12 Bar Schmooze

Friday 15th February DAVID CRONENBERG’S WIFE + MR DUKE + J.HERZFELD & HOOVERVILLE + EXTRADITION ORDER + MIDNIGHT EXPRESSO + TIM TOMLINSON + LUCY’S DIARY + POPPY + SHIT + STAGE SAGES
£6
AntiFolk UK Winter FestivalHosted by Filthy Pedro, Richard Tyrone Jones & Tom Mayne.
Being the drummer in a band is never an easy task. The stigma attached to the role can be tough to weather, even in the most celebrated of bands. Everybody knows that Keith Moon and John Bonham turned to drink merely as a refuge from the endless torment of generic drummer jokes, and we know what happened to them. I mean, these guys were in two of the greatest bands of all time, what about those drummers in far lesser bands. I mean, imagine being the stand-in drummer in a really SHIT band, possibly playing extremely low down the bill at one of the tiniest venues in Central London, and then being told on arrival that you still have to BUILD the drum kit... It's enough to make the poor guy inclined to drink half a crate of Strongbow and take to the stage armed with a hammer. Trust me, I've seen it happen. Last Friday night actually, and all in aid of something it's exponents call AntiFolk. Indeed, most of the paying attendees at the gig probably missed the act of aggravated 'drumicide' seen during the last 'song' by the punk/folk trio SHIT, such was the size of the evening's bill. 10 bands, some gathered from as far away as Bournemouth and Cardiff, graced the stage of London's intimate but sleazily classy 12 Bar venue. All launching themselves into their 20 minute to half-hour sets with equal measures of passion and bloody mindedness, whether it was the acoustic pop/proto-folk of the lone Poppy and her songs of fishing and everyday chores, or the elegantly PJ Harvey-esque Lucy's Diary, the modest promises of Filthy Pedro's 2008 AntiFolk UK Winter Festival were easily kept and for the most part well exceeded. Drenched in an alcohol and 'God-Knows-What-Else' atmosphere, the venue's balcony seemed to almost audibly groan under the strain of dancing revellers as the floor space was quickly filled and the drinks began to flow a little more freely. So freely in fact that as much as your humble music reviewer would love to tell you how good the last couple of bands were, those 12 cans of cider eventually proved quite a barrier to objective rock journalism, and reduced anything the wrong side of Lucy Joplin's leather knee-highs to nothing but a sonic whirlwind of (ironically) bad poetry and brutalised acoustic guitar thrashing nonsense... So yeah, all in all, a fucking good night out. I say “Bring on the Spring Festival you pussies!!!”