Firstly, myself and Paul didn’t go to this gig in any kind of “ironic” way. And I’m only using speech marks because you can’t see me waving my fingers around in the air like a dickhead. We actually like Chas & Dave. Going back a few years, when the ‘Back To Mine’ CD series were being released, Paul put together one from the perspective of Chas & Dave. It’s brilliant. I now use it for DJing, except the Blur song. You have to draw the line somewhere.

Secondly, it was Record Store Day so we both started drinking in work. Then went to the Murrenger. The woman collecting tickets definitely looked less than impressed when Paul handed his ticket in with his mouth as both his hands were holding pints of beer. To her credit, said staff member returned his ticket to its point of departure.

We may’ve been a bit drunk. We were also in the front row. This was pretty cool, Dave even posed for photos when he realised Paul was excitedly snapping away on his phone.

Basically this was a reunion and a farewell tour. Dave was back. But only briefly. They’ve been performing together since the early seventies so there’s a fair catalogue to trek through. For this final tour though they thought it was appropriate to go back to the beginning for the first half of the show. They played their old pub set right up to Gertcha from 1979.

It’s easy to think of Chas & Dave as a novelty act but watching them play the oldies, American soul tunes, honky tonk piano tunes, brought home how good they were/are at their art. Dave Peacock is a very, very good bass player. You don’t get sampled by Eminem and Wu Tang for nothing!

The break brought more beers and frantic attempts at borrowing money off people to buy a t-shirt. It wasn’t a proud moment but it had to be done*. We also met a member of Jurassic 5. Odd evening. When we went back into the theatre we had a look around at the crowd. Predominantly late middle aged it’s probably fair to say but a sprinkling of younger faces. The couple behind us looked genuinely pleased by the mix of ages. They also assured us that we weren’t pissing them off. This was good.

The second half were the hits. Rabbit, Snooker Loopy, you know ‘em. Party atmosphere all the way. The lads at the other end of the front row had clearly come to this in the same frame of mind as ourselves. To enjoy the music, have a social shandy or two and dance. Like Cockneys. You ‘eard. For the last couple of songs, a bunch of men in their late twenties and thirties made twats of themselves by doing the knees up dance in a respectable Art Centre. It was a right good laugh.

Dave shook our hand as he left the stage. Good lad is Dave.

* I finally managed to scrounge 4 quid off someone after the show and am now the proud owner of a Down To Margate t-shirt.

To be honest I thought it might be a bit empty but I arrived to a full bar of Cardiff’s music fraternity. Carl Rylatt on the decks, familiar faces playing with Lego. Musicians complaining about cookies that were too hard. Not your usual Monday night out.

First up on stage was Jemma Roper, I was always a fan of Sammo Hung and latterly Heck, both bands had their art rock leanings and both were fronted by Miss Roper. Her doll like poses and almost child like vocals were an integral part of both bands’ look and sound. Now though, she’s struck out on her own. Echoey guitar lines underpin vocals that have shed some of their saccharine sheen, at times it’s reminiscent of Nico and certainly has a late sixties/early seventies feel to it. There’s every chance that there’ll be a bit more experimenting with sounds other than guitar in the future and the short set tonight is a promising start.

The Failed NASA Experiment split opinion. I thought they were a bit noodly and had no direction, everyone else thought they were amazing. I couldn’t see the stage during the first few, ummm, let’s call them songs, so had to rely on my ears. There were certainly interesting sounds being made and the two guys in the band knew their way around instruments. My problem was that it wasn’t really building into anything. When I got down the front and could see what was going on, I began to understand the attraction, violin bows were being used on cymbals, the drummer had a selection of about six thousand drumsticks that were interchanged depending on what he was scraping, tapping or occasionally, drumming. Non drumming guy was busy with a shitload of effects pedals, a keyboard, some plastic charity shop instruments and more percussion. The crowd looked mildly hypnotised. Maybe it was my lack of recent drug experimentation but I just think that ‘interesting’ doesn’t always mean ‘entertaining’, I certainly wouldn’t be putting the CD on while hoovering the house (if I ever hoovered the house). They just seemed a little impatient, sounds changed and instruments were swapped before they hit their stride. A little more structure (and I don’t mean verse chorus verse) and a final aim to each piece and I could really like them. I know full well that Vivers will love these.

