I saw Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine live for the first time in the autumn of 1993.  It was on the ‘Post Historic Monsters Tour’ – the album had only just been released and the single ‘Lean On Me (I Won’t Fall Over)’ had cracked the top forty.  It was a special night – being my first ever gig – but aside from a handful of tunes (including the awesome ‘Say It With Flowers’), I couldn’t tell you what they played.  The adrenaline was pumping so hard, they could have played anything at all and I would have gone home smiling.  I have vivid memories of the end of the night, however, which involved my mate falling off a kerb, into the front of our car and throwing a kebab all over my lap and the passenger’s seat.  [With regard to that night’s Carter USM setlist, I’ve actually asked Jim Bob and Fruitbat what was included, and in the days of handwritten setlists and no internet archiving, they can’t remember either...]

Over the following two years, I saw the band another three times – including the short ‘Worry Bomb’ in-store launch gig in a Virgin Megastore, London on 6/2/95 – each time as good as the first, two of those with the brilliant Salad in support.  There were opportunities to catch them a couple more times before their breakup in 1997, but there were other gigs which got in the way – and truthfully, things were never quite the same during the band’s twilight years – especially once they’d signed to Cooking Vinyl, enlisted a bassist and keyboard player and become a “proper” band.

Following various individual projects, Jim Bob and Fruitbat reunited as Certer USM in 2007. Sporadic gigging ensued.  I missed a supposedly storming set at The Levellers’ curated Beautiful Days Festival in 2011 and two shows at Brixton Academy in 2010/11, so when Carter USM announced a return to Brixton for the end of 2012, I wasn’t going to miss them yet again…

On arrival at the venue, one of the security guards told me she had been working at Carter USM’s Brixton gig a year previously and it had been fantastic – one of the most fun gigs she’d ever worked through.  It was great to be hear enthusiasm from somebody unbiased – somebody without the rosy glow of nostalgia that often colours events such as this.  The fun didn’t kick in instantly however: first we had to endure Cud, a 90s indie band who remain largely forgotten.  Enjoyed by six or seven people bouncing at the front, their tunes barely rose beyond bog-standard indie sturm and drang, while bespectacled frontman Carl Puttnam wailed tunelessly while occasionally wiggling his tartan-clad arse in an embarrassing fashion.  It’s painfully obvious why Cud never really made the big time back in the day: they have a great bassist, but that’s it.  90s cult heroes Ned’s Atomic Dustbin were a very welcome addition to the bill and were enjoyed by many as they ploughed through 45 minutes of solid material – including hits ‘Kill Your Television’ and ‘Not Sleeping Around’ – so it wasn’t too long before the sour memories of Cud faded.

Watching the audience that filled the venue prior to Carter’s appearance, the older, fatter and largely male crowd seemed to be made up of blokes whose wives had let them off the lead for a night.  I’m also acutely aware of the passing years, noting that this particular occasion comes seventeen years since I last witnessed Jim Bob and Fruitbat play a full gig.  Once the duo appear on stage however, (to the usual barrage of “You fat bastard!” chants), it’s clear that the passing years have been kinder to these two musicians than it has to many of us.  Fruitbat looks about the same as he always did, while Jim Bob, rather perversely, has more hair than during Carter’s classic years – and more than lots of their audience ever will again.

The tunes are as vibrant as ever though, and at this show, the opening barrage of ‘Surfin’ USM’, ‘My Second To Last Will & Testament’, ‘Midnight On The Murder Mile’ and ‘Say It With Flowers’ is just about as intense as any show I’d previously seen them play…or perhaps any show they’ve played.  The two men look slightly lost on the largish stage at the Brixton Academy and there’s no visual to speak of for the most part, but it’s quickly clear that this show is more about interaction between band and audience than any flash musicianship or visual gimmickry. With nothing to prove, nothing new to promote and no record company breathing down their necks, Carter are left to concentrate on the evening’s main agenda: ensuring everyone has a great time.

Throughout the first forty five minutes there was barely time to breathe, let alone take stock of the setlist.  Having never seen it played in the Carter live set previously, the inclusion of Pet Shop Boys’ ‘Rent’ marked the beginning of a musical lull, followed as it was by ‘Falling On A Bruise’ (it’s moodiness certainly not well suited to mid set) and a slightly wobbly ‘While You Were Out’.   From then on – and pretty much throughout the last fifty minutes, both band and audience were on fire, tearing through other tunes from ’30 Something’ (three songs short of an entire outing tonight) alongside choice cuts from ‘1992’ and ‘101 Damnations’.  Perhaps the most unexpected were renditions of ‘Let’s Get Tattoos’ and ‘Glam Rock Cops’ – both from the beginning of Carter’s downhill slide – and a cover of Inspiral Carpets’ ‘This Is How It Feels’ (featuring a guest spot from Tom Hingley!).  Maybe the sagging mood midway was included on purpose, in order for the band and audience to re-charge themselves, but it would have been nice if the six minutes of ‘Falling On A Bruise’ were replaced with the sadly missed ‘Lenny & Terence’ and ‘Stuff The Jubilee (1977)’, but you can’t have everything.  It was a near perfect set after all.

