HW: Litmus Gig

[Jon Jarrett]

On Sat, 16 Apr 2005, Colin J Allen wrote:

> Just a reminder that Litmus are playing at the Standard Music Venue in
> Walthamstow tomorrow (Sunday) night as support to the David Cross band, who
> are using the gig as a warm-up before embarking on a Japanese tour. Litmus
> are due on stage about 20:00.

        And I was there, not at my sharpest either after a week of
insufficient sleep and various griefs, but I had a thoroughly good
time. Some hastily-typed up thoughts:

        After getting some food, I still had twenty minutes or so to
wait for the doors to open, this eventually happening fifteen minutes or
so after Litmus's advertised start time. Hmph. Eventually however, they
opened up and in I went to find Litmus, setting up. They were as it turned
out bloody ace, "making even the shattered and moody me dance as best I
could (which was really not very well, as in I kept nearly falling over),
but the set was quite short. I had a long chat with Martin afterwards in
which I only very narrowly escaped telling him far more about me than he
probably wants to know, and learnt a lot of things I didn't believe about
Electric Wizard. I also bought a Litmus t-shirt so that's OK. Simon seems
to have added a load of extra tricks to his guitar repertoire. Some
reminded me lots of Ed Wynne, some vaguely of Dave Brock, but many seemed
original. Impressive and noisy stuff. He gets better all the time. He and
Martin were a bit ragged of voice I thought, or perhaps the mix was unkind
to them; Martin thought it was probably actually being kind as he wasn't
on form. But he also thought that it wasn't very tight, but that what they
might have lacked in tightness they made up in brutality; I really only
noticed the upside of that particular exchange if so, good to see them so
full-on after so long being unable to make the gigs. Lots of
applause: Martin saying `Bloody hell, anyone'd think you came to see
us' getting even more as I'm sure he expected.

        "They were supporting the David Cross Band, which on due
inspection appears to be a young band gathered around the man who played
violin on King Crimson's _Larks Tongues in Aspic_. He himself was very
good, if somewhat damaged in my estimation by the same thing that every
rock violinist except Simon House is, to wit that he wasn't Simon House,
but you could usually hardly hear him when the band was going, and they
had a fat widdly guitarist who thought too much of himself, a drummer who
was a fabulous timekeeper, in as much as he could keep times I couldn't
count and still make it sound like he was really playing uninteresting 4:4
(I couldn't figure out how he did this) and a bass-player who was very
good but again, just not on fire. Also a mostly redundant keyboardist and
a singer whose bottom range was shaky but who was otherwise very good,
Unfortunately the words of their own stuff were lousy, and by far the best
thing they did, I think not just because I knew it, was a very long and
feeling-shot dual cover of Crimson's `Exiles' and `Talking Drum'. I felt
rather hypocritical, because I'd assumed they'd be little more than a
tribute act and here they were doing for the most part their own new
stuff, but I was rather wishing they wouldn't. In `Talking Drum' the
drummer managed to break his snare, and they did a three-piece song while
he wandered around back-stage plainly having a fag instead of fixing the
one that Litmus's drummer went and got out of the van for him. As they
finished that I wandered away, wishing that my bed wasn't still an
hour plus's journey away."

        Litmus set-list was:

Intro [somewhere between `Erpriff' and `Stonehenge Decoded' I thought]
Infinity Drive
Dreams of Space
Destroy the Mothership
Tempest [I think; I never really got to grips with this number but I'm
        sure it had developed some new bits since last I saw it, new vocal
        sections in the break mainly--I'm still not sure this is as
        successful as some other new or indeed some old stuff]
Under the Sign
        *
Twinstar

        Yours,
               Jonathan

--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)