Hey, You're not the first, You're not the last, To hold me back

Monday 26 October - It's a school night but when there is a very good band in town, you just have to make the effort. On my way to The Duchess I walked passed Fibbers where I was surprised to find a couple of policeman lurking near the concrete steps around the back of the Stonebow. Puzzlingly, there was another PC hanging around at the St Saviourgate end of the passage where the front entrance to The Duchess is. I later found out that a Barnsley man had climbed up onto the scaffolding and was threatening to jump off. We never realised he was there, and tragically, he did finally jump to his death at 13:50 on Tuesday.

Back to the gig, and the first support band was Ghosts On The Intercom, a York-based three-piece consisting of; Tom Robinson (Guitar and vocals), Alex Woolgar (drums), and Rich Morley (bass). Tom is from the school of guitar players who likes to wear his instrument like a necklace, affording him the opportunity to spider up the frets with his right hand, performing hammer-ons, pull-offs, and still picking out notes from the chord. It looks flashier than it really is, as evidenced by the fact that he did it for almost every guitar solo he played. That said he was actually a competent player. The vocals were way too shouty for me. Lyrics were completely wasted, something about "feed me a stray cat"? The whole set was very jangly on the ears, with one song sounding pretty much like another. Andy liked them though.

We also agreed to differ on the second band, Sucioperro, another 3-piece, but this time from Ayr in Scotland. The band are; JP Reid (vocals and guitar), Fergus Munro (vocals and drums), and Stewart Chown (bass). They produced an almighty bass sound that made my clothes vibrate. I like it when my clothes vibrate. These were very heavy, and yet surprisingly tuneful, a bit like York's own With One Last Breath. I did manage to make out the titles of a couple of tracks; Dissident Code, and You Can't Lose (What You Don't Have). I think Andy found their black arm-bands with red crosses on them, slightly unnerving.

And so to the head-liners, ManchesterNine Black Alps, who consist of Sam Forrest (vocals, guitar), David Jones (guitar), Martin Cohen (bass), and James Galley (drums). We've seen them twice at The Duchess and they perform superbly to what appears to me to be a loyal York fan-base. Certainly Sam originally came from York, and the band have strong ties to the city. When we saw them last they were touring material from a forthcoming album, Locked Out From The Inside, which they have just released. By tonight this material was fully integrated into their set, which still draws fairly heavily from their debut, Everything Is. NBA are an English Nirvana. Sam growls Cobain-like, while James drums with vast energy. The guitar-work of David and Martin is enough to wake the dead, yet melodic, sometimes as soft as down, yet a volume never dipping below eleven. Bass and lead guitarists even swap for the final two tracks, just because they can. The band came on-stage to the strains of the theme from Antiques Roadshow. Outstanding tracks for me were; the superb Heavier Than Water, Salt Water, and Burn Faster, grunge-stomp Vampire In The Sun, trouser-shaking Every Photograph Steals My Soul, and spaced-out Cold Star. Hell, I liked them all. This was a first-class gig and I dug into my pockets for a copy of their latest album to add to my collection. Very highly recommended.

Tuesday 27 October - Continuing on my much extended weekend, we are out again on yet another school night, this time at The Basement Bar. The evening kicked off with two-fifths of Sheffield band David Woodcock and The Dead Comedians, specifically; Dave (former frontman of punksters Taste Of Shotgun) on guitars and vocals, supported by Chris Saunders on guitar. Most of the songs they played revolved around cigarettes and alcohol, or love lost. Dave sang with a Waits-style growl and invoked images of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. I missed most of the song titles, except for the outstanding City Lights.

Not a bad start to the evening that had been organised by the second act, Boss Caine, aka GT Turbo, aka Dan Lucas. A York musician, Dan writes and plays music in the Americana style. He has vocals like Neil Diamond, very bass, very smooth. Again, I missed the titles but the songs went somewhere along the lines of; Smoking In My Back Yard, something about Lady Macbeth, Kinda Loving, Anyone Here Seen Hank?, and the highlight for me, Sweet Sorrow Surrender.

The Basement Bar is a very intimate (small) venue, so there were probably only about fifty people tops. But tonight they were hosting a big act, Hope&Social. H&S come from Leeds and regular readers will know they consist of; Simon Wainwright (vocals, guitar, piano), Rich Huxley (guitar, vocals, piano), Jason Miller (bass), and Ed Waring (keyboards). They are currently joined on drums by Mark Ashwell. Sadly, this was Jason's penultimate gig with the band. After a final gig in Leeds on Thursday, he will be hanging up his bass in favour of his family.

