HW: Upcoming Litmus Gigs (and a Space Ritual gig)

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Sun, Sep 11, 2005 at 08:28:47PM +0100, Colin Allen typed out:

        <snip>

> October 20th: The Portland Arms, Cambridge (with support TBA)

        <snip>

        I was there, given it's my local, though I was late for stupid
reasons and so missed the first band. Of the rest I wrote like this:

        "I arrived too late to catch Leaden, whom I'm told are a quite
proggy metal type of band but who had brought some genuinely tedious fans
with them, teeny metallers whose idea of a good dance was to hang their
heads over their boots and shake spastically, moving forward till they
knocked people over like some strange sightless troll with Parkinson's. So
I have no real wish to repair my omission.

        "This Incident were here from Reading because Obiat, who had been
booked, had got some mates to fill their slot when their drummer was
discovered to be running a high fever that morning. They were supposed to
be like the Melvins, but were a lot more conventional than that. They did
have a *fabulous* drummer, most unlikely looking bloke, but also a
guitarist with a big mouth and raucous voice, reasonable guitar ability,
and a girl bassist who for much of the set wouldn't have missed three of
her strings if someone had stolen them, really couldn't sing and who was
wearing odd Converse sneakers. I wasn't sure if this was a fashion
statement or not. Their music was quite jumpy Nirvana-aimed stuff but with
more complexity and shifts between shouting anger and then sudden attacks
of indie pastoralism with harmonies. I sort of enjoyed the set but really
didn't feel the need for an album, it just wasn't a finished act." A
reprobate friend of mine, and currently Cambridge Rocksoc president for
some reason, "however did get the album and claims that it confirms what
he had suspected, that they do in fact have some really good songs being
badly performed. The drummer was fantastic, I repeat. Pity that he kept
making space for the others.

        "Litmus were winging it. When they'd arrived their bass-player had
been scarcely able to stand, being with something flu-like. By the time
they took the stage he'd been dosed with lots of flu-plus, made to drink a
half-carafe of really awful wine, and had a lot of water splashed on his
face. Though his singing voice was a bit gone, which robbed them of some
definition in the attack as the guitarist and drummer can't carry vocals
by themselves, his bass-playing was a lot less careful than usual, and
this mostly didn't go wrong but instead propelled them into an even
higher-intensity jam space than they usually occupy. They had a crowd of
mostly-metallers to please and had most of them moshing or dancing, and
grinning evilly at the bass-work. It was probably only me that knew there
was something missing, partly because of Martin's vocals being ill and
partly because the drummer's double-kick pedal had come to bits, so he was
less present than usual. But this only goes to show they have redundancy
and panic to exploit in these circumstances, everyone else came away
saying it was a blinding gig and I was pretty happy with it also. It's
nice when other people get something you've been trying to tell them for
months and thank you for making the effort..."

        Setlist was:

Intro
?
Psychic Projection
You Are Here (with a big jam at the end)
Under the Sign
Far Beyond
Infinity Drive

        Midweek pub times so no encore, sadly, but they filled the time
pretty full. Yours,
                    Jon

ObCD: Hawkwind - _Family Tree_
--
        Jonathan Jarrett                Birkbeck College, London
                 jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
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  "The large print giveth and the small print taketh away." (Tom Waits)