I’ve tried, Lord knows, I’ve tried to get past Secret Rivals‘ internet obnoxiousness, their appalling reputation on the local scene and their own boasts of playing unlistenable gigs while inebriated, and have tried to locate something worthwhile in their music, an unremarkable brew of shouty punk pop, but enough is enough. Secret Rivals are a disgrace and an embarrassment and the sooner they break up and cease wasting their time and ours with their puerile tantrums the better for all concerned.
Last night was a nadir, in a career of nadirs. The opening number was nervously but competently played before the guitarist took his guitar off and threw it on the ground, complaining about the lead. Five minutes of messing about (shouldn’t it be thirty seconds?) led to a new complaint. It was out of tune! Sorry, but if you treat your instrument as if it came free with last week’s TV Quick then stop complaining when it sounds like a choir of strangled cats when you pick it up again. Then the bass drum pedal broke, to be replaced by that of Ace Bushy Striptease, the replacement being received without a word of thanks so far as I could make out. A couple more forgettable tunes followed and the guitarist stopped again, threw both his guitars off the stage and then swiftly followed it, leaving his three bandmates behind, gaping like landed haddocks.
Everyone has an off-night, but it was the contempt for the promoters (Three Blind Mice, who’s Midas touch seems to have temporarily deserted them), the soundman who had to protect his equipment from the guitarist’s carelessness bordering on vandalism, and of course the ten-strong audience who had paid to see this pathetic performance which threw me into a rage. Who are these people? Why do they strut around with such a sense of unearned entitlement? The four of them should be shackled in chains and made to pick potatoes in East Anglia for a twelvemonth to teach them a work ethic.
Another heap of dross followed in the form of the talentless indie trio Ace Bushy Striptease. Many of the songs were little more than thirty-second thrashes, over which someone or other drawled or squeaked tunelessly. Random bods were pulled from the audience to contribute a bit of guitar to the odd number, gave negligible performances and were then summarily dispatched. The grinding pointlessness of it all became oppressive, the songs structureless, bland and ineptly performed, most of them disintegrating forlornly at random moments. The only memorable thing about the gig was the speaking voice of what must be the campest bassist in England (and I’ve seen Barbare11a!), a tiny little squeak that made Alan Carr sound like Mr T. Get off the stage, you crazy fools.
The Skins Effect did not result in a full house for Dial F for Frankenstein, but the audience swelled from the deservedly dead to the respectfully respectable, and the band proceeded to give a painful lesson to the previous bands in the arts of performance, composition, singing and structure. They generally perform powerful, focussed rock rather in the Biffy Clyro/ Foo Fighters mould, though their best-known song ‘Wes Vega’ is a little lighter in style, with a touch of The Strokes and even Blur’s ‘Song Two’ in the catchy, melodic hoots in the chorus. They too had their technical troubles at one point, but instead of acting like snivelling six-year-olds, the band launched into an entertaining two minute jam while the guitarist made his fixes, before plunging into the next song with a cheery ‘And we’re Back!’. Class act.
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