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

[Colin J Allen]

The ? was Earthbound.

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 23:30:59 +0100, Jonathan Jarrett
<jjarrett at CHIARK.GREENEND.ORG.UK> wrote:

>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
>        --------------------------------------------------------
>  "The large print giveth and the small print taketh away." (Tom Waits)