OFF: Judge Trev on Cosmic Puffin bill

[trev]

There, I've added all the stuff you left out (in brackets) and a pic of me with the starfighters
trev

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From: "Jonathan Jarrett" <jjarrett at CHIARK.GREENEND.ORG.UK>
Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 9:02 PM
To: <BOC-L at LISTSERV.ISPNETINC.NET>
Subject: Re: OFF: Judge Trev on Cosmic Puffin bill

> 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 http://www.realfestivalmusic.co.uk/jt.html  
(with judge trev) 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 (fat bastard)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 (fat bastard) tries to stop him by insulting him. Insults are returned, Trev starts playing and 
> then Kev (fat bastard)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 (fat bastard) and give up halfway through. Kev (fat bastard) 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 (beautiful stranger). Trust me, it needed doing. There were lots 
> more but being forced to recall Kev's (fat bastards) 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,  (Dream Machine) 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 (boy band) 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 (boy band'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 (boy band); 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
>