Barfly At The Monarch, Camden, London
9th August 2001
OK, so it’s a promotional gig for (the once-proud, now suckers of corporate cock) Xfm. OK, so the other bands are yer average guitar malarkey. Fair enough. But if 2nd Gen’s on, then why the fuck is no-one dancing? Huh? Answer me that and win a prize. (Of fuck all, incidentally, in case you were wondering.) 2nd Gen is here, with an ALL STAR LINE-UP of guests (including Roger Carne from Leechwoman and Dave Watts of Fun’da’mental) and everything! And these retards just stand there going “it’s a bit noisy, isn’t it? not like those nice Belle & Sebastian geezers.” Well… well.. umm… FUCK YOU! `Cuz this is noise par excellence, this is frequencies your mother never even had a chance to worry about, ‘cos she was too busy giving head to the GOD OF NOISE! (and such… I may have to calm down a bit now.)
Even shackled by the restraints of your Earth radio stations, and therefore toning it down a bit, 2nd Gen still does the do (as did Betty Boo, only he does it louder) and again proves himself one of the few noise artists it’s actually worth watching (as opposed to just hearing. I mean, yeah, Bomb 20 (say) Rocks a snow leopard’s ass, but is there any difference between watching him standing behind a computer and sitting at home listening to him kickin’ it on CD? Oh yeah… you probably have comfier furniture at home…) Rawk (as opposed to Rock) is provided by James Johnston of Camden’s very own Bad Men In Good Suits, Gallon Drunk. Yeah, (yeah!) he comes on to do “Black Spring”, and he’s being pretty damn cool about it when – OH MY GOD! – he suddenly forgets this is a promotional gig and decides to belabour the hapless Freq photographer about the ears (or at least in that general direction, not actually making physical contact or anything) with his mikestand! Christ on a spoon! It’s mild chaos for a while, ’til poor old James manages to dismantle his entire monitor/effects/guitar/mic setup and storms off in what, if he wasn’t so hard and cool, would obviously be termed “a huff”.
Hmm. Such is life. But the rest of the set… boy, does it BANG. And ROCK. And many other terms I really shouldn’t be seen dead using since I was about 14. But hey, it just did. You got a problem with that? Oh… and I forgot to mention… this “LightWave” (is that what it’s called?) thingy he was using; it’s the gadget that put the mental in experimental. (Yeah, old joke, but you can fuck off.) 2nd Gen? Long may he live to frighten Indie kids everywhere. (And please, God, may he not have to next time? I mean, like, there’s enough people that wanna hear this stuff without foisting it on people who just don’t get it cos it’s not four white geezers with guitars?… Can’t something be arranged?)
-Deuteronemu 90210 and the temple of doom-
