Future Of The Left at Clwb 28/01/10

Last night was probably the third show that I have been to so far this year due to a lack of funds and generally trying to find new ways of getting drunk on the cheap. I had made the sensible choice of buying a ticket for the show a couple of days before because I thought that it would most likely sell out. A few of my friends who wanted to go didn't think of buying tickets for ages and when they got round to it, it was too late and tickets were sold out.
This wouldn't be the first time I've gone and watched a band play by myself so I shouldn't have been bothered. However, I had a horrible feeling like I could have shit my pants at any minute and wanted to throw up in the face of whoever happened to be sitting closest to me on the train. This problem was compounded by the fact that I decided to make and eat a vegetarian chilli before leaving the house.
On top of the fact that I was generally feeling pretty shitty anyway, I got even more angry by some fucking mongoloid at Neath train station who had decided to put up this professionally composed sign to customers.



Why the fuck do people have such a weak grasp of basic literacy? Why do people capitalise random words that don't need to be capitalised? There are obviously some exceptions to this rule. For example, if I wanted to say, 'The person who wrote this must have been a right cunt', it would be acceptable for 'cunt' to be written as 'Cunt', because you have to be a cunt with a capital C to make signs like this one.
After getting to Cardiff, I sat on my own in a classy Wetherspoons establishment for a while. There was some drunk, biker-looking guy who was generally in a bit of a state who I watched for a while. He dropped a pound coin then spent about two minutes looking around for it even though it was right behind him. I got bored of this very quickly, finished my drink and left. By the time I got to Clwb, Solutions had already played and Right Hand Left Hand were just finishing up their set. I have seen RHLH play at least a thousand times before and find their brand of loop based buffoonery to be interesting for a short while, but I usually become quite bored with it pretty quickly. I wish I had seen Solutions play because their album is pretty good and I haven't seen them before.
Future Of The Left came onto the stage, called everyone in the crowd a cunt and set the tone for the rest of their set. For anyone who doesn't know. FOTL are made up of ex members of defunct Cardiff legends mclusky and Ammanford's Jarcrew. The band has been touring constantly since releasing their second album and this really shows. They tore though songs from both of their albums with a couple of highlights being 'Small Bones Small Bodies' and 'You Need Satan More Than He Needs You'.
Even though the band and the songs are awesome, a huge part of their set is abusing people in the crowd who leave themselves wide open to it. One guy got told that he looked like a fat version of Kelson's brother and got referred to as 'my fat friend'. People wearing hats indoors were also mocked and lots of other stuff I can't remember because I was drunk and my memory doesn't stretch back to remembering all of last night. Some guy from the crowd kept shouting stuff at the band between the songs that made little or no sense and eventually he decided to get on the stage and get in their face.
This went on for a short time before he got back into the crowd and literally got his arse kicked before being escorted out by the bouncers. What a fucking mug. He got marched straight past me on his way out, which gave me the chance to get a better look at him and realise it was the drunk biker-looking guy from the pub earlier on. How exciting.
I had to miss my train home because the set ran on but I didn't really care because I would rather be drinking and watching a band than sitting at home arguing with my parents over what to watch on TV. Yes, I'm 25 years old and I have to live with my parents. Overall, a pretty good set from FOTL and to anybody who reads this and doesn't already know, the band has announced another show downstairs in the same venue tonight (29/01/10) and you can get in for a fiver if you saw them last night. Also, I managed to make it home without shitting myself, which can only be a good thing.