Tonight they played most of their album, Architect of this Church. They kicked off with the super hand-clapping Living A Lie. After this they revealed that most of the band were suffering, in varying degrees, with colds. Ed even confessed to a "runny bottom." Sweet. Moving swiftly along, they polished off Stuck Like Glue, Sunlight Hold Me, Drink The Drink, and Red Red Rose. Then they exhorted the crowd to invoke the spirit of Rod Stewart for Stay With Me. It doesn't sound like a huge set-list, but each song was elongated to its maximum and the set was extended with tuneful links between the tracks. Nonetheless, it was all over way too quickly. Rich and Simon came back for an encore sans a PA system. Looking For Answers is a great track that allows for lots of audience participation, and how we participated! It was a great show and at the end Jas came around the audience selling copies of the album, using their pay-what-you-want model of distribution. Please, go and see H&S, or buy their album, for how ever much you want, or download it, or just go and see another band, but just get out there a support live music!

All I ever wanted was a reason to be happy, Happiness can be so hard to find.

Friday 23 October - In the mid-eighties, New Orleaner Tony Green and tea chest bass player Dennis Johnson collided at London's Covent Garden to form the core of busking band, the Gutter Brothers. They toured with the likes of Jools Holland and Dr Feelgood, and signed with Elvis Costello's Demon Records. The band split in 1993 and Dennis died in 2002. Since then the band has played the occasional one-off show and recently embarked on something of a mini-tour, culminating (for us at least) tonight at The Duchess. Given that they were billed as a skiffle band I was somewhat relieved to see a wash-board onstage, although unsure as quite what to expect musically.

Support tonight was billed as Tom Cawte and guitarist Dave Thornley, both of Babe Shadow, who performed an acoustic set, presumably of Babe Shadow material. They both played and sang competently, although I didn't recognise any of their material. It was a kind of rocked up folk. If I had to pigeon-hole them, they would probably get filed next to Noah & the Whale.

Anyway, on to the headline act, Gutter Brothers, who were joined on-stage by one of the Babe Shadows, who played guitar and harmonium (a keyboard instrument where sound is produced by air, supplied by hand-operated bellows). I think bass player was Steve Turner, and he played electric bass guitar as well as an electric upright bass. The rest of the band consisted of Tony Green (vocals and washboard), Chris Cawte (guitar), and Jeff Walker (on drums). Musically they played a mixture of heavy be-bop, hi-energy skiffle, R&B, and quite rocky material. The former seemed to stem mainly from their early stuff, principally drawn from their first album Isometric Boogie. The rockier stuff I think comes from their later albums, and in particular, the 2008 album El Krusho. Highlights for me where the tracks; Everlasting Shining Peace of Mind, and Stand Up, Little Jesus. Tony was a real performer. I really didn't have a clue what this band would sound like, but I'm pleased I turned out. They were brilliant and I highly recommend seeing them.

These girls fall like dominos, dominos

Friday 16 October - Sorry, there was a bit of radio silence last week as I was at a wedding. Anyway, I'm back to normal this weekend as we kick off at Fibbers with, apparently, one of the top ten British blues guitarists of all time (according to Guitar & Bass magazine). Support tonight came from Mark Wynn a York chap who plays in the troubadour tradition, a bit like Bob Dylan or Woody Guthrie. I didn't recognise any of the songs he played/sang, but he sang clearly and strongly, and his playing was excellent. I think he plays around York fairly regularly and I would recommend looking out for him.

There was a rather noisy element to the audience, but these were swiftly drowned out by the headline act, Matt Schofield and his band. Matt was born in 1977 in Manchester but grew up in Fairford in Gloucestershire. These days he is based in Canada and typically performs with an organ trio, a slightly unusual format for a blues band. He is currently touring his 2009 album Head, Tails & Aces with a four-piece featuring Jeff 'The Funk' Walker on bass, and replacing Evan Jenkins with Alain Baudry on drums. The fourth band member is organist Jonny Henderson who plays a Hammond organ, performing bass lines using his left hand, and playing chords and lead lines with his right hand. All very clever stuff. I was a bit sceptically about the whole "top ten best blues guitarist..." blah, blah, but as the set unfolded Schofield did indeed produce some blistering guitar solos the likes of which made my jaw ache as it was dropped open for so long. I didn't pick up much of what he played; there was Betting Man, effectively the title track from Head, Tails & Aces, All You Need, and Lights Are On, But Nobody's Home, a cover of an Albert Collin's track I think. It was an exceptionally good gig and I thoroughly recommend that you try and catch Matt on tour. Researching him afterwards, I noted that he has also co-produced albums of another British blues guitarist that I've seen relatively recently, Ian Siegal. Ian is also gracing the boards at Fibbers, sometime later this year.

