OFF: Judge Trev on Cosmic Puffin bill

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Mon, Apr 06, 2009 at 09:32:41PM +0100, trev typed out:
> Judge Trev, the legendary Inner City Unit guitarist, has now been added to 
> the bill of the Cosmic Puffin festival, Essex, this week-end.
> 
> http://www.cosmicpuffin.co.uk
> 
> He will be playing with his acoustic duo Trev and Kev, opening Sunday's 
> events.

	That would be the perfect cue for a review, really, wouldn't it? After all if I don't do one, Trev will set Mike on me for
using second-hand vinyl mailers...

	Mersea Island is a lovely little place, about three miles of flat land linked only by a tidal causeway to the rest of Essex. 
However, my companion and I didn't really see this till Saturday morning of a festival that started Friday night, because a twenty-
minute delay at the point of departure turned into an hour's delay at the station turned into a two-hour one at the mercy of First 
buses and, to cut a long story short, we arrived in the dark, on foot, much to the surprise of the organisers who seemed (odd for 
hippies) to expect everyone to come in by car. Or at least by van. Anyway, there we were, having followed the sound of music down the 
unlit road, and once we had the tent out and being set up I recognised `Ejection'. It turned out to be The Starfighters doing it, and 
although I never actually *saw* them I think they won the title of best Hawkwind covers band playing the festival, and there was 
actually a lot of competition for this. I would not see Xenon Codex or Assassins of Silence again, in fact I avoided them this time 
too, but The Starfighters sound like a tight band having fun with songs they love, and would be worth a look if you're feeling short 
of Hawkness and they're down your way.

	By the time we actually got to the place where the bands were however the Starfighters had disappeared, and a very lively 
groove was being kicked up. I ran into Kozmik Ken outside the tent and after some catching-up he let slip that the band in question 
was House of Thandoy, Mike Howlett's current outfit, so I dashed in to see, and they were being very good indeed. Basil Brooks on 
synth added more to the look than the sound a lot of the time, but Mike's bass never stopped its stuttery Primus-like urgency, and the 
guitarist several times locked in step with him in really quite complex patterns while the drummer was just enjoying everything. As I 
was just saying about Zone Six elsewhere, this is a jamband that can recover when something runs out of speed, and I was very glad to 
have caught them even for only part of a set.

	The pattern of things was that there was a hall inside the place, which was notionally sound-proofed, and there the organisers 
had a late music license and they played till two or so; outside there was a much larger marquee where they had an eleven o'clock 
curfew. The site was busy enough but all weekend I never saw that marquee full, and the PA had trouble making it sound nice when there 
weren't people to fill the room. It must have echoed something awful as well. The quiet acts had a better time of it than the loud 
ones, but the loud ones all sounded a bit compressed, as if only the mid-range was really delivering any punch. Sound inside the hall 
was fine but sadly the bands in there weren't usually the ones I wanted to see. In the marquee, also, except with the very quietest 
acts the soundman had to turn up the vocals with every single band. It would usually take him a song and a half to make them audible, 
and some people might have realised this was a problem with the rig and compensated. As it was no band really got a strong start 
because of this dozy response to the acoustics. I'm sure it's not easy but it annoys me to see bands I care about doing their best and 
not being able to reach anyone because someone else messed up.

	Now I've realised in trying to put this together that I can no longer remember what bands played in what order, and there was 
never anything as helpful as a running order on the web (my gods the website's useless. Colourful, but useless) so I will just have to 
give you highlights as they occur to me. Given that, I may as well make Trev happy for a minute by remembering that either on the 
Saturday or the Sunday, after almost no or only some sleep respectfully, I still made it out of bed to go and see Trev and Kev first 
thing. Trev had warned me to expect `comedy', but aside from the essential comedy involved in trying to play punk songs on an 
acoustic--well, I say `trying' but that implies he didn't manage, whereas he did and it was good--the main comedy dynamic here appears 
to be that Trev tries to play some songs, and Kev tries to stop him by insulting him. Insults are returned, Trev starts playing and 
then Kev decides he may as well join in either on backing vocals, harmonica or noise-box. There was also a genuine synth player very 
quietly contributing to some numbers but he seemed to get fed up with Kev and give up halfway through. Kev also seemed to give up 
halfway through, and by the end was trying to do all his accompaniment using one key. "All Trev's songs sound the same," he said, 
"I bet this note'll fit right in." It actually did, as well... Anyway, though it may not sound it, it was fun, and once you've woken 
up to the sounds of `Watching the Grass Grow' on an acoustic, you're probably well prepared for some light-hearted backchat and 
musical irreverence. Other songs that got the treatment were `Folsom Prison Blues', `Ghost Riders in the Sky', and a version of 
'Master of the Universe' mashed up with a Madonna song whose name I've already forgotten. Trust me, it needed doing. There were lots 
more but being forced to recall Kev's beard has thrown me off the track. It all only holds up because Trev can (a) play most songs at 
the drop of a hat and (b) is used to playing with people who can't play the ones they know however many hats you drop, but given those 
two facts, it was a good way to start the day.

