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The Garage, London 11 September 2010
 Reanimated musical corpses aren’t much of a news story these days – after The Velvet Underground and Throbbing Gristle reformations, nothing comes as a surprise. I was shocked then to realise just how stunned I felt to hear that The Pop Group had got back together to allegedly “blow the dust off the old songs and pick up where we left off…” or might it be perhaps to benefit from some of that old “consumer fascism” they railed so strongly against back in the day?
 After three decades of informing people that they were the greatest artistic entity I’d ever encountered, it had never occurred to me that
Continue reading The Pop Group (live) [...]
The Garage, London 18th May 2006
In a Garage not exactly rammed to gills for a sold-out gig, Lightning Bolt – positioned as ever in a corner on the floor instead of taking to the stage – open their set with a looped low fidelity rhythm which soon wavers into loudness sliced by stabs of tuning-up sounds. An emergent chug struggles foal-like into unco-ordinated yet groovesome earshot, and given the amount of time they let the process continue, it’s certainly one way of building up anticipation. Such is Lightning Bolt’s cult status that even a jack plug interjection is greeted with eager yelps from the crowd, so when they actually lurch into a double-tapped frenzy of skronk bass guitar and flailing drums, the tension is pitched towards a cathartic release.
Live or on record, Lightning Bolt’s ethos seems to bo
Continue reading Lightning Bolt (live) [...]
The Garage, London 9 April 2004
It’s good to know Thrash is alive and well and kicking up a stir, and tonight The Garage is graced with a queue down the street and eventually with a venue full of The Kids, Heavy Metal or otherwise, almost visibly churning with excitement at the prospect of a night of speedy percussion and throaty vocals. Ephel Duath provide more of the former than the latter, springing with vigorous post-Primus jazzcore energy. Their sound is taut and polished, ripping out the sixpence-turns at the point where virtuosity and gleeful noise interesct. Whatever they do – and it’s a phenomenon of the style, not really a fault per se – everything sounds progged up and hence more than a little noodly: but the saving grace is that one song is over quickly and another begun
Continue reading The Locust/Beecher/Ephel Duath (live) [...]
 Kosmische Club @ The Garage, London
8 June 2002
Circle look worryingly like they’re going to play pub-Rock covers of Judas Priest – but fortunately nothing could be further from the truth. Finland’s finest space rockers (with the emphasis on the rock) have all the churning drive of Hawkwind at their psychedelic wind-tunnel best, with all the extraneous Blues influences stripped down to the bare rage of fuzz and phaser set to splurge. Other obviously unnecessary reference points might as well include the chug-a-lug intensity of the Butthole Surfers back when they didn’t bother appealing to anyone listening except their own baser selves, and Keiji Haino levitating the Albert Hall from a distance. In other words, they are on a mission to the heart
Continue reading Damo Suzuki Network/Circle (live) [...]
 The Garage, London 7 May 2002
 There’s been a fair amount of good press come Bobby Conn‘s way since he last visited these shores in February. Appreciative album and live reviews in the national papers. A full page photo (wearing a lurid 80′s shellsuit) and enthusiastic write-up from Ted Kessler in the 4th of May edition of the NME. Badly Drawn Boy Damon Gough‘s description of The Golden Age as “the best album he’d heard in a decade,” can’t exactly have hindered the spreading of the Word either, for reasons of his celebrity if nothing else. Then there’s the upcoming show supporting Supergrass at the Royal Festival Hall on the 28th of June as part of David Bowie‘s otherwise appallingly billed Meltdown. All in all, it
Continue reading Bobby Conn (live) [...]
 The Garage, London 18 January 2002
 Not just another of those long-thought forgotten altered-state Pop could-have been idols extracting and revitalising themselves from the Eighties and onto the stage again, Frank Tovey, here backed up by a full band is back. In front of an audience half uncolourful and speckled with piercings in place of acne, and half old enough to have been there the first time Fad Gadget stalked the earth, tonight’s show turns out to be a serious joke on the notion of Electro posturing and Gothic cabaret croons. As a passing stranger at the bar remarks as Tovey manifests in a puffing gout of theatrical smoke, all bowler-hatted and spiney-shirted, “It lives.”
He lives, and is live and lively; the Electro-pop is dark and twisted, and so
Continue reading Fad Gadget (live) [...]
 Kosmische Club The Garage, London 31 May 2001
 Beware all snow leopards; indeed all mammals were at risk of having their asses rocked Thursday at the Kosmische Club‘s presentation of Acid Mothers Temple. Once Southall Riot was done with their opening imitation of all that was Krautrock in a Nineties sort of style, all three chord-led and droney – and most of which I missed – Acid Mothers Temple strolled on, lit up and rawked out. An enthusiastic audience had to have been relieved by the breathing space afforded by the last minute manoeuvre to downstairs at The Garage, knowing that Upstairs would never have accommodated the sweating, grooving, smoking crowd, much less the band’s hair. You would never want to invite this group over for showers,
Continue reading Acid Mothers Temple/Southall Riot (live) [...]
The Garage, London 25th November 2000
 Ahhh, poor Suicide… always just missing the boat but still trying to hitch a ride thirty years after Alan Vega claims to have coined the term “punk”. These guys are getting old now, and I must say I did feel a bit sorry for them tonight, faced with a boring as stiffs crowd and faint memories to go on.
 My sympathy was not needed really after all. Martin Rev and Alan Vega seemed to be having a time of their lives, happy to play about and remain undeterred from their purpose which was to play Rock and Roll. Perhaps they have mellowed; they have definitely dropped the pissed-off attitude. One wonders if the last two years since their most recent
Continue reading Suicide (live) [...]
The Kosmische Club Upstairs at The Garage, London 25th March 2000
When consumer electronics expanded sufficiently to include musical intruments at relatively affordable prices for the average band to use in the Eighties, the result was synth pop, unfortunately with some quite dire results. Then came the Techno revolution, and Sampler-based bedroom cookups, and eventually everyone who once would have formed a Garage band was in on the Electronica act. Now that the original Mini-Moogs and Stylophones, DX7s and SH-1s have become collectors’ items after years on the second-hand shelves at bargain basement prices, their place in the battery of instrumentation available to those who started out as Indie Rock bands (in the loosest possible sense, covering a variety of pleasures and sins) soon eclipsed the treasured varnished sheen of a vintage Fender Jaguar or a Rickenbacker semi-acoustic guitar as
Continue reading Oh (live) [...]
The Garage, London 31st January 2000
It’s been seven years since Matt Johnson released Dusk, the last The The album; and barring the frankly bizarre collection of Hank Williams covers, plus a series of dubious rumours, nobody has heard from him since. Until now. Joining Trent Reznor‘s Nothing label (after Epic refused to release his experimental album, GunSluts) appears to have rejuvenated Johnson, and his triumphant return to the UK stage saw him debut a selection of material from his forthcoming NakedSelf release (GunSluts is to be released later in the year on his own label). And it Rocked.
With a band comprising of an ex-Sly Stone drummer, an ex-Iggy Pop guitarist, and an ex-Frank Sinatra bassist, Johnson appears to have abandoned the rich, dark keyboards of earlier work in favour of a stripped down two guitars, bass and drum
Continue reading The The (live) [...]
The Garage, London 28th November 1999
If a band sounds the same live as they do recorded, it can be a bit disappointing. Too clean, too rehearsed. Seeing Salaryman live at The Garage could easily have been like that, only it never strayed into those well-trodden pedestrian precincts. The only non-perfect things about this show were the lack of audience (Sunday night maybe?) and the less than amazing sound system difficulties. Salaryman themselves were pristine, and beyond that, purely enjoyable. “Thomas Jefferson Airplane” came on massive and Manga, putting me in mind of a fabulous Godzilla style battle waged out aurally between oscillator bass and drums and guitars vs. keyboards. Bass-zilla vs. King Ghidra Electronic perhaps? Of course with special guest Mothra and the crying Godzuki. Add in the pterodactyl screaming flame-throw of Monster Island and this song was far
Continue reading Salaryman (live) [...]
The Garage, London 6th December 1998
There are few enough gigs where all three acts are equally placed in their levels of enthusiasm, energy and sheer in yer face enjoyment, but tonight is one of those nights where the rush of machine noise goes from strength to strength. Bomb 20 is first up, a surprisingly reasonable chap by the name of David Skiba, who faces a rack of electronics and forces unfeasibly pounding thuds, breaks and squirts of distressed kitsch out between his diffident thanks to the cyber-crusty-Techno-head crowd. Not content with the four-square restrictions of Techno, the beat jumps from Drum & Bass depthcharge shudder to clattery rewind with a smidgen of drill on top, but compared to Shizuo‘s set, Bomb 20′s is comparitively conventional, right down to the frighteningly polite “Thank you’s” which he slides in shyly between
Continue reading EC8OR/Shizuo/Bomb 20 (live) [...]
Kosmische The Garage, London 12th September 1998
A legend or two popped into The Garage, held an audience captive for a couple of hours, and it was just as might be expected – half a trip back in time, and half a slice of something timeless. Damo Suzuki nearly three decades on still has the stage presence of the Can days (at least that evident in Peter Pryzgoda‘s Freeconcert film for those who are too young to actually have been there), while Michael Karoli looks better if anything, all razored cheeks and shades – a great imorovement on the regulation Seventies rock-mop he used to sport. But forget the haircuts, remember that this was not a Can reunion (wait for November for that unmissable occasion), but Damo and friends touching down from the wilderness.
With half of Guru Guru
Continue reading Damo Suzuki Network (live) [...]
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