HW: Litmus Dates

[Colin Allen]

See my comments below:

Jonathan Jarrett <jjarrett at CHIARK.GREENEND.ORG.UK> wrote:    On Tue, Oct 09, 2007 at 09:18:38AM +0100, Colin Allen typed out:
> Uber-Space Rockers Litmus have the following dates scheduled:



> 28th October 2007
> The Underworld
> 174 Camden High Street
> London
> NW1 0NE
> (2nd night of the All Hallows Festival with Leafhound, Gentlemans
> Pistols and Earthling Society)



Well, I was there, and with a reasonable head of beer on too and 
so prepared to enjoy many things. All the bands decently represented, 
which was nice; also good to see that Rise Above have belaboured Litmus 
into producing new t-shirt designs.
   
  No, they had not; the t-shirts were the band's idea. 

Earthling Society were first up and opened with a slow jam, 
which may not have been the best way to go about it; Sherman lost 
interest quite rapidly and disappeared to the loo for the rest of their 
set, of which this was about a third. This meant that she missed the 
bits where they actually did something, including the culmination of the 
jam where they'd piled so much in that just shunting that noise about 
began to have an intensity of its own. The second track they did was an 
actual song, and not a bad one even, but the singer can't really hit his 
notes, and their playing is nothing remarkable, and by and large I saw 
nothing in this set that did more than catch my interest.

  I do feel that this is rather unfair on Earthling Society, who are a very good band; this was not an ideal environment for them but their set was both enjoyable and musically of very high quality.  For me, they were probably played the best set on the night.
  
Of an entirely different stamp were Gentleman's Pistols. As they 
were setting up I took stock of the general amount of facial hair, other 
hair, vintage instrumentation and swagger, and was reminded of an 
interview I read once with Mick Farren about the Deviants gig at Hyde 
Park. I can't remember who exactly it was that the Deviants had been 
sandwiched between for that gig, but one of them was the Edgar Broughton 
band, and Mick told of how he'd been unable to convince himself they 
could catch the audience, what with being stuck between one band far 
heavier and another far cleverer. And Paul Rudolph found the point for 
them to stand on by coming to the mic and saying, "Now we're going to 
have some fun". This was what I found myself expecting as the Pistols 
took the stage. I wasn't wrong either. I think a third of the songs were 
about masturbation or other unsavoury sexual practices, the singer 
(whose hair and beard were most outrageous of all) needed to be credited 
for camp as well as guitar, posing and vocals, and they were all 
enjoying themselves hugely playing loud fuzzy rock and roll of a happily 
filthy kind. No-one could accuse them of taking themselves too 
seriously, but you certainly couldn't have accused them of being 
under-rehearsed either; this band is worth seeing. I shall definitely 
hope to catch them again, and I only held off on buying the album 
because it was clear that Sherman was going to and I wanted to save the 
money for a new Litmus t-shirt.

So Litmus had a lot to follow, although I was confident that 
they could manage it. However, I'm not sure they made any converts this 
night in the event. A four-track set, half of which was new and 
unfinished material, and much of which was jamming, would have taken 
over and stolen Earthling Society's thunder with no problem but 
following people who'd been playing short, furious and complete songs, 
Litmus unfortunately looked rather amateur. The known songs were 
`Infinity Drive', which was ugly and brutal but in a good way, and 
has a new break now, and `Under the Sign', which probably jammed for too 
long; I think it's possible that Litmus might benefit from a performance 
rule that says once they drop the ball once in a jam it's time to wrap 
it up and remind the audience who's boss by getting back to the riff. As 
it was it was a long time to wait for the bit where one could dance 
again.

The new stuff had its parts but they were spaced out too far at 
the moment. The worst of it was that during the last track, which was a 
monster in terms of time but only came to a focus for about two minutes, 
I found myself thinking, "Marek [the drummer] is wasted on this", and at 
any other time I wouldn't usually notice him because I'd be 
concentrating on the stringsmen. From this I conclude that Simon, 
especially, but also Martin to a lesser extent, need to come up with 
some new tricks, or perhaps focus on song structure a bit more, or 
mainly, I suspect, finally get a new keyboardist and be prepared to 
endure him or her saying, "guys, guys, this is flaccid spacewasting, we 
can do better than this". It may not always be true but it's a point 
they perhaps need to be readier to hear. So I don't quite know what goes 
on in Litmus camp at this time, but I think it needs some work and 
possibly some help.
   
  Unfortunately, you did not hear the new material as it is supposed to be heard due to the untimely death of Simon's pedal board, which left him playing solely through his amp without any effects whatever.  This was the cause of the somewhat stilted jamming as, to an extent, the songs were no longer really playable.  Due to this, it was a poor set, especially when compared with the recent performance in Brighton supporting Space Ritual.  I suspect that the band are even more disappointed with what happened than you were.

Headliners were Leafhound, of whom I probably should have known. 
They have done a Nektar- or Blue-Cheer-like rejuvenation by recruiting 
one new younger member, but I don't know how much difference this has 
made. The guitarist is the new boy, and definitely had the shred and the 
widdle, a Vai fan I suspect, whilst also being quite ready to hold down 
the riff where necessary, and apart from the fact that he looked too 
damn clean compared to the rest of the band I had no problem with 
considering him part of the deal. And the bassist was fine, the drummer 
and singer both clearly still had what they'd had, or if they didn't, I 
didn't know, not knowing the original. Let me put it this way: if you'd 
only been able to hear them, you wouldn't have known they were an old 
band. What you might have thought, however, is "why is this pub blues 
band headlining in the Underworld?" There was nothing wrong with them 
but they were some way off being special. I guess there were big fans in 
the audience who were pleased to see their favourite tracks actually 
being done right, and I can certainly relate to that from experiences 
with other bands, but I couldn't join them there and there wasn't 
really much for anyone else.

So yes. Earthling Society and Leafhound come in some way behind, 
Litmus suffering creative injuries and scrape a second place; outright 
victory by a long way to Gentleman's Pistols. If we could get them on a 
bill with Gorilla and Drunk Horse the resultant testosterone guitar 
explosion would probably level the venue. Yours,
Jon

-- 
"When fortune wanes, of what assistance are quantities of elephants?"
(Juvaini, Afghan Muslim chronicler, c. 1206)
Jon Jarrett, Fitzwilliam Museum, jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk