorie - The Cavendish Arms

Aw man, this place is packed. Maybe picking a seat at the back to look moody and mysterious was a bad idea. Its a nice seat, but there's plenty of folk standing in front of me.

The band on stage look like Girls Aloud with guitars, sequins are in. They sound like commercial rock, raw but well designed. There's something a little disjointed about the first song, the way the guitar cuts out when the backing vocals kick in, or the quiet bits for the bass riffs, it leaves you hanging in mid-air.


I'm not sure if they actually sound like Sugarcoma or if its just my futile grasp of teengirl soft rock.

Surprised that they have a Myspace page and a busy Facebook group but there's no sign of them on Songkick. I'll soon sort that out... One show now and a couple blurrycam shots.

Well-informed howling guitar riffs, bits of soul in the vocals and mid-eighties epic soundtrack too. The mix is a little clunky, a bigger venue and more time sound checking could do them wonders.
They swiftly turn the crowd into converts.

They lose three points for using the cliche "Now we're gonna take it down a little bit".

I'm still wondering who they remind me of. Not The Sahara Hotnights, Kalorie are too commercial for that. Shakira? The one with the glasses? Anastasia?


Ooh, who were that bunch of teenage girls who played last year's Indietracks? Kalorie are better than them.

They lose another two points for a fast rock cover of 'Fever'. It probably seemed like a good idea in rehearsals, but really, even I've recorded my own version.

Inspirition - Dusk Till Dawn

Inspirition appear to be a woman with a splash of pink hair and a turquoise shawl over a Katie-Jane Garside dress, and a grey bearded gentleman on guitar.

Could have been a jazz singer in a previous life, but tonight Matthew she's going to be Kate Bush. The chap is going to be the tuition cover CD from Total Guitar magazine.


They've come from the west country to be with us tonight and left the rest of the band at home. They could have done with bringing a backing tape with them, rather than this. Its not mixed right, the vocals make you wince occasionally and the guitar needs reverb and the treble turned down a smidgen.

I've heard Kate Bush-alikes with lone axe accompaniment before, and its rarely done well. Here its abrasive when it ought to be more gentle.

There's something of the Tortoise Shout about her and the introductions to the songs, she's got a good voice, its just tonight its packed wrong, I bet they sound great on record


Hang on a moment, shouldn't this place be called "Dusk 'Til Dawn" rather than "Dusk Till Dawn"? For typographic reasons I'll let them off the missing apostrophe but misspelling the abbreviated 'until' seems a bit more wrong. Hmm, oh my mistake. As you were.

Witness To The Beard - Dusk Till Dawn

Officially the finest band name of 2009, Witness To The Beard are a London-based three-piece, I know the drummer off of the internetz.

Dusk Till Dawn is an odd wee venue, in the middle the Archway roundabout. Its a warm night so there's a crowd drinking outside, but inside its starting to fill up for Witness To The Beard's second ever gig. Some day these people will be proud members of 'the Beard Army.

They start off a little grungey I thought, but then it carries you away on a wave of roughed up Kingmaker riffs and Longpigs howling. They've got a rare appreciation for guitar hooks, and the tall bass chap does some neat noodling.

The grunge gives way to some nice warm fuzzy bluesy numbers, like a duvet soaked in hot totty. But the White Stripes cover felt a wee bit flat, aiming to be like the original version when they could have made it more their own.

Then a weird thing happens that catches me off-guard, the guitar and bass players swap round, the drummer swaps round her drum sticks and they start to sound like The Fall.

All shouts and jagged chord changes. Hammering into yer heid like rusty railroad spikes. Its wondeful.

The Beard Army's chanting 'Witness! Witness! Witness!' between songs is strangely infectious.

Some songs come over like The Hector Collectors have grown a set of balls. A final cutdown medley of rock hooks, kind of like the Witness equivalent of !!!!111!!roflcopter!!

Truly they are the future sound of London rock, and one day we shall all bear Witness To The Beard.

Indietracks in 7 minutes

I'm still hammering away at trying to shorten this video to make it more manageable and digestible. This is a seven minute version.

