Something wants me to stay round here…
Three weeks after the Rhythms monster and Hitchin's ready to rock again! Like every other small festival since the 1960s, local music collective LIVE CIRCUIT add the word 'stock' to their name, to call their (our) festival LIVESTOCK. Very funny… What better way to end my holiday at home than by seeing some of the best and adventurous musical talent of the area?
Friday evening at the Hitchin Town Football Club clubhouse brings us four rock bands and the first of many train delays due to the influx of sheep for the Robbie Williams concerts at Knebworth down the road. Anyway, lemme tell ya a story. There's a cool London band called Finlay who often recall a cross betwixt Pavement and Pixies, and Red Maxx from Welwyn Garden City are a cross of Finlay and some band you've heard of - straying from the popular path to get their clothes torn on the lo-fi hedge. They play a dirty blend of rock with chaotic endings, screaming at their own music like the most deranged fans, and truth be told I used to prefer it when the trio stopped playing their songs and just made a racket. But their non-instant tunes are gradually wheedling their way into my brain; they were most refreshing when they closed Club 85's 'Rawk Stage' on the Rhythms weekend, because most everything else had sounded so nice (a near-unavoidable factor for family viewing, I suppose - you won't get asked back if you start swearing at the sun and pretend to kill babies) and Red Maxx in contrast had the rock flowing through their veins. At the start of this summer evening, with the sun shafting dust through the pavilion windows, they do swing their guitars around well - but give the impression that they need to listen to more Pavement bootlegs. The Immortals listen to all sorts but, to put it concisely, play punk with long hair. Their songs are both gruff and paced, too old to be emo and too spirited to ignore, anti-anti-social vocals and plenty of musical trickery: take 'Disco Cowboys' which describes itself perfectly, though I never remember the false ending in its odd signatures…(the descriptions get shorter as the night gets longer) punk outfit Bedford Falls (from Cardiff) and eternally Kerrang!-famed funk-ruckers Fog Donkey are both quite good and quite boring to me: active, musically consistent throughout their sets, BF catching my ear with an overly-sensitive moment but FD failing to live up to their promise of a few years ago despite playing half the same songs they did then. Sure they have a good reception from their local hardcore, and apparently get around the country quite a bit too, but I'd hate to see any of the other local bands end up like them. Where's the invention? Worse than that, why's it still found entertaining?
the next one
and a bit days of Livestock coming soon!
