The Retro Spankees/Winston Echo/The Bobby McGees/Das Wunderlust/Larry Pickleman
The Free Butt, Brighton

Words meander fitfully. Words leap and laugh around, caustic in their indignation. Faces flurry past, an ice storm of blurred memories and irritating cigarette smoke. I can’t recall the last time I had so much rare fun. I can’t recall the last time I watched four-and-a- half-bands from the front section of the Butt. I can’t recall much, actually – which may account for my continuing enthusiasm. I have few comparison points, little context.

Larry Pickleman transports me back to that squat in New Cross Road where ‘ranting’ poets such as Seething Wells and the (annoying, even then) Ben Elton would hold court, splendid in their sardonic anger. Mr Pickleman draws upon the odd sample of noise, Guinness, a store of stories concerning his three children – mostly along the lines of “Go to school, they say/Or you’ll be a FOOL, they say” and is so ebullient, so good-natured it’s all I can do to stop myself from leaping on stage and joining in as a human fret-box. Guitar bites, like Joe Strummer. Words hurt, like Courtney. “Ah, but you would like it,” the Irishman says afterwards. “You’re an old fucker like me.” True, but he makes me feel young again.

Das Wunderlust leap up and down, up and down, sending out spiteful shreds of emotion and break-up material, arguing vociferously with other Middlesborough sorts in the audience, the keyboard clashing and hiccupping loudly…far more early punk-disco Bis than Help She Can’t Sing, which is a fucking relief: far more Valerie than vanity; not serious enough to merit attention in the ‘proper’ music press doubtless, but again this is a relief. They charm, and smile, and bounce, and swap instruments – or do they? Maybe they just sound like that. Music as comforting and sticky as an ice cream on a hot summer’s day: no, really.

The Bobby McGees leave me flummoxed: a ripped-out tooth necessitated way too much alcohol consumption on the part of Mr McGee himself (smart shoes, suit, beard, strong Glaswegian accent) as he strums his ukulele and mostly tries to rile the audience. His companion (demure, flower-pattern dress, ukulele) looks on disdainful in her punk rock librarian glasses as he takes audience members to task over their Converse footwear – “I’ll get back to you later,” he barks at one: later includes a shoe being hurled on stage in response to a new number called “I Fucking Hate Converse”. The songs are absolutely charming, twee-r than Uncle Twee’s simpering elder brother Joe Twee McTwee Twee Top – ‘Please Don’t Dump Me’ (the title repeated over and over again), ‘No Friends’ (“I’ve got no friends…not one…”). It’s all in the delivery. Simultaneously antagonistic and heartrending and dumb, The Bobby McGees are purest essence of C86, distilled and with a thousand early BMX Bandits bootlegs clutched to their hearts.

Emily claims they’re “too twee”. That would be Emily, twee-est person I know in Brighton saying that. Whoa. Now there’s a compliment.

Winston Echo looks like a very nervous Frank Black, alone up there on stage, frantically strumming away at his acoustic and exhorting us all to shut the fuck up: his nervousness communicates itself as charm. He stops a number, forgets words, starts another, takes requests, sings pitiful and lonely songs about dole life, falls in love with someone on the Bureau de Change desk, hopes they notice him, strums some more, words nearly lost in his earnestness. I’d say he was a nascent English version of Daniel Johnston, if that wasn’t too obvious – or a Noughties Clive Pig.

I love to compare people to Clive Pig, cos no one knows what the fuck I’m on about.

I miss the Retro Spankees, mostly: they seem excellent, they have a song that may or may not be named after a near neighbour of Brighton, they bounce up and down with even more alacrity than Das Wunderlust – but lose points for having fewer female members – and they too have keyboards, and sound like they grew up grooving to the unfettered fun of Bis. They too are similar to Help She Can’t Sing, only THEY’RE FUN. The drummer presses two copies of their album into my hand, the childishly gleeful I Know You Are But What Am I? What, in case I lose the first? I’m most glad he does though, because now I have – to quote Dickon – a secret crush on the fourth trombone. I absolutely fucking LOVE this music, and want all five acts to reprise this entire show, in my front room, six weeks from now, recorded on four-track, no arguing.

And this time, I promise. I’ll pay even fuller attention.

Posted by Everett True on Thursday, February 16th, 2006
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Jens Lekman/Bill Wells/The Legend!/Esio Trot
St Andrew’s Church, Hove

I’ve always seen words in blocks, shapes – not sentences or letters, but blocks, shapes, like patterns coalescing on a chessboard, fluid. I see concerts as birdsong: unfettered, inspiring but oddly limited to the same five or six notes, the same patterns forming and un-forming and reforming. All I seek for are the odd moments of magic – my baby Isaac smiling, innocent of hurt and hatred, smiling with unquestioning love in his eyes; a half-empty church, icy-cold, high arches, low eaves with a few troubadours singing songs of rejection and hope on stage, coloured in by brass and a tinkling keyboard. All I look for are those moments of magic: someone or something slightly askew – the girls on the door selling the most delicious chocolate cake for 50p a slice, or the tea steaming up gratefully in our chapped hands, anything to stave the cold, Jens Lekman with the power suddenly blown out, picking up an acoustic guitar and continuing on anyway to the accompaniment of finger-clicking and a softened saxophone, a teenage girl transported from the mundane, in raptures, twisting and turning through the church aisles with her partner.

On stage myself, with Chris Anderson playing his tinkling Omnichord keyboard, strumming moments of beauty behind my un-amplified voice that takes strange turns and twists soaring up to the rafters as I sing of death and Girls To Share Your Life With, breast feeding and decayed ambition. On stage myself, jacket thrown off, jumper thrown off, because as Jens says when he appears – and does same – it’s the best way to keep warm in a snowstorm, strip naked and huddle up to a companion. Watching from the crowd as Esio Trot charm and beguile, transported back to 1988 and it’s a village hall in Hertford and The McTells and Beat Happening are on stage, and The Legend! plays a set with his electric guitar unplugged, and everything is discordant and jangling, out-of-tune but so mesmerising, Velvet Underground filtered through a secondhand tape-recorder and a collection of Postcard Records. Watching from the crowd as Bill Wells soothes and excites us mightily with his jazz-inflected firestorms, the female brass section from Gothenburg improvising harmony and rhinestones like I’ve continually missed from rock music, Jens playing a bass – a favour that Bill then returns.

Watching from the crowd as Jens sings his own Beat Happening sample; and afterwards, sated by the tea and cake and wonderful chilly atmosphere, we watched Jens Lekman play half-a-dozen songs to half-a-dozen fans (by request) as most folk shuffled out anyway, figuring that concerts really ought to have a proper end, and we discussed Scout Niblett and Television Personalities before braving the bitter storm outside.

Chris Anderson said: “Well, isn’t there something wonderfully English about this whole evening?” and it would be hard to deny him his observation. Fortitude, beauty, village halls, music…sometimes I’m still proud to be living here in Brighton (and Hove actually).

Posted by Everett True on Wednesday, February 15th, 2006
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Polydor have just reissued The Jam’s superlative collection of A-sides, B-sides, rarities and album tracks Snap!, and - I can’t quite believe this myself - I’m excited. Ridiculously so. It went straight on the CD player by my computer, and there it’s staying until I have to leave to go to the dentist about this half a tooth that broke off a few hours ago. The reason it’s so ridiculous that I’m excited is that I already own most of these songs - original seven-inch, original LP, CD reissue, variety of compilations, BBC Sessions, bootlegs, live stuff, box sets, punk compilations - up to a dozen times, but I can’t help myself. I FUCKING LOVE THIS MUSIC! It soundtracked some of my most turbulant, miserable and rewarding times - well I remember hearing that line from ‘When You’re Young’ about “You swear you’re never ever going to work for someone/No corporations for the new age sons” while I was working on the production line in Cundell’s Corrugated Cardboard Factory, having just been turned down for university. “Tears of rage roll down your face,” Weller sang, possessed, “but still you swear it’s fun.” Man.

My love for The Jam is one of the reasons I feel empathy for folk who love Kaiser Chiefs and Arctic Monkeys, even if I don’t particularly like the music. When you’re a teenager, you need someone to articulate your frustrations.

I always hated Weller’s solo stuff, mind.

Posted by Everett True on Wednesday, February 8th, 2006
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Here’s what I’ve been listening to while trying to write my Nirvana book (part 2)

1. The Research - Breaking Up
2. The Organ - Grab That Gun
3. The June Brides - Every Conversation
4. Spider And The Webs - demo
5. Catfish Haven - Please Come Back
6. The Zombies - The EP Collection
7. McKinlay ‘Soul’ Mitchell - The Town I Live In
8. Various - Fonotone Records
9. Quasi - When The Going Gets Dark
10. The Wipers - Is This Real?

Saw The Research two nights back: Russell battered three layers of submission out of his timid keyboard like he was auditioning for Quasi; Georgia threatened to hit him with her bass; Sarah jumped up in a futile attempt to see the back of the Free Butt. Tunes spun and serrated, a sugary edge masking the bitter aftertaste. (A little like medicine, perhaps?) People laughed, a fraction too loudly. Some twat stood right in front of me, videoing for his own private pleasure - ignoring the fact he was at a live concert. Started with ‘The Way You Used To Smile’, announced as ‘our best song’, which it so remained until ‘I Love You But…’ came along and stole our hearts once more. The band seemed nervous, and rocked harder than I expected, or even necessarily wanted. Halfway through, Charlotte came over faint - lack of sleep, cigarette smoke, claustrophobia - and we had to leave. Bah.

Earlier, the band came over for tea and muffins, and recorded four songs on the 4-track, cheered on by Russell’s girlfriend Charlotte, and my mum. They’re so sweet and polite! The songs sounded so special, only slightly hampered by my entire lack of technical expertise. (I move people around the living room to achieve a balance, rather than overdub.) Piano, Casio, upturned footrest, baby’s tambourine, two acoustic guitars and of course those three voices, dipping in and out, swooping.

Man, we felt special.

I’ve just got to the part of the biography where Courtney flies out to Chicago to meet up with Billy Corgan and ends the night with Kurt in his hotel room. Man, where is Urge Overkill’s number when I need it?

Posted by Everett True on Thursday, February 2nd, 2006
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This is my favourite review I ever received…

The Legend!
Room At The Top, London
The Legend! kept watching the clock. Five minutes passed, then 10: “We never play more than 20.” Looking embarrassed and self-conscious on stage he apologises: “I’m sorry it’s not wacky but when I get a guitar in my hands I get all serious.” You probably never guessed that the only exclamation mark would be on the back of Simon’s guitar; comprehended the dual identity, the insecurity beneath the popular exterior: key words and phrases that lurk beneath the surface: loneliness, unhappiness, now lay naked.
Sad songs and in this case their titles say enough: ‘The Price Of Friendship’, ‘Fixed Grin’, (no) ‘Room At The Top’. The music reflects the state of mind, merely a vehicle for the lyrics; shambolic anger and confused emotions, fluctuating pulse and tearing heart-strings.
The fans? They wanted to be entertained by an ever-smiling man who with limitless, boisterous enthusiasm has launched a thousand groups and ‘zines. The Legend! The story of an unhappy clown, created by his boyish, unaffected love for music. Cuddle and protect him - He’s vulnerable.
Helen Mead, NME, 1986

Although I did always like John Robb’s description in Rox of The Legend! being “a choirboy lost in a field of out-of-tune guitars”, and the Sounds line, “Like listening to someone dying”.

Posted by Everett True on Wednesday, February 1st, 2006
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Name that single -

“I’ve got a rhyme that comes as a riddle/(o-hi-o)/What’s round on the ends and high in the middle”

Man. I’d forgotten how great this album is.

Posted by Everett True on Friday, January 20th, 2006
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Here’s what I’ve been listening to while trying to write my Nirvana book:

1. El Perro Del Mar - El Perro Del Mar (on constant repeat)
2. Buzzcocks - Love Bites (for those early morning blues)
3. Misty’s Big Adventure - The Black Hole (indubitably our favourite album of 2005)
4. Blondie - Greatest Hits: Sight And Sound (for when guests appear)
5. Dear Eskimo - Be Patient EP (witty and tricksy post-Outkast trip hop)
6. Betty Lavette - Souvenirs (even if this compilation is a little disappointing)
7. Wire - 154 (the one that turned my life around)
8. Lonnie Donegan - Lonesome Traveller (he’s NOT a novelty act!)
9. Nirvana - Nevermind (I still hate the production)
10. Bitter Springs - That Sentimental Slush (such depth of material)

Purchased a retro record player on Ideal Deal.com a couple of days ago, and excitedly waiting for its arrival. It’s red! I long ago passed along my four Dansettes to friends, and need something to play the 78rpms - Winifred Atwell, Spike Jones, Johnnie Ray, Lonnie Donegan, Alma Cogan, Nervous Norvus - I bought back up from my dad’s in Chelmsford last weekend.

Posted by Everett True on Thursday, January 19th, 2006
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Just been sent the excellent double-CD Cherry Red compilation of The June Brides and Phil Wilson - to celebrate, I thought I’d share my sleeve notes to the forthcoming June Brides tribute album, due out some time whenever.

(1985) It’s about time! In this current climate of depressed and depressing music, where the word “pop” has become synonymous with drab grey colourless tinsel-town glamour children making three-minute worthless video-exercises in how low modern music can sink, The June Brides produce an eight-track mini-album (produced by John O-Neill, ex-Undertones) to blast away the dullness. They sav(i)our pop for the side of COLOUR! LAUGHTER! JOY! with their spiky sublime intoxicating tunes; following that long and luminary lineage of Buzzcocks, Subway Sect, Fire Engines et al down the cottage way.

(2005) Mostly, I recall the walks home along dark, dismal, intimidating, intoxicating South London streets with the sound of Jon Hunter’s trumpet blaring in my ears. Mostly, I recall frantic dancing and gay abandon, pirouetting to the sound of Simon and Phil’s guitars, feeling that such euphoria should not go unnoticed. I’d queued outside the Rock Garden in ’81, waiting for Josef K and their chilled blue groove. Now it was ’84 and we suddenly were on first name terms with our pop stars. They were human, shy and painfully insecure…people like us. Did this make them any less special? Are you joking?

(1985) The first side starts off with a cracking, animated instrumental – which will make you wish you’d never dyed your hair black and started looking sullen – and SLAMS straight into “I Fall”, a tumultuous impetuous expression of joy; fragile, soaring, forever bewitching. The guitars rush headlong through a tumbling waterfall of viola and vocals: “I fall, and you drag me down, no one is listening, but let’s shout out loud to prove that we’re alive.”

(2005) I tried to recapture that feeling for years, the simple pleasure of shouting out loud to prove my own existence…I’d reference June Brides on the oddest occasions: in Melbourne 2000 trying to get to grips with grazed knees, in Pittsburgh 1993 in front of 20,000 people, none of whom knew my name…but such nostalgia is not part of my brief. My friend Ian instructed me never to call him up once our shared interests ceased – why would I? Should we talk about the past? Why? June Brides were a celebration of the present, with its endless waits in dole offices and miners’ rights being trampled into the ground. These songs are not made for these times.

(1985) (ASIDE: The production does seem a trifle wimpish in places, the cover’s not exactly riveting and the ghost of Young Scotland occasionally raises a bleary eyebrow, still…)

(2005) One time in 1996, I bumped into Phil Wilson in a pub around the corner from King’s Reach Tower: not only was he now a civil servant – and don’t you wish ALL pop stars would take a cue from his declaration to retire from making music past the age of 30 (or whatever it was) – but he now worked along the same corridor as my brother Mick, without knowing it. Odd, because both men clearly had shared bills at Alan’s Living Room in the dim mists of…

(1985) …the pace continues with “Sunday To Saturday”, that class(ic) first single of theirs, now impossible to find, and ends in an exhausting exhaustive exhorting extreme exhibition of (barely) un-extolled evocative exhilaration – “Sick, Tired And Drunk”, an anthemic paean to all those moments when you’re swaying sullenly sideways. Orgasmic! Ooh, I could lie here forever, but…

(2005) The NME compared them to Holden Caulfield. I can see their point now. Then, I never bothered reading music press interviews: too many imaginary barricades to man, too much dancing to partake in. The June Brides began with the perfectly understandable motivation of wanting to be a guitar band that didn’t sound like U2 or Echo & the bleedin’ Bunnymen and finished way before they had the chance to turn boring. Anyone worth their stripy pop socks in the early 80s loved Buzzcocks and Jonathan Richman. The Smiths were a momentary abhorrence that ruined everything.

(1985) Side two: rapture! Unfettered by any commercial restraints, The June Brides jangle straight for the jugular and BITE every time.
1! The heart! “Every Conversation” shining chiming ringing singing – a remix of their other single, more finely honed incisive streamlined – the chorus melting in your mouth like week-old Anchor.
2! The throat! “Comfort” – it’s those guitars again. Biting, bold, brash, harsh – nearly too cutting in their determination to shatter the nerves.
3! The neck! “Heard You Whisper” – enchanting, empathetically fresh, enraptured: guitars and voices and instruments weaving and interweaving around a passionate acquisition of an enchanting tune. Spicy, bright, wholesome.
4! The wrist! “Enemies” – jubilant massed ranks, invigorating vivid sparkling – a fitting climax for such a magnificent album. The legs finally give way as you find yourself swept along on a tide of exultation.
For its sense of vision alone