Indietracks long video - Part 1

Part 1 of the Last Night From Glasgow Indie Eyespy full length video of Indietracks 2009



This video feature the following bands recorded on Friday and Saturday

• Modular
• Rose Elinor Dougall
• Au Revoir Simone
• Little My
• Lets Whisper
• Friends
• Tender Trap
• Fitness First
• The Frank and Walters
• Labrador
• The Specific Heats
• Butcher Boy
• Camera Obscura
• Alaska
• Emmy the Great
• La Casa Azul
• 'Allo Darlin'
• The Smittens
• David Pope from The Just Joans
• Moustache of Insanity
• The Vegetable Assembly
• Images of Mathematicians on Postage Stamps
• Pete Green

My plan is to do a full length video in two 10-minute long parts, this is the first one, the second one with cover bands from the Sunday. I also plan to make a 7-minute cut, a 3-munite cut and then finally somehow distill 40 minutes of footage of Indietracks into a 30 second clip featuring all the bands.

Videos from Indietracks 2008 last year are here, here and here

Sorry the sound quality is pants, I recorded it all on my trusty Canon Ixus 50 camera and built-in microphone with a 2Gb memory card in black and white, and used Windows Movie Maker for editing and subtitles. Its not high definition, its not even DVD quality, it's barely YouTube quality. I'm not a professional, I'm an unemployable wretch, so its got to be quick, easy and hassle free.

There were loads of other video folk at Indietracks, the Scottish mob, the pretty girls with professional equipment and the thousands of folk thrusting cameraphones at the stage, there's got to be some higher quality videos out there, but this is what I saw and what I heard, and it was great, I know cos I was there. Was There Then.

Videos from Indietracks 2008 are here, here and here

Rose Elinor Dougall - Indietracks

The sun's just setting as she takes to the stage, everyone squints. Near to where I sit a girl draws pictures in her notebook. The rain has gone and its all summery.

People are queuing to enter the Indietracks site on a Friday night.

Rose Elinor Dougall on stage is pretty neat. She suits the wide stage and huge audience better than she does the confines of venues like the Enterprise.

There's a dark air of celtic about her sound. Could do with more overdrive for my tastes,but its still has that arch sound to it, the rest of the band is kind of secondary to her voice. Although the leopard print cat-suited bass player is pretty neat.

She has a little of the Help Stamp Out Loneliness to her vocals, that it could be used for opera, but right now its indie.

Modular - Indietracks

Its gone all corporate, there's a fence round the place, the trains are one side, the burger vans and stages on the other.

Its Friday night and on stage are Modular from Buenos Aires.

The program says soundscapes of retrofuturistic and fantastic feeling, which is about right. It music that makes you smile. And eep, they're singing in Spanish. I've no idea what they're saying but it sounds lovely.

Its kind of sunny with on and off rain, some people wearing shorts, some in raincoats. From where I'm sat, behind the toilet block, I can see four people wearing striped jumpers.

Ooh, on stage they have some spacy reverb going down and vocoda vocals, its like 1999 in the future.

Maybe its just the language thing, but its very background musicy, rather than some I can really sink my teeth into. Having said that, soke of the trumpet / drum lines are a bit shoegazery early Boo Radleys, with a bit of Moody Blues psychedelia.

Sweet Baboo - Betsey Trotwood

I reckon Sweet Baboo are a bit dub gospel. Like Johnny Cash's spaceship had crashlanded in North Wales rather than Smallville. He even does that pointing guitar thing that JC did.

I'm not sure if might not be a carefully scripted and rehearsed comedy act.

Warm and delicate acoustic guitar with like the biggest electric I've ever seen.

No doublebass player tonight "the twat's gone to Latitude instead." I love the banter, "no, I didn't go to the same primary school as you Steve", "Sorry that I've jabbled on. Jabbled?"

The songs have a little of the surreal about them, snow in a vietnamese field with your legs blown off. Backing vocals supplied by the reluctant keyboard player and some ghostly voices to the left of me in the crowd.

Allo Darlin' - Betsey Trotwood

I arrived late and missed Lets Whisper. Lots of familiar faces in the crowd, the WeePOP massive, the Moustache of Insanity crowd, Monster Bobby.

