>>Nostalgia For Infinity

This won’t be a glorious retrospective or even an excoriating rant about British pop music in the 1990s. I moved to Essex in about 1993, and my enduring memories of the Brit music for the ensuant 7 years are BritPop (which I never really took to bar Suede and Blur’s mid-to-late work), the shudderingly awful ladrock of Oasis, awful meat market dance tunes – this was Essex, after all – and of course the cancerous polyp upon the anus of humanity that was UK Garage, and subsequently Craig David’s stupid chinstrap. I wasn’t much of a fan of what I heard at the time. But hey, your mileage may vary. I once read that the guys who pioneered UK Garage were working underground with little recognition for many years, so at least they were genuine at the same time as being terrible.

But the point of this post isn’t too reminisce about times past. It’s actually to make cheap fun of the elements of British pop culture that just don’t seem to be able to move on. Let’s start with the slightly tragic: recently ’90s two-hit wonder Republica (you know them, your mum probably likes ‘Ready To Go’) reformed for a tax write-off reunion show. Loserville was in attendance and reviewed what was, by all accounts, the most significant musical event of 2010.

» Read the rest of this entry «

Thank fuck it’s Friday.

For your listening pleasure, head to Banner Pilot’s bandcamp page to listen to a stream of their wholly re-mastered 2008 album Resignation Day. It’s totally awesome; previously I felt that it didn’t hold a candle to 2009′s Collapser but with some canny production work it’s every bit as good. Not to be missed if you dig melodic punk rock as much as I do.

You might also want to check out this PunkNews stream of Pacer’s (ex-The Steal) debut 10″. I’ve not listened to it yet but I caught them live a few weeks ago and they kicked a few asses with their driving hardcore punk.

I’ve also been listening to Gallops today and Holy Roar are streaming all 5 tracks from their excellent self-titled dance / rock EP. (Holy Roar stream a lot of stuff which is very cool indeed.)

I heard that some elderly apologist for paedophilia is here in the UK at the moment. Well, we’re all annoyed about that but remember he’s involved in even worse things. Easy to lose sight of that. Fucking papacy.

The news broke today that the Freebutt will no longer be able to operate commercially as a live music venue. Head over here to read their official statement; the gist is that they need £20,000 for the required soundproofing, which they don’t have, and the council have reduced the limiter to 95db which is too low for amplified music. They’ve shut the venue as making £20k from live acoustic music doesn’t seem feasible.

(The Penthouse above the ‘butt will be still be running, though, so do keep heading there. It’s a scrappy little bar that I’m still really fond of, and it has some cool esoteric DJ nights.)

This rapidly follows confirmation that The Providence is being sold by the Barracuda chain, quite likely to Tesco. Make of that what you will; it’s been pointed out that several other Tesco branches are about 5 minutes walk away, and there are already 11 Tesco shops in Brighton (plus there’s the one they’re considering building in Lewes Road too). I wasn’t hugely fond of the Providence as a pub but the sound was decent enough and some long-standing promoters put on a lot of shows there.

In the last month we’ve also heard news that The Engine Room has been closed. No official statements have been released as far as I’m aware, although the word on the street is that there just wasn’t enough money for some payment or another. Anyone reading this got the facts? [UPDATE: minutes after I posted this, an article popped up on the local paper's website explaining that the venue is up for sale. Balls!]

And of course earlier this year came the end of the Hobgoblin, a genuine Brighton punk rock and metal institution, which despite eking a few more months of life after its initial closure late in 2009 has been bought by another chain. They’re currently in the process of entirely revamping it; initial rumour was that it was being turned into a gastro pub (ah yes, no shortage of those in Brighton) although its new exterior paintjob does still tout “live music” as a feature. It seems unlikely that they’ll want to play host to the same D.I.Y. promoters and touring bands as in the past, though.

Several years back the Pressure Point was sold to a developer following a lack of interest from purchasers who wanted to keep it running as a venue. It’s since been converted into a hostel with a bar. The Brighton Gloucester / Barfly remains closed and unused following Barfly / MAMA’s abortive attempt to break into the local music scene around the same time. I assume they still own it and may intend to reopen it in brighter economic times.

The saddest thing is that most of the venues that have bitten the dust were the ones doing the most to support relatively unknown outfits, small touring bands, local groups and musicians and so on.

SIGNS OF LIFE

On the positive side of things the Hydrant (was the Hare & Hounds) is making a huge and laudable push into supporting local music with both a large upstairs function room for shows and regular gigs in the downstairs pub as well. Then there’s Hector’s House which seems to have picked up a lot of the punk and metal shows the Hob would once have hosted – and good on them, speaking personally it’s greatly preferable to the student drum ‘n bass crowd I remember from 5 years ago! Finally one of my current favourite venues, the Prince Albert, is also keeping on rocking – and their P.A. is one of the best I’ve heard in a small venue.

And of course there are other venues like Jam, the Greenhouse Effect, Audio and larger venues like the Concorde 2. So live music in Brighton has taken some major blows, but there are still plenty of places to go and play.

If you’re involved with a local venue, whether as an owner or a promoter, please get in touch via email or the comments below. I’d like to do a round-up of venues in a separate post in the near future, and counteract some of this bad news with a reminder of how Brighton still has a lot to offer!

The Freebutt today.

This news broke last Wednesday but I’ve been busy recently and so I’m only writing about it now! One of Brighton’s longest-running venues, the Freebutt, is under threat of closure as a result of a noise complaint and subsequent Environmental Health Office investigation. As I put it on Facebook:

Many of you will have seen this already, but so what, it’s important. The Freebutt is facing closure due to ONE noise complaint. They are doing everything they can to solve the noise problem, but the EHO and the neighbour are preventing them from doing so. For a venue with decades of history to be shut down for such a bullshit reason would be a travesty.

This summary is a bit unfair on the EHO – they’re helping, just somewhat slowly – and the neighbour – who presumably has a legitimate complaint, but they’re not helping get it resolved except in the sense of “if the venue closes, the problem goes away”.

The Freebutt is presently owned by a small group of local music fans and entrepreneurs. They’re put a lot of work into ensuring the venue is shipshape and this is the only noise complaint since they took ownership. Although since the redesign the giant pillar in the middle of the room is still a source of constant complaint, Brighton’s live music scene wouldn’t be the same without the ‘butt.

The Freebutt circa 1968.

You can read the full story from the Freebutt here. The Argus has an article covering Brighton Council’s statements and some tedious, reactionary reader comments. There’s a petition you can sign here and a Facebook group here. The MP for the area is Caroline Lucas (Green) and the city councillors can be contacted from here.

The venue’s owners sent out an update 24 hours after the news and campaign broke which you can read below the cut. » Read the rest of this entry «

In late 2009, one of my favourite hardcore punk outfits in Brighton called it a day: the Offcuts. In the interest of full disclosure I should probably mention that I’ve been friends with the band for years and have lived with most of them at various addresses!

Essentially, the band ended when Alex (bass) decided to leave. The others opted to continue as a band but to make some changes. These included one of the band’s two guitarists adopting bass duties (at the moment Chris and Pinder share, swapping over on stage for different songs), Alec adding keys and synth to his distinctive vocal slurs and screams, ditching all of the old tunes and writing entirely new ones, and changing the band’s name to WW2 vs Dinosaurs.

» Read the rest of this entry «

If you’d like to hear masterful Toronto-based hardcore hardcore experimentalists Fucked Up covering Katrina & the Waves’ 1980s hit ‘Walking on Sunshine’, I suggest you click here.

Just a quick post to point at a couple of mp3 blogs that I think are pretty cool and you might want to check out. If you’ve got some favourites, feel free to share ‘em in the comments.

Note – none of these are blogs that are likely to post high-profile releases. They’re more about offering exposure to obscure outfits. If you want to know where to download the new Deftones, use Google. I’m not enabling you. You might alternatively want to go listen to something you’ve never heard before instead… in which case, knock yourself out!

Anyway, obviously you’re gonna do whatever you want to do, but if you find some tunes you really like and it’s still in print, go buy a real copy of it. Give something back to the artists and the labels who support them, huh?

» Read the rest of this entry «

I’ve lately become a little obsessed with the pop culture junkie blog Stuff You Will Hate, which is mostly written by some of the guys from Metal Inquisition and some teenage scene girls. You’d be right in thinking that this is not something that would traditionally be up my proverbial alley and you’d be spot on with that assessment. That’s partly why I like it so much.

So just what is SYWH? To quote its own blurb:

The meaning of “Stuff You Will Hate” changes depending on the installment, and often during the course of a single column. It can mean “stuff I love, but that you, the reader, will dislike.” Sometimes it means “stuff you will hate, and I hate it as well.” And sometimes, it means “stuff you like, and I might actually like it, too, but I’m going to pretend to hate it in a way that will infuriate you because it will be written as a parody of a typical idiot hating something great, and you’ll quote the fake blurb to your friends and say ‘what an ignorant dick’ when in reality it’s intentional and now we’re laughing at you, you gullible fuck.”

Yeah, pretty much. A lot of the blog’s content is about contemporary pop music – the scene stuff that the kidzzz are into, right, rather than the shit that sells the most units. It’s often written in a way that’s simultaneously derisive and loving; evidently the writers have a fondness for their subject matter at the same time as they realise the essential absurdity of pop culture. In a vague sense it’s simultaneously ironic and post-ironic, which I kind of get the impression is the nature of contemporary teen/pop culture.

A lot of posts poke fun at ‘oldz’; older fans of music like hardcore or metal who like to criticise the shit that the kids listen to these days. SYWH slaughters some of the last sacred cows of the pop music machine; the idea that what came before was somehow better rather than, as is actually the case, just a different sort of music made by and for young people that responds to or is a product of the culture from which it emerges.

» Read the rest of this entry «

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

Brilliant, horrifying video.