Briefly, those intervening seventeen years since I last saw Carter USM could have been condensed into a much shorter time span.  Living in the moment, for those two hours in Carter USM’s presence, nostalgia never felt so good.  It would have been great if my mate who shared a couple of those past gigs had been there too to make the experience complete, but hey…at least I got home without smelling of doner meat.

Novemeber 2012

For the months leading up to its one off London performance, Devin Townsend promised big things of the “Retinal Circus”. The near three hour career retrospective was said to contain various theatrical elements and a full choir – and perhaps more importantly – a selection of special guests, but in all seriousness, those of us who’d had tickets for a year prior to the event didn’t really know what would happen. Devin has always been unpredictable: a trip into his imagination could have included all of those things; it could have just as easily included a whole world of other bizarreness. Whatever, it was going to be special.

Since it is possible to view about 80% of the surroundings from the front of the stalls in London’s Roundhouse, we got a great view of activities on and off stage. Perhaps the oddest thing of all about The Retinal Circus was not the onstage antics, but the audience’s reaction. Partly due to there being so much to take in at any one time, the audience – at least for the most part – seemed far more subdued than at any of Townsend’s prior gigs. There were times when those standing at stage right became involved in the usual levels of moshing and lurching back and forth, but even during the more aggressive parts of the show’s first half, those below us at stage left stayed almost stationary. It was as if they were not actually participants at a rock gig, but just captivated by the whole thing as a theatrical performance. In the balconies, too, gig style atmospheres seemed less obvious…but there was little doubt as to whether everybody within the sold out 3,300 capacity venue was having a good time.

In terms of theatrics, the Retinal Circus was indeed a cavalcade of oddity, mixing carnival and sci-fi elements with themes of spirituality, dual personalities and eventual peace. Although the performance was supposedly taking place within the dream states of “Harold” – the show’s central character – was a thinly disguised plot to explore the various moods of Townsend himself over the years, something mocked with self-depreciating humour by Townsend himself and the shows narrator – Steve Vai, via an often badly synched video link – throughout the performance.

With a cast of various actors, the show initially seemed to be about evolution – cat costumed dancers, apes and a selection of tunes from 2012’s excellent ‘Epicloud’, start things off excellently, with Dev sounding great whilst complimented by regular collaborator Anneke Van Giesburgen. This relatively straightforward concept was quickly sidelined in favour of sci-fi and playing to into the hands of fan-favourite Ziltoid The Omniscient, a vulgar power-hungry extra terrestrial being. You can do anything with a dream state after all…giving Townsend a blank canvas for such a non-linear narrative. Naturally, this section involved alien reproductive organs, a green foetus and an ensuing war. Rather silly visuals did not detract from excellent performances of ‘Planet Smasher’ (including guest vocals by a face painted metal growler – reportedly journalist and Linkin Park hater, Dom Lawson) and a crushing ‘War’, involving angle grinders, huge smoke guns and women wearing gas masks and WWI Tommy Atkins helmets. In short, Ziltoid’s vulgarity aside, if this is why you came to experience the Retinal Circus, there was plenty of fun to be had. Actually, even with the often over-rated Ziltoid’s input, this was quite awesome. Finishing off the first act, rousing performances of ‘Addicted!’, ‘Color Your World’ and ‘The Greys’ did not disappoint, while visually, acrobats climbed material ropes and Dev was eventually dragged off-stage himself by semi-threatening gargoyles. You don’t get that at a Defiled show.

In the show’s second half, those who love Devin’s softer side were treated to excellent renditions of ‘Hyperdrive’ and ‘Ih-Ah’ in an attempt to bring Harold out of his dream state, before a huge throwback from the past…a revisitation of ‘Detox’ from Strapping Young Lad’s ‘City’, conceptually thrown into the mix after bring goaded by Steve Vai’s skull. Even after the appearance of SYL’s Jed Simon on stage, it seemed unnatural witnessing Townsend playing Strapping Young Lad material after so long. He’s moved on, both musically and emotionally and it shows: he’s got a family and, at the time of this big performance, is at peace with himself. While most of the audience went insane for rare outings of both this (and, slightly later) ‘SYL’s ‘Love’, these exteme metal numbers seemed shoe-horned in as lip service to the band that put Townsend on the map. Just as he feels no real connection to his blatantly angry past any more, surely half of his fan base who get stupidly excited at seeing him thrash out some angry sentiments should have moved on too? Seemingly not, since the (stage right) half of the audience erupted into a full on war zone of bodies within seconds, coaxing out (pretty much) the evening’s only crowd surfers. Enjoyable to see briefly, but Townsend is far more complex a composer, arranger and musician since his dark and angry SYL days. It’s a shame some of his audience still only appear to want flat out aggression from him. Maybe they have unresolved issues.

Rounding out the evening, Devin discussed the demons within his head with himself on a video screen (a nod to Townsend’s own struggles with bi-polarity) and things wound down nicely with the dumb singalong ‘Bend It Like Bender’, ‘Grace’ and – best of all – ‘Life’. The latter, one of the greatest songs within Townsend’s huge catalogue (from ‘Ocean Machine: Biomech’, a prog masterpiece), captures the musician’s most melodic side; its message of inner peace represented on stage by a tree.

Aside from a lack of ‘Ocean Machine’ material, the night was amazing. It was a performance worthy of ending a career on a high. For Townsend, meanwhile, this Circus was not the literal end – just a means of taking stock of his achievements thus far. While no material from Steve Vai’s own ‘Sex & Religion’ appeared and there was no mention of Dev’s brief tenure with The Wildhearts, all the performers – musical and theatrical – gave everything they had to give and the result was something the audience will remember for a long time. In terms of narrative, Roger Waters can probably rest easy, but one thing is certain: at the end of 2012, Devin Townsend is as close to a genius as anyone working within the boundaries of rock and metal gets.

October 2012

NOFX have become somewhat of a punk rock institution and their frontman Fat Mike a hero.  As the founder of Fat Wreck Chords – home to countless fantastic punk bands – and writer of many great songs, his reputation places him in extremely high regard in the minds of a generation of punk fans.

In 2010, Fat Mike made a solo appearance at the SXSW Festival.  Dressed as Cokie, a sad clown, he spent most of his set recounting detailed tales from his past.  He subjected his audience to stories of how he watched a loved one die, of how a friend committed suicide and he and friends divvied up the departed’s record collection, of frankly disturbing sexual acts and how he’d seen a girl being assaulted at a show in the early 80s.  The event has been discussed many times online since, with one reviewer claiming the event had left him “shaken afterward”.  While some younger fans have hailed this car-crash as “totally punk”, it is obvious to those with any sense, that Fat Mike Burkett was having anything but fun: that set acting as therapy for some deeply scarring emotional issues.

On Sunday 17^th June 2012 at approximately 9:20 PM (following enjoyable sets from Margate, Snuff and Less Than Jake), NOFX unceremoniously take their place on the stage at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire.  Their arrival is so disorganised that they gather only a muted response from the crowd, as if another set of roadies have shuffled on for a last minute tune-up.  It’s the last night of the tour and Burkett wanders toward mid-stage – his mohawk flopping – and picks up his bass.    Following a bit of witless banter, the band launch into their opening song and the audience becomes a mass of heaving bodies and plastic glasses begin to fly.

A couple of songs in, the between song chat takes a turn for the worse.  Burkett makes childish remarks about audience members being gay (something of a recurring and quickly tiresome theme).  “Your country is built on racism”, he quips a little later, leading to lots of other remarks about race.  He’s not actually being racist, of course; his approach of making fun of ethnic minorities involves a broad enough range of nationalities over the course of an hour, suggesting that, in his eyes, everyone is equal and thus fair game.   Fair game, maybe, but it does not really pass as humour.  In contrast with Snuff’s set, where both band and audience appeared to be having a great time (and where all humour was generally directed at nobody and nothing specific, aside from the band themselves), as things progress, it’s now only the audience who appear to be having fun.  NOFX, aside from being physically exhausted, are clearly not enjoying the experience.  They’ve been funny (and had fun) in the past, but now that fun has fizzled.  End of tour tiredness is certainly a factor, but there is a sense that it’s not just tiredness that hinders their performance.

The sad clown make-up is not present, but the doomy spectre of Cokie The Clown still hovers over Burkett, affecting almost everything he says in some small way.  It certainly isn’t as direct as that fateful day at SXSW, but it’s there, and he’s more than going through the motions. He is resenting every second on the stage.  It’s as if he’s not performing because he likes to, or even wants to anymore, but because he has feels that he has to…and he’s bitter.  His snippy attitude is one of a man in self-destruct mode, always picking the fight, as if he wants to be punished for those things he’s been holding in from the past.  Such behaviour is common amongst those who are in some way unhappy, but that sad familiarity doesn’t make it any less hard to watch.  His attitude does not deserve the fan adoration he still commands – and surprisingly still receives – from most of the audience.

Occasionally, a brilliant tune between will be sharp reminder of how fantastic NOFX once were and of how they’re still great musicians. There are spirited renditions of ‘Murder The Government’, ‘It’s My Job To Keep Punk Rock Elite’ and ‘Soul Doubt’.  The superb ‘Eat The Meek’ is also a bright spot, as is a surprise appearance by Frank Turner on a cover of his own ‘Glory Hallelujah’.   But these fantastic moments don’t counterbalance the general air of resentment.  While a huge chunk of the audience are blissfully unaware of any potential depressive issues, for the most part, watching a band slowly bashing another nail into their coffin – with Fat Mike brandishing the metaphorical hammer – proves to be a rather saddening experience.

June 2012