With the rest of the band set up in the corner, Elizabeth Darling lifts her microphone stand and steps to the centre of the room.

The place is packed and its mighty warm. For once I'm in the upstairs room at the Betsey Trotwood, usually the gigs I go to are in the basement.

The first song she plays on her own, just a girl and her ukulele and the whole room falls silent.

Its happy music. Music for small rooms of quiet people listening rather than big rooms with people talking.

Ooh, I've never noticed the Just Joans namedrop in a song before.

Some of the songs are available on iTunes, I'm not sure how to link to them, but if you search for 'Allo Darlin' they're easy to find, and well worth purchasing, I did.

Lost Music : Rose Elinor Dougall - The Enterprise

Its really loud in The Enterprise tonight, or I haven't been to any gigs in weeks, dark and moody, always reminds me of the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks. On stage is a five piece, really skinny people. Sassy dark-haired girl center-stage surrounded by keyboards, killer cheekbones and sparkly bustier.

The music is overwealmingly loud and strangely hypnotic. Like what I'd heard on Rose Elinor Dougall's Myspace page but with the overdrive pedal firmly pressed.

There's something of the early era Johnny Greenwood about their left side guitarist, I wonder if anyone else though so.

The crowd is a little sparse tonight, the only familiar faces I can see are Trevor and Tom the promoters and the woman on the door. Trevor let's me know that he's going to be winding up Lost Music after four more shows. The recession's biting and folk aren't coming out as much as in the halcyon days of 2007 and 2008.

Anyhoo, Rose Elinor Dougall was mighty fine and gets extra bonus points in my book for sticking around to see the next band.

Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

The Hillfields - The Buffalo Bar

I wrote this review once before, just while the band were on stage but deleted it by accident. To be honest the review was more about my girlfriend's absence and me glancing at the stairs in case she appeared. The main bit of the review about the band was that the photographer chap's camera flashed a green checked pattern before taking photies, I hadn't seen that before. I know my camera does a red thing before the autoflash, so I keep it switched off.

Also I love the Hillfields. The matching shirts. The singer who looked a little like he'd been Gomez in the 90's. The stark instrumentation. If I were in a band with other people I'd want to be the Hillfield's bass player. Aw man, if The Deep Fried Wolfknuckles hadn't been on a garage trip we could have been the Hillfields. Even the guitar was neat, all open chords, and half-set capos, I'd never seen that before.

The set seemed a tad short.

Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

The Gresham Flyers - Buffalo Bar

Its been ages since I last saw the mighty Flyers, I love those guys so much it hurts right here.

This has got to be the largest sector of my Facebool friends gathered in one place since the ole Blueveins alldayer, and at least two of my top five favourite bands playing.

The mighty Flyer, a swift run through of their new material. Shaza's keyboard noodles still send my head two steps to the left.

If my girlfriend were here she'd get the lyrics. And then a selection of their regular numbers, day I'm going to find out the name of that one that starts like Another Girl Another Planet.

For more objective review, please see this one. For something more specific, they had more treble than usual and the crowd were more familiar with their material than usual, dancing and singing along.

Their final song was a Bruce Springsteen cover, a more recent number 'Magic', which is on a soon to be released tribute album (hmm, did uncle Darren play one the other night, or am I thinking of Ballboy). Quite a departure from the acoustic original, but well worth a listen.

I'm writing this on the bus home, its been a weird night, starting off with a little turmoil, but an interesting safety-net. Its so cold right now, but my head's stuck in the mid-decade, we were there then, aye.

Other photies here

Town Bike - The Buffalo Bar

Not sure about new drummer, a bit stuttery.

I just wrote this great exhaustive review of the last band, the Hillfields, but then clicked delete instead of send. Then I got this really long and deep text from the girlfriend. She's not here and no matter how often I glance at the door, she's still an hour away.

Ooh I recorded me a cover of this song, Trouble Fucken Rocks, its here.

So I've seen this mob too often to review them objectively. All the songs so familiar, its just a matter of finding the sweetspot to stand in, where the acoustics are just right.

I wish she was here,

So much

Other photies here

Jeans Goes POP - The Buffalo Bar

I so want to get drunk tonight, booze and booze and booze. I've got something in my eye.

Floppy haired chap in a velvet jacket, seated, playing keyboards with a kick snare and two kick bass drums. A couple of mics too, one all compressed, one more normal.

My girlfriend isn't here, I'm sad.

Christ, who does his banter sound like? One of these apologetic midlands comedians.

Sings a little like Jack White and more so when he straps on a guitar.

Ooh taping down keys, that's clever, gives a droning backdrop to his struming. The compressed microphone reminds me of White Town, but with a Livin' On The Edge Aerosmith bass drum.

Young Stacy is here, Jona from Wintergreen and from earlier in the decade, Dr Debbie of Scotland.

I feel like '95, I don't know what happened with the girlfriend. Its the doubt and insecurity that gets me.

Jeans Goes POP's Chaz n Dave-ish moment isn't exactly the best soundtrack. And also count really do with a rabbit rabbit rabbit refrain, but Jeans' chickens out.

Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

Goonite: The School - Bardens Boudoir

The DJ puts on B&S's immortal 'Lazy Line Painter Jane' and for a few seconds I got that was there the feeling of nostalgia for Glasgow, same as when I hear 'The only one-eyed gnome' by The Charlatans, I think of Manchester. Hmm, DJ follows up with Feelgood Factor. Anyhoo, so me and Pnos were bestest mates in school in Bolton, he headed to Cardiff for uni and I headed to Glasgow, some time at the end of the last century he joined The Loves. Time passes and Liz from The Loves leaves to form The School. Has it really been 36 years?

Right now, I love The School, I'm all soppy and loved up in real life and when they roll up on my ipod I go gay for them.

Crikey, the crowd are noisy. Folk near the stage, Shoreditch girls mostly, they're doing the cheek-thrusting dance step.

Aw man, I love The School, but the crowd are so painfully noisy, chattering over the music, I'm going home.

Sorry Goonite.

Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

Goonite: Voluntary Butler Scheme - Bardens Boudoir

He's got his keyboard painted red and has the sockets he doesn't use taped over.

Pretty sure last time I saw him he was a one man band but this evening there's a whole mob on stage, takes away some of the magic. It sounds a chunk more bombastic then when was solo. The drums, the drums.

Is it still in the same spirit as before? Maybe.

Its less of a change then Just Joans had when they went from bedroom composer to six-piece.

Its less mechanical than before.

I was chatting to Camila WeePop earlier, well she's stood just next to me now, she was saying in this venue you can feel the bass in you stomach. Right now, leaning against a wall, its giving the music a hypnotic quality.

As I understand it, the VBS come from the same stable as The Loves and The School, I hear shades of the Orgon Box. Ooh I've got it, 'Robert Johnson meets Jackson Five' or maybe Jackie Wilson, damn, I typed that before they started a cover of 'your love takes me higher'. It sounds great mind, all retro future 21st century.

Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

Hands On Heads - Bardens Boudoir

First time I came to Bardens, I wasn't impressed with it as a venue, the space in front of the stage is too small and everywhere else in the venue provides a crap view of the band. This evening I'n here early and have found a perch just to the left of the stage.

I recognise no one, but its still early doors and there's four bands to get through.

First up are Hands On Heads, a four piece, fast lead guitar noodling, wee Korg keyboard, bass and drums. The singing chap occasionally sounds like late Britpop's Space, but the over all sound is more like Urusei Yatsura.

They're fast and noisy and a little poppy.

Ooh, did I mention the lumberjack shirts? They wear them.

Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

Lizzy Parks - The Luminaire

Not really sure what to expect tonight, just needed some jazz to unwind after a hard week of job hunting and unsuccessful interviews. We're at the Luminaire tonight.



On stage is Lizzy Parks and her band, hammond organ, double bass, jazz drums and trumpet.



Its all got a noice jazz soul vibe, the trumpet with more jazz thans soul, too much noodling. The missus says Lizzy sounds like old skool Amy Winehouse, but I'm not enough of a connesseur to tell. Fine fine hammond.



For an encore they did a fine version of Psychedelic Sally.

Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange