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17.6.05 The Week In Performance: You Are Nothing Without Your OAP In The Sailor Moon Costume

"Where are the loos?"

"Over there. Take a left at the fat chick."

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realised that the chick in question was, in fact, the singer of The Eighteenth Day of May, the band I'd gone to see two days before at the Spitz. The Twisted Folk/Track and Field mafia are a tight group, and they all show up to each other's gigs. Most of the Broken Family Band - the group I was seeing that night - had been at the Vetiver/Hinson gig at the Lyric the week before.

The Eighteenth Day of May (whose singer isn't actually fat) were lovely on Sunday night. Song of the evening had to be "Lady Margaret". The 18s, as I shall now call them, being far too lazy to type out their ridiculously long name, aren't really pushing new musical boundaries, but their Byrds/Mamas & Papas-esque prettiness makes for a hugely enjoyable evening at a sit-down venue like the Spitz. And the world needs more pretty.

The 18s were only the opening act on a three-band slate. Next up was Tunng: three guitarists, a screechy girl, a rack of electronica, and a percussion section consisting of a snare drum and bits of seashells and dried grass suspended from a rope. I like ambient electronica. I like John Fahey-esque acoustic guitar. So why did my brain judder so much when confronted with a mash-up of these two things? I kept thinking, "I'm going to leave," then, half-out of my chair, I'd stop and sit back down again, captivated by a turn in the song. Tunng have the sort of music I'd listen to while writing. I still left before the final act. Hey, it was Sunday. I was tired.

Now back to Cargo on Tuesday, where Mr Brown, his musician friend, and I lean against the wall next to the DJ booth and wait impatiently for Currituck County to get the hell off the stage. The 18s are a couple feet away. Currituck are two bearded young folkies who had opened the Vetiver/Hinson gig. I hadn't been impressed then. Now I actively wished them pain. Tonight, Track and Field cleverly put them second, after the fun, energetic Magoo (of which I want to hear more) and before the Broken Family Band. I think they realised that nobody would have shown up for them otherwise. Now, I like American roots guitar. I listen to John Fahey and Leo Kottke CDs pretty much every day while I write. I've stumbled upon a blinding performance of Kottke's stuff live in the lobby of the National Theatre, played by a slide guitar/slap bass duo (is there anything more wonderful than good slide guitar and slap bass? I think not.) So I know what these guys are trying to achieve, and I know just how short they're falling. Boring, noodly, bloodless acoustica. The only song that had a pulse was a cover.

I probably would have retreated to Cargo's amply stocked bar, had it not been for the 60 year old bleached blonde chick with the orange tan and the Sailor Moon costume. As everyone else stood around in a quiet half-circle and shoe-gazed, she marched up right in front of the stage and gyrated her hips in ways I haven't seen outside the more downmarket Wan Chai strip joints. She kept it up for their entire set. Her taste was atrocious; her stamina, impressive. I prayed she was the mother of one of the Curritucks.

Finally they went away and The Broken Family Band started. Countryish indie with sarcastic, amusing lyrics. They don't quite have the bravura musical brilliance of a Flipron, but they're good fun live. Best song is the one about being left alone in the make-out room, which describes in great detail how much the lead singer wants bad things to happen to his girlfriend. I have the new album, WELCOME HOME, LOSER at home and it hasn't really grabbed me yet.

Last night... Last night involved entirely too much Jack Daniels. Four band slate at Up All Night in Hoxton Square. Great little venue, and Up All Night are my new favourite promoters for managing to back the sort of fantastic, unusual acts that make me excited about music. First: Horsebox, a duo that were a lot Robyn Hitchcock, a little Noel Coward. Good start.

Then Flipron. Stage, festooned with fairy lights and Hawaiian flower chains. Sound, Aladdin Sane reeling down Margate Pier with Flanders & Swann. Super-tight set. They didn't play nearly long enough. And their new album, from what I've heard of it, is going to be magnificent. Standouts are the song about Cerberus, the many-headed guard dog of Hell - "You throw him a stick, and it's the shadow he chases" - and the immensely danceable (or maybe it was just the JD) "Dogboy vs Monsters". If Flipron are still speaking to Jon and myself after we finish defiling "Raindrops" by video, my quarter's on the pool table to do something for Dogboy vs Monsters. You know it has to be a Silver Age-style comic story of a lonely half-boy/half-beast who saves the town and finally gets the girl, only to dump her for the neighbour's Alsatian.

Thomas Truax made Flipron look mainstream, though. Half-shouted, half-sung, lanky streak of grease up there all by himself, with an assortment of Rube Goldberg-esque handmade instruments. The "drummer" was a spiked metal wheel apparatus named Sister Spinster; the first song featured The Hornicator, which looked like the top of an old wind-up gramophone, ripped off and mutated. There was a percussive rucksack-type-thing called the Backbeater. It was as if Laurie Andersen and Kraftwerk had a baby, and forced it to make its own toys from discarded household appliances. My favourite song was a tale of a man and a butterfly on the run, and the human propensity to violence, with the sounds of the butterfly's wings made by applying the blades of a battery-operated personal fan to a guitar's strings. Mental? Yes. Enthralling? Yes.

Last up was Misty's Big Adventure, most of whose set on the Track & Field All-Dayer I had missed for reason of Bertolucci. I have been converted to the Church of Misty. They sound like the B-52s raping Billy Bragg with a Speak N' Spell. They look like pedophiles, and their live gigs feature a man in a giant burgundy boiler suit adorned with stuffed blue gloves, jumping up and down frantically to all the songs. I hope by now I am getting across the true awesomeness of the Misty's experience. The samples on their site, while fine, have nowhere near the energy they get across live. All their albums will soon be mine.

I'm still reeling from so much good music from so many different acts in one night. Everyone walking out of the gig had an expression on their face like they'd just had the best sex of their lives. All nights should be like this.

( 2:47 PM )

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