	I'm sure Nukli weren't next, but they weren't far off it, and they were certainly notable. I remember Nukli from the days of 
Delerium Records as one of the legendary festi bands Richard Allen basically pursued around the country until they agreed to give him 
an album. He must have found this easier with Nukli than with Omnia Opera because Nukli don't seem to have stopped for very long, 
ever, and of the bands I saw I reckon Nukli would have to be the best in terms of what they were able to play and how much they seemed 
to enjoy doing so. The only one I knew, `Inner Days' from the Delerium sampler, sounded a bit odd without the sound effects, but I'd 
never really thought before that actually it's a fairly complex piece of music with lots of different parts and they just played it 
through as if it was easy and obvious good fun to jump around like that. Playing as a three-piece, with a drummer (trading under the 
name of Peter Out) who would have won any guess-the-oldest-geezer-on-the-site competition but played like it was all in an afternoon's 
workout, guitarist/keyboardist/flautist-and-I'm-pretty-sure-he-played-other-things-too singing (and he would have won the *hairiest* 
geezer competition), and a bassist, all just having a good time playing very proggy space-rock at a fair old lick. In sum, I 
would say they are worth catching. If they'd been in a dark club with lights and a full-time synthist they'd be a spectacle and a 
half, but as it was they came over like jazz-prog workmen who loved their job. If you don't know their stuff think, a lighter jazzier 
Nektar with more aliens and hippy cliches. Another thing I'd say in their favour is that whereas most other bands came and went on the 
day they were playing or else sprawled around smoking and chie-iking the two Nukli stringsmen were in every audience I formed part of 
over the festival, anxious to see what everyone else was up to and dancing where appropriate. They did feel like the festival's 
resident band by the end.

	Nukli mainly made it through the lame sound OK though I suspect they'd usually have a bit more meat to their riffs. Bruise 
on the other hand suffered somewhat. I became a Bruise convert the first time I saw them about this time last year, and since then 
I've seen them a few times and know they can have better gigs than they got this time. In part this was because what is sometimes a 
two-piece of singer-guitarist and drummer this time had their bassist along, thinking I guess to fill more outdoor space but actually 
only slowing themselves down and making what should have been an electric performance slightly flat of batteries. Isobel's voice 
wasn't quite there even once it was at full volume, just the edges bleeding off into the tinny PA, her guitar couldn't fill the 
whole tent with what it was playing through, and the rhythm section seemed to have both slowed down for each other. My companion liked 
them but I wished they'd had a better chance at it.

	Who else? On the Saturday, playing inside, were a band of whom I knew nothing called Grooveweird whom I would cheerfully see 
again, heavy dubby trance type rhythms fronted by a girl who played a variety of wind instruments without much effect or imagination 
but who thankfully couldn't spoil her fearsomely tight band who were the most danceable thing I heard all weekend. Show-off guitarist 
and mad synths an added bonus. I only caught the end of their set and wished it had been more. They were followed by a band whose name 
I now forget, but who had John Egan from the Ozrics on wind instruments. Jon's biggest features with the Ozrics were never being close 
enough to the mike to be heard, dancing like a whirling dervish and seeing things in the rafters, and wearing the most egregious 
colourful kaftans known to man. Unfortunately for this band he'd only retained the first of these skills, and so he didn't add much to 
a rather underinspired trance-dub sort of outfit who just didn't have the muscle of the band they'd followed. On the Sunday evening 
the inside also played host to a band called Surfquake, including a keyboardist whom they insisted was called Hannah Lulu, and they 
were a complete misfit with the rest of the festival but in a great, coordinated-wavy-shirt, trad surf kind of way. They were second 
most danceable and no mistake. And late on the Saturday night, after retiring shattered to the tent, there were two successive bands 
who made me nearly get up again to go and dance, one more of the "banging choonz" persuasion and one proper festi with psych guitar 
over the beat, but I was too tired to actually get up, and there is no running order on the website, so I'm afraid I don't know who 
they were. Trev, did anyone give *you* a running order you could check against?

	I'm sure I'm doing some bands a terrible injustice by not remembering them, but this is long enough already and the only other 
one I can recall straight away is Litmus. Litmus arrived and I found them in the middle of being accused of being uniformly addicted 
to Sudafed by a certain Judge Trev character. Given that Martin was ill, and not for the first time in their performing career either, 
I could understand it as a precaution but it seems unlikely... So when they played it was with one vocalist, because Martin could 
stand, play bass and croak greetings but he certainly couldn't sing. That might have worked if Simon had been able to cover some of 
his vocal parts, or Marek had picked up some extra, but they only sang their own lines which left a number of the songs basically only 
three-quarters there. Given that a lot of Litmus's style is in shouted chorals, having the strongest vocalist unable to sing, combined 
with a band too polyphonic and loud for the ratty PA to cope with, made them sound much too much as if they had no ideas and were just 
going to do sterile jamming all night. And to be fair, they did play for, what, forty-five minutes to an hour and did six songs or 
maybe seven, one of which was only three minutes long (but by far the best). That's a lot of space to fill and it's hard for some of 
it not to be, well, filler. I'm growing fonder of the new material and thought it came over as well as the old, but that may have been 
partly because, down at the front throwing myself around to the still-undeniable punch of the rhythm section, I was shouting words 
that fitted the missing vocals so loud I couldn't necessarily tell what wasn't there. If they'd done `Right Stuff' I seriously would 
have asked to be let sing it. But they didn't, so everybody was saved. (N. B. never actually let me do this, anyone. I can never 
remember how many times `My nerves are made of steel...' goes round.) Nonetheless, this was not a good day for Litmus; the poor sound 
and the ill co-frontman sapped them of definition and variation and without the vocal volume there wasn't really enough attack to 
survive. Rotten luck for them but I wonder if more and shorter songs would have worked better than hoping to get by on jamming, even 
here. This audience didn't really get to see what the band can do. However, I will observe that the new keyboardist is still a top 
choice, and managing to lever himself into the occasional exclusion triangle that arises in the breaks between drums-guitar-bass with 
interesting and *musical* extra parts; he is able to join in the jams, in fact, but here the sound rather damped the effect of that. 
Oh well. Better luck next week I hope!

	If I've missed anyone that Trev thinks desrves a write-up too, or a different one, well, he can write too dammit, I've seen 
it. Over to you yer 'Onner, yours,
				   Jon

ObCD: Comets on Fire - _Avatar_
-- 
"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