H.Hawkline sound like The Kinks if they’d listened to Cluster. This is a good thing. They were also drunk. This is also a good thing. Steve Baboo plays bass in this band, drunk Steve is worth the admission fee alone (OK, so it was free). Songs start, go wrong, stop, restart, have explaination that this one is difficult, song ends. Genius. One of the songs, when recorded, will contain a trumpet refrain. Tonight, singer Huw simply makes the noises himself. The music itself is basically sixties psych pop with a kraut edge, it’s good, I’m tapping my feet and everything but it’s the ramshackle, unashamed fun they’re having onstage that makes the live experience so worthwhile. This joyous abandon nearly turns sour at the end when the crowd swells (students, daft hats) and the band feel they should maybe play another song, clearly Steve is thirsty and asks the crowd for beer. He’s given a pint by guy in hat that clearly has no previous knowledge of the band’s appetite for alcohol. The pint is swiftly knocked back and the now really pissed off hat wearer stands at the front giving the band the finger. Things could turn ugly.

Luckily there was a crack team of trained negotiators at hand. Strange News From Another Star’s Jimmy Watkins was first to try to diffuse the situation by barging past the irate young gentleman and according to some eye witnesses, call him ‘a cunt’.

“I was trying to draw his sting like my Dad taught me, I didn’t want him to hit little Steve” Watkins explained later.

Unbelievably this noble attempt at peace failed and hat guy followed the band outside. In turn, hat guy was followed by Jimmy, Islet, writers from both this website and this is fake DIY and some girls. Obviously this hardened gang of wool wearing indie ex-art students would put the fear of God into the angriest of beer deprived warm headed gig goers. Not this fella though, he continued his attempt to get across his perceived miscarriage of justice and legal right to be compensated for his beer to members of the Hawkline fraternity. This, despite renowned violent gym addicted lunatic Mark Thomas (Islet, Attack + Defend) mocking the way he walked and doing an impressively accurate impression of his sticky outy chest bravado. They were also various hat related jibes from the assembled twee crew.

Common sense began to win out when money was given to the young music fan, albeit mainly scattered on the ground of the beer garden, for him to buy himself a pint. At this point he decided this wasn’t the issue and had to be talked into taking it by his mate. “We came to see your band, no hard feelings” the UN peacekeeping trainee ventured. All, it seemed, would end well.

“No you fucking didn’t, you don’t even know what they’re called” – Mark Thomas. “What were they called? Come on. You don’t even know!”. Luckily, everyone was now a bit bored of verbal jousting and just wandered off to dust down their knitwear.

Apologies to actual music fans for the seemingly unfair percentage of this review given over to coverage of violent undercurrents. It was really fucking funny though, this shit doesn’t happen very often.

Oh, and I forgot to take photos so I just used Fenella The Kettle Witch.

The Method used to be called The Rhythm Method. Shit name but they did have a knack of getting a sticker on every condom machine in Cardiff. Respect. They started like an Us And Us Only era Charlatans and Ocean Colour Scene hybrid. With trumpets. I began to sweat more. I needn’t have stripped to the waste though, they found their groove as the set went on.

Despite, or possibly because of the totally static crowd, they began to loosen up and feel the funk. Yeah, I said it. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not Parliament/Funkadelic, their Myspace genre of Garage / Psychedelic / Soul doesn’t even touch upon ‘the funk’, Foley told me they were funk though and he knows his shit. Also, I’m easily led. Their soulypsychfunkgarage failed to move any feet though. Not even their singer’s attempts to wander the room while his microphone lead was well and truly wrapped around it’s stand could raise a shuffle. Over to you Jimmy Watkins…

Watkins has a hat on. A very bright hat. If I was involved in a train crash and the glow sticks were fucked, I’d pick him up and lead my fellow passengers to safety. The rest of him (and everyone else) is clad head to toe in denim. As always. Tonight Harry has wheeled out a denim tie. Special. Foley is on his bass podium. There is an armchair on stage. Four people look on expectantly.

WHERE ARE ALL THE MOTHERFUCKING FAT GIRLS AT?!

And so begins ‘The Ballad Of John Rostron’. The crowd doubles. OK, that’s still not a massive audience but statistically that’s an impressive percentage rise. Jimmy then drags one eighth (you liking this percentage fans?) of the crowd onto the stage and into the armchair. The interview gets as far as ‘so, what’s your name?’ before the singer loses interest and hammers into the next song, leaving his victim sat on stage.

You never really know what you’re going to get at a Strange News gig. Aside from the regular starting point of double denim and bass podiums, I’ve seen broken guitars, new members added mid-gig, men in pants, crying, a possible mental breakdown and a story about being chased down Queen Street by a man with a dildo which was told by an audience member. They are an entertaining band. They are also a very good one. They started life sounding a bit White Stripes, went a bit mclusky and have come out the other end sounding like a fucking good rock band with a point to prove. Whether Watkins joining Future Of The Left has had an impact on his song writing is open to debate but that band’s urgency and lack of waste are present and correct. Short, sharp guitar riffs, sharper lyrics. This is Jimmy’s band and his time to shine. Whether the venue is full or they’re playing to 8 confused students, they’ll still tear the venue a new ring piece.

The set ends with Mark Foley taking lead vocals on ‘Oh My God, They’ve Given Me The Suburbs’. I’m guessing this was a spur of the moment decision. They normally are. Either way, of the ten people that are in the room by the end, 90% are clapping. The other 10% was hastily tapping notes into his phone so that he could write this review in varying person tense so that more people could clap in future. Give a man a fish and all that…

Bringing you a full whack of festival goodness, Undeb celebrate all that is Cardiff. Theatre, Bands, Poetry, Photography and Live Art combine in this epic celebration of our beloved Capital.

Four arenas take over the Cardiff Arts Institute, simultaneously playing host to exciting events!

We can’t promise you mud but feel free to bring along your wellies and face paints…

THEATRE and MUSIC ARENA:

carIDff

What is Cardiff’s identity?
What does it mean to you?
If you had to sum Cardiff up in one object or place, photo or word, memory or street, what would it be?

4 writers to each create ‘a monologue for Cardiff’ – the twist being that they’ll have only 4 hours in which to create and rehearse it, and that the pieces will be inspired & provoked by the objects, photos, words and places that you the audience bring along.

Whether it be a pebble from Penarth beach or a bag of chips from Caroline Street. The winding arcades of St. Mary Street or the expanses of Bute Park. The mighty castle walls or the Millennium Stadium at capacity on international day.

So bring your slice of Cardiff along to Undeb’s Cardiff Identity Festival on June 20th and see it get woven into 6 pieces of bespoke theatre, created before your very eyes. An intimate, custom-made and fleeting theatre experience.

Featuring some of Wales’ most exciting playwrights and actors, paired up for one night only, curated by True/Fiction Theatre’s Matthew Bulgo, the writers are:

-Tracy Harris
-Alan Harris
-Kit Lambert
-Branwen Davies

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Plus a selection of plays from Undeb Theatre celebrating Cardiff including work from their collaboration with National Theatre Wales.

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Exclusive set from Jak Poore

Bands T.B.C

POETRY ARENA:

In a special collaboration with Undeb and Jam Bones, Cardiff’s most irreverent literature and music event Balloon will be doing stuff with words. For the first hour, Balloon present Bright Young Things: three soon to be huge young writers all publishing their first books. Featuring Susie Wild, Tyler Keevil and James Smythe all will be reading from their debut works and hanging around to chat and that. Later on Balloon team up with Jam Bones for a special micro-fiction Cardiff ’55 slam.

Collect your postcard at the event and do us a short story of exactly 55 words and if we pull you out of the hat you can stun us all with your literary cojones. Overall winners will be treated with prizes from Parthian of books and ebooks. That’s right ebooks. On memory sticks. The future.

If that’s not enough, come to Balloon’s Harder Better Faster Rhondda night at Clwb Ifor Bach on Thursday 17th June and you get all this a quid cheaper as well!

Meanwhile, get a closer look at those Bright Young Things here:

Onwards!

Jam Bones is the Diff-born spoken word collective that aims to encourage local talent while bringing the best in UK performance poetry to Wales

AND – details of our next event, if ppl come along they receive £1 off entry to the CIF!!

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/event.php?eid=130096163675660&ref=mf

GARDEN ARENA:

Cardiff Graffiti Artist R-MER is bringing down himself and 2 other local graf artists to paint live during the day. Plus live acoustic music outside.

PHOTOGRAPHY ARENA:

Curated by Dan Green and Big Little City

Amazing exhibition and live photo booth photography…oh yeah!

Rachel Trezise launches her new novel ‘Sixteen Shades Of Crazy’ to a Cardiff crowd. An Orange Futures and inaugural winner of the EDS Dylan Thomas Prize, Rachel’s previous work such as ‘In And Out Of The Goldfish Bowl’ and ‘Fresh Apples’ have marked her out of one of Britain’s best young writers, and with ‘Sixteen Shades of Crazy’ she is destined for even greater things. Expect psychopathic hair-dressers, smokey-eyed Cornish lotharios and dream-filled looks towards New York City.

Samuel Bees is an actor, director and writer currently in residence at Undeb Theatre Company in Cardiff. He will be directing the self-written short ‘The Boy Who Killed John Hopper’, a funny and ultimately shocking two-hander about young lust, shared shame, and Kung Fu. This piece was originally written for Undeb’s ‘Christmas Collaboration’ evening.

Jimmy Watkins is a former international athlete and still Welsh indoor record holder for the 800m. More importantly he is lead singer in Strange News From Another Star and guitarist in Future Of The Left. Rather annoyingly, he can also write and speak. Tonight he’ll be showing off his literary side as well as acting as compere for the evening, so there will be plenty of opportunity to heckle the Treorchy polymath.

Music for the evening comes from Matt Jon who will be treating us to some acoustic, folk-tinged strummery; Rowdy, whiskey-soaked and possibly bowler-hatted Punk-Country from Fatty’s Leg; acoustic Beck like ditties from John Mouse and sixties influenced psyche pop from highly rated Aberdare lads The Broken Vinyl Club.

Throw in a pub quiz with some special Rhondda prizes, and a market selling everything from T-Shirts to Literary Magazines, and all in all we think you have a cracking night on your hands. All for a measly three quid.

Oh, and if you hold onto your ticket, you will be eligible for a pound off entry to Undeb Theatre’s ‘Cardiff Identity Festival’ at which Balloon will be teaming up with Jam Bones to run the literary side of things.

This Balloon event is supported by Academi. Cheers Academi!

Three songs into Team Brick’s set I sent Vivers a text saying that they sounded like Nazi Germany. He replied saying that he’d seen them before and they (well, he, it’s one bloke) were good when not being deliberately shit. This made sense eventually. The first part of the set was mainly noise, not music, just noise, with a man making weird vocal noises over the top. It was horrible. Halfway through the set though he started playing drums and it all began to make sense. It still made Fuck Buttons sound like Girls Aloud though.

The second band were called Yuck and this review is the conversation I had on note paper with members of Islet who were on the merch stand.

Me: I know some of these were in Cajun Dance Party but the bloke on the left sounds like the singer of Future Kings Of Spain. Any ideas?

Emma: I’m not cool enough to know who these people are.

Me: They’re Irish and had a really good first album that sounded like a cross between Pavement and Dinosaur Jr.

Alex: I have spoken to the gentleman in question and he doth not have an Irish accent…yet.

Me: Balls.

Me: Actually, these are great. I miss the mid nineties. Do the kids like this?

Scotty: I’m a massive fan of the Mojave 3.

Now I think this gives you a totally accurate and in depth analysis of Yuck’s set.

And now Islet.  This is the fourth time I’ve seen them (I think) and there’s always been the wild ambition there and I’ve always thought they were brilliant but with so much going on it was easy for it to be slightly shambolic.  The fact that they’ve now been on a couple of tours is evident.  If there’s instrument swapping, it’s done without breaking stride, the flow isn’t broken and with a band like this, that’s important.

I watched Faust at All Tomorrows Parties recently and decided I hated them.  I hung around because my friends wanted to see them and found myself getting drawn into to their groove once they’d got going.  They just started every song bellending around with a sax and making a horrible noise.  Islet dispense with the bellending and get straight to the groove part.  This isn’t to say it’s not broken up with howling, shouting and hitting things.  There are generally comparisons with Faust’s fellow Krautrockers Can and also with Os Mutantes.  Both have merit.  The drumming is a massively important part of their sound, this shows through more in the live set that it does on their mini album.  Quite often there are two drummers or at least someone else twatting something with a stick.  It probably shouldn’t work but whether the percussion is overlaid with loud choppy guitar or sixties sounding organ, it does.  The four members all sing and all have very different voices that compliment the different feel of the songs.  There’s a lot going on but all of it necessary.

For all the Krautrock similarities, Islet probably have more in common with 3 EPs era Beta Band.  Invention, melody, being bonkers – check.  Having mad flowery artwork – check.  There’s no reason why they can’t cultivate that band’s cult following, it just remains to be seen whether their unhinged genius can cross over to a wider audience in a world that think The Cribs are the best band in the country.  Here’s hoping they can.

Diverse Records are thrilled to be bringing Chuck Prophet to Wales for the first time in about a billion years. His album ‘Let Freedom Ring’ is being released on vinyl by Diverse in May (hopefully in time for the gig, there’s been a couple of delays), it was described by New York’s Village Voice as “Born in the USA for our times.”. We thought it was only fair that we promoted this show too as he’s as thrilling on stage as he is on record. He’s an amazingly entertaining performer and with his band, The Mission Express, produces bluesy, country, Tom Petty-like music with balls. That’s right, balls.

Prophet first attracted attention in March 1983 on joining Los Angeles band Green On Red. His exciting, highly skilled, technique added a new dimension to this already excellent group, although critics initially dubbed his work derivative of Neil Young. Successive releases by the group established Prophet as one of the era’s finest musicians, whose skills were enhanced through jams with the cream of San Francisco’s rock fraternity. In 1990 the artist released Brother Aldo, a largely country rock selection. This superior set featured several vocal duets with Prophet’s partner Stephanie Finch and included support from R&B pianist Spooner Oldham and Durocs’ drummer Scott Matthews. Prophet’s guitar work was, however, also prominent, particularly on “Scarecrow”, the album’s most intense offering. Following Green On Red’s demise in 1992, Prophet was able to concentrate on his solo career, establishing himself as one of the most acclaimed singer-songwriters of the 90s. He has collaborated with several legendary songwriters, including Jim Dickinson, Billy Swan and Bob Neuwirth. In 1997, Prophet delivered Homemade Blood, a live studio set that contains several of his finest songs to date. He made an excellent contribution to Kelly Willis’ 1998 album What I Deserve.

Support on the night comes from Gallowbirds who plough a similar rootsy rock furrow to Chuck. Tickets are £12 and are available from Diverse Music, Spillers and here.

Popcorn and your choice of poison at the ready! We will be showing the film The Bunny and the Bull on the middle floor of Clwb on Sunday from 6.30pm,then we will congregate to downstairs to hear The Ralfe Band play a full set plus support from Son Capson.
For their April shows, Ralfe Band will be celebrating the DVD release of ‘Bunny and the Bull’ by playing songs from the soundtrack, alongside tracks from their previous albums, as well as debuting some new songs.

Praise for Ralfe Band’s ‘Bunny and the Bull’ OST::

‘The 22 tracks here recall the deft melancholy of the Amelie soundtrack… The kind of regally drunk spirit last heard on David Dundas’ equally fine Withnail & I soundtrack. Score!” NME 8/10

‘The real test of any score is its ability to survive independent of the movie and Oliver Ralfe’s piano-heavy work manages that easily… It’s alternately sweetly hushed, spooky and sad, tapping Bernard Herrmann, Danny Elfman, European folk and gypsy song traditions in a bewitchingly evocative collection.’ UNCUT

£6adv / £8otd / Tickets available from Spillers Records  / www.ticketweb.co.uk

I’ve reviewed Baddies before and wasn’t overly complimentary. There’s nothing bad or evil about them, they play that kind of post punk well, they have the odd catchy tune and as a support they do their job of warming up the crowd rather well. They even acknowledge this themselves. I’m just not sure they have the originality to get any bigger than than they currently are. On different songs they sound like The Knack, The Futureheads but as my gig going colleague remarked ‘aren’t clever enough to be Talking Heads’. The matching grey shirts done up to the Adam’s apple look like they’ve walked out of an open prison but hey, you have to have a look these days. After a few songs, conversation turned to how much the singer looked like Cardiff City midfielder Stephen McPhail.

The Joy Formidable are a different prospect altogether. Their star seems to be in the ascendency, you can’t open a magazine of webpage without seeing their name. This is pretty impressive seeing as you can only buy their debut album from their merch stand if you want to hold an actual, physical CD (as opposed to one of those ether based download thingys). Gigging, radio play and a clutch of 7″s have got them this far and tonight they play to a pretty much full Barfly.

I like this band because I like the bands that they probably like too.  The shoegaze of bands like Slowride And Mazzy Star soundtracked my late teens.  The Joy Formidable take this template and batter it into song shapes.  For all the shimmering guitar and thumping bass, you’re never very far away from a big chorus.  Singer Ritzy isn’t just a pretty face either, her glassy eyed stare into the audience probably doesn’t harm the band’s chances of making it big, rock is always thankful for a poster girl but her voice is perfectly suited to soar above the wall of noise.  Even more impressive seeing as she’s contributing to said noise by battling with her guitar at the same time.

This is the third time I’ve seen the band and they still seem to be improving. This must simply be down to confidence as they’ve been playing together as a band for a fair old time now. Let’s just hope the songs keep getting better and that the forthcoming album matches new single Popinjay.

After the gig it would appear that I warranted a fellow JCer to use a popular social networking site to proclaim me ‘a terrifying drunk’. My gig colleague left early to catch the last train and was promptly sick on it. Please Barfly staff, in future, do not serve us Red Stripe.