Home | About | Live | CDs / Vinyl / Downloads | Interviews | Photos | Archive | Links
Email | LiveJournal | MySpace | Last FM

OK, here's a challenge for you. Define punk in - oh, I dunno, 25 words or less. Betcha can't. Me, I wouldn't even try. Because the days when you could nail punk down to a certain sound or style (or even hairstyle) have gone, and that's no bad thing. Diversity has kicked in with a vengeance, and that's fine by me, since that was always the whole point of punk. I remember a time - not so many years back - when punk bands seemed to be degenerating into a pile of identikit Exploitedalikes, but that was never the way it was meant to be. But now, it's all over the shop again, which is much more like it. Tonight we have a chance to dip into the punk pool, and see what strange creatures we fish out. Tonight: four bands, without much in common except an attitude and an aptitude for kicking up a racket.

vvvvvv

The Computers might have a name that makes you think of electronics, but in fact the combo turns out to be a kind of bashed-up garage band version of Devo, all uniform whiteness and geek spex. The music is a gleefully trashy thrash, fast and catchy and sixties-eighties weird, like someone's put early XTC in a mincer with The Count Five. The vocalist exchanges cheery banter with the audience between songs, and adopts a fearsome shriek during them. Rough, ready, and rather fun.

ccccc

If Cooter, the garage mechanic from The Dukes Of Hazzard (c'mon, you remember Cooter!) ever formed a band, I dare say it would turn out something like Scourge Of River City. A purposeful bunch of gents, all lumberjack shirts and denim, they look like the blokes in the Jack Daniels adverts: no-shit American working guys ready to chug-a-lug a couple beers and get busy with the rockin'. It is, therefore, a slight surprise that the band actually hails from London, and in spite of the stand-up bass dominating the stage, Scourge Of River City don't do psychobilly. Instead, the band delivers a tight package of abrasive alternorock in which the dunka-dunka-dunka of the bass sounds downright incongruous, matched as it is with a wall of rock guitar and ripped-up rock vocals. Very Foo Fighters, in a way, and while I can't quite decide if the band's mash-up of traditional rockabilly elements with a more contemporary rock sound entirely hangs together, it's a bold move and a musical collision that might just work in the end, even if I'm not quite convinced that it works now.

Love and a .45 have been on tour. That's probably a superfluous detail, because unless you're specifically informed otherwise, you can take it as a given that Love and a .45 are always on tour. This band spends half it's life on the gig circuit, and they're right to do so, because even - no, especially - in these days of instant downloads and all-pervasive media, any band that can kick it on stage will ultimately make an impact. Love and a .45 make an impact, all right. They hit the stage with a blam, and it's fast and furious from the starting line. In fact, the band seem to be playing everything at 300mph - 'Lights On The Water' slams past like a Eurostar - which is probably a side effect of all that touring. As the gigs rack up, everything starts speeding up. This means the detail in the songs tends to vanish in the blur of sheer velocity. That's a slight shame, because Love ands a .45 do write some nifty pop-punk anthems with all that songwriting stuff - you know, catchy choruses, hooks that lodge in your brain - well to the fore. Hear 'em and love 'em, but at warp speed it all gets a bit indistinct. Fortunately, the band's sound, a heady mix of L7 and X-Ray Spex, is in full effect, and vocalist Kate Moritz is a human hand grenade of energy, bouncing off the walls as she rips out the lyrics. I say this: Love and a .45 stand as one of the best UK punk bands around at present, and with plenty of potential to make it beyond the punk scene, too. Just...pace it a bit, OK, guys?

Strange though it may seem, psychobilly - a music that originally crawled out of a car crash between American rockabilly and British punk - is big news all over Europe. As if to prove this, here come The Peacocks, all the way from that hot-bed of rockin' culture - Switzerland. On the face of it a standard psychobilly trio - drums, slap bass, Gibson Les Paul - The Peacocks in fact cook up a hot bowl of punk 'n' roll soup. The three members of the band, dressed in minimalist monochrome, swing into ther songs with the verve of vintage Clash - and that's probably not such a bad comparison, now I think of it. There's even something distinctly Strummer-esque about the way the vocalist rasps out the words, leaning in to the microphone as if desperate to impress on us the urgency of it all. It's punk, but not necessarily as we've known it. What the hell, it's rock 'n' roll. Maybe that's the only description we need.

Essential links: The Peacocks: Website | MySpace Love and a .45: MySpace Scourge Of River City: Website | MySpace The Computers: MySpace

  Page credits: Review, photos and construction by Michael Johnson.
Nemesis logo by Antony Johnston, Red N version by Mark Rimmell.