Diet Pills, Smiler and Brandyman at Buffalo Bar Cardiff 19/01/10

Last night saw the first show put on by Lesson No.1 of the new decade and they set the benchmark pretty high.
Brandyman were first to play and anticipation for them was pretty high as the room had filled up early on in the evening. There aren't any recordings available for this band but I really wanted to see them because they are something of a Cardiff supergroup (I know, I hate using that term too). One of their guitarists has been involved with a few different bands over the years, most recently Truckers Of Husk and most notably, FTSE 100. Their other guitarist played for Joy Of Sex and their vocalist is none other than Cardiff publican, northern lunatic and Gindrinker vocalist, DC Gates.
With the calibre of musicians involved I was expecting good things but had no idea of what they would sound like. After seeing them play I'm still finding it hard to put my finger on how to describe their sound. The general consensus is that they rocked and there were lots of big riffs, some tricky time changes and some surprising vocals from DC. In Gindrinker, he talks in an angry northern drawl but with Brandyman he was closer to singing. It was definitely good to see him freed up from some of the restraints that come from being in a band with a minimal set up (Gindrinker) to try something quite different. There were some technical issues after the third song involving a destroyed guitar amp that stopped the pace of the show a bit so when the fourth and final song had started, some of their energy had been lost.
I still think that it was a really good set and some comments describing the band as being similar to ZZ Top made sense in the respect that they rocked hard. I thought they sounded kind of similar to Helmet in parts but I'm sure I'll be hearing a lot more from them over the next few months. Definitely ones to watch.
After a short break where we went out to the beer garden and discussed cheap ways to get drunk, (mainly involving sucking urinal cakes covered in drunk people's piss, which we decided to name 'Piss Jubblys') we headed back upstairs to watch Smiler. They are a band who have some members who have been involved in other bands such as George Annihilation And The Legion Of Hate and Makeshift Truth. After the relative complexity of Brandyman, Smiler were happy to just play as fast and hard as possible at high volume.
The band was pretty basic, flat out punk/powerviolence that didn't disappoint me. The songs mainly clocked in at a couple of minutes each and followed the same sort of formula: All play very fast, shout a lot and be angry about stuff in the world that is shit. One of the songs that stood out was about hating the BNP, which every self respecting human being should do and the lyrics were something about not being a 'racist cunt'. Haven't really got anything bad to say about the band, they sounded exactly as I would have expected them to and even threw in a cover of 'Rise Above' by Black Flag.
Last up were Diet Pills, who are a band who I didn't really know anything about apart from that they come from Leicester, which is probably one of my least favourite cities in the UK and that they had been compared to Neurosis and The Jesus Lizard.
From the minute they first started playing there was a menacing amount of volume and density and I knew I was going to like this band a lot. Their sound was really sludgy in parts and very bass heavy, which is never a bad thing. Their singer was a small guy who seemed pretty unhinged and threw himself around at the front of the stage keeping the first row of the audience at a distance with the threat of being smashed in the mouth by a swinging arm or head. Vocally, he reminded me of Mike from Racebannon or David Yow from the Jesus Lizard, with a high pitched screaming and tortured style.
The songs worked well from being a combination of slow, sludgy parts that felt like they were repeatedly hitting you with a hammer and other quiter and more eerie parts that actually reminded me of some parts of the first Khanate album. The set did seem to be over all too quickly but the band really blew me away by being a pretty unique prospect. I picked up their demo CD, a split CD they did with The Ergon Carousel and their 7" that was put out by Force Fed Records for less than a fiver. Unfortunately, I dropped the demo CD on the train home and somebody stole it rather than giving it back to me. At least I can take some comfort in knowing that some retard from the valleys may have gone home drunk, put the CD on and got his mind raped.
Here are some links to everyone involved with the show.
http://www.lessonnumberone.blogspot.com/ Who regularly put on most of the gigs worth going to in Cardiff and Newport.
http://uhoh-watson.blogspot.com/ Ian Watson, who made the awesome flyer for the show.
http://www.myspace.com/dietpillsband Listen to Diet Pills here and order stuff from them.
http://www.myspace.com/smileruk Listen to Smiler here.

What's the point?

I have no idea why I have decided to start this blog or what is going to be written on here but I'm sure the next time I leave the house I'll get angry at something and hopefully it will amuse, entertain or sicken you when I detail it on here.

I will probably put up some reviews of shows I have been to see and possibly some album reviews or stuff I think people should listen to when I figure out how to operate this new fangled technology.

Good day.