As we had an early finish, we sprinted gracefully across town to The Roman Bath to catch the last half hour of The Penetrators. Not the old punk band (actually the first live band I ever saw), but rather a classic rock covers outfit. A four-piece outfit from Hull, The Penetrators consist of Andy Bolder (guitar & vocals), Ian Bolder (guitar & vocals), Haydne Carter (bass guitar & vocals) and Mike Wright (drums). They were playing Genesis' I Can't Dance when we arrived, and our ears were treated to a bit of AC/DC, Whole Lotta Rosie, The Who, Won't Get Fooled Again, ZZ Top, Led Zeppelin etc. We've yet to catch a full set by these guys but they sounded pretty darn good to me.

Saturday 17 October - Always on the listen out for something new, Saturday found us in the bowels of The Duchess. Well, me at least. 'A' was attending a call-out from work and was a little late in arriving. In fact he missed the first support band, Idiot Savant. I'm not sure there's a category box for these chaps. It was all a bit Divine Comedy gone completely avant-garde. Art-rock? No idea. It was different, let's just leave it there.

The second support act were We Fell To Earth an electronic rock band from London, of which the main performers are Wendy Rae-Fowler and Richard File. Dave Okumu and Leo Taylor of The Invisible play drums and guitar on the debut album, but I'm not sure if they are part of the touring band. File joined UNKLE after DJ Shadow left and subsequently met up with Fowler whilst working in LA. The UNKLE influence is retained in the work of WFTE, it's millennium-era post-trip-hop with File and Fowler as Tricky and Shirley Manson. The drums are tom heavy and there are stray bleeps and bloops in the spaces between the drums and vocals. It's polite, well-produced music, but a bit too middle-class to be worthy of the label "interesting".

The headliners, on the other hand, were a complete different kettle of kittens. The Big Pink are an electro-rock duo from London, Robertson "Robbie" Furze (vocals, guitar) and Milo Cordell (programming, keyboards, synthesizer, vocals). For the live tour they are joined by other musicians who provide bass, percussion, and backing vocals. I think they also had multi-instrumentalist Daniel O'Sullivan with them, ferreting about in a metal case, pushing buttons and hitting things. I guessing that most of the material they played was from their debut album A Brief History Of Love, released in September 2009. I also understand that they are supporting Muse on tour in November 2009.Their music is a bit like Spiritualized, or Spacemen 3 (I've not heard SM3 so the comparison comes from 'A'), a cross between trance-dance and drone-rock. I remember one track, Count Backwards From Ten, but the others passed me by so I couldn't identify individual tracks. This blissed-out electronica is not normally my cup of Yorkshire but I thoroughly enjoyed this band so that must make them pretty good. I'm also listening to quite a bit of drone-rock at the moment, although I would have put TBP at the fringe of the genre, so I was probably more receptive than I might otherwise have been. This was a great end to a great weekend of music.

My fear has gone, I’m fake

Tuesday 6 October - Yep, it was a school night, but The Druid and I were out at Fibbers to see a band that came recommended. As we arrived there was a chap, Ian Ellwood I believe, who had just started his set. One guy and a guitar, always a difficult setup I think. He did some covers, some songs I didn't recognise with scatter-gun lyrics. His vocals weren't particularly expressive and his guitar playing was up there (or down there) with mine. So, no great shakes. Still, it takes guts to perform in front of a crowd.

The next support came from Sketches. Are those necklaces they are wearing? No, they're just high-slung guitars. Sketches are a four-piece from Leeds consisting of Matthew Hutt, James McBrien, Luke Rogers, and John Arkell (James, how about changing your name to Mark?) They play a mixture of styles; some big and angry, some urgent indie, some kinda emo, soundscape stuff. At times their frontman's vocals and guitar playing sounded like early Coldplay, a bit Yellow. Interesting sound, and a band I'll watch out for.

Now, the headliners were the Engineers, due to support Porcupine Tree at Leeds O2 Academy on Thursday 8 October. Simon Phipps is the singer, Dan Macbean is the guitarist, Mark Peters is the bassist, and Sweeney is the drummer. Tonight they were also joined onstage by a female vocalist, sorry, I've no idea of her name. The mix was very much in favour of the keyboards, which rendered most of the vocals inaudible. What I can say is that they sounded tremendous. The keyboards set up a canvas of sound against which the drums splatter and the guitars paint huge swathes of sound. It was shoe-gazing, blessed-out, synth-rock of the highest order. I'm guessing that most of the tracks are from their latest album, Three Fact Fader (penultimate track was The Fear Has Gone), although at least one, One In Seven, was from their eponymous debut album, Engineers. I've already ordered a copy of Three Fact Fader. Superb stuff.

My hair's turning white, my neck's always been red, my collar's still blue / we've always been here, just trying to sing the truth to you.

Friday 2 October - kicked off a game of two halves. Tonight we were at Fibbers for a speculative punt on a band neither 'A' or I knew, Second Skin, essentially a set of The Chameleons' songs from their studio albums from 1983-6 (Script of the Bridge, What Does Anything Mean? Basically, and Strange Times) featuring original drummer John Lever, and front-man Mark Burgess. First though, we had to endure Thatcher' Bush. TB delivered plodding formulaic punk rock 'n' roll which, frankly, wouldn't have been out of place in the back room of some smoky pub at the turn of the 80's. So, bit of a duff start then. Fibs started to get quite crowded at this point, and there was a quite a mass of people heading for the front. A few mohican-style hair cuts and a whole bunch of guys on what appeared to be a bouncers night out. Even some of the women looked as if they filed their teeth and sported tattoos on their knuckles. We lurked at bar level.

The name Second Skin comes from track four of The Chameleons' first album. Artwork for their first three albums was produced by their guitarist, Reg Smithies, now an artist of some renown. I thought I'd never heard of them before, but I was wrong. I remember them covering Bowie's John I'm Only Dancing, although I'm blowed if I can find a reference to them releasing it as a single. On the other hand, the rest of the audience knew every single word to every single track and bellowed along in a great sing-along session. It was all very strange. I felt like we'd gate-crashed a private party. I quite enjoyed the music and it was delivered in a technically competent fashion by the musicians. Burgess was a passionate and demonstrative front-man, a joy to watch him in action. I can't say that I'll be running out and buying any albums though.

Given an early finish we ventured across the road to The Terrace where The Melodicas New Reed were playing. Again, we'd never heard of these guys, but hey, the beer's much better than at Fibs. They hail from Leeds and Runcorn (Hashman aka "Ash", the drummer, was the Runcorn connection) and featured a slip of a girl, Cath, on flute which caused our eyebrows to rise slightly. They played a mixture of reggae, funk, soul, blues, jazz... well, anything and everything really. Even though we normally loathe funk with a passion, this group managed to make it sound acceptable. I can't tell you what they played, because it was all their own material, but it was a great end to the evening. Recommended.

Saturday 3 October - The Druid and I were out to see Idle Jack And The Big Sleep, a York band that we seem to keep missing. There was only one support band and while they were setting up we rested our aged bones by sitting at a table up near the mixing desk and lighting console. We didn't stay there long. Lost From Atlas started playing and immediately the whole room was in their thrall. It was like some amazing drum solo accompanied by guitar and bass (Liam Ledgeway was on drums, Dan Gallagher on guitar, and Orlando Lloyd on bass and artistic design.) They played fantastic, tight, post-rock instrumental math-rock. Dan plays with a distinctive tappy guitar sound and the band were constantly switching time signatures or at least giving that illusion. They reminded me somewhat of a band we never see anymore, Ishtar, who seem to play just one track for their set. Co-incidentally, Ishtar are a side project of Idle Jack... Anyway, Lost From Atlas kindly provided me with a free EP featuring the cracking Tom Robinson Must Die. Their debut album is due to be launched on November 14 at Fibbers, definitely a date for my diary. A band not to be missed, highly recommended.

And so to the headline act, Idle Jack And The Big Sleep. Their front man, big-hair, reminded me of someone and when he removed his sunglasses I recognised him as Rob Hughes, a chap who had once spun around rather too quickly in Fibbers and spilt his red wine down my t-shirt. That was the first and last time I ever wore a white t-shirt on a Friday night. I don't bear grudges though. This six-piece York band comprises the aforesaid Mr Hughes on vocals, guitars, theramin, banjo, Stylophone, and megaphone, Rob East on bass, Mike East on rhythm guitar, Jacob Hammerton on lead guitar and effects, Simon Himsworth on drums, and Matthew Hardy on brass; although there were two additional brass players on the stage as well. The sound was pretty unique, varying between rock, prog, metal and all stations in-between. The live show was dynamic and energetic. Sometimes the vocals took centre-stage, at others, the music flew off a dark tangents, painting vast aural soundscapes. Fantastic stuff and, again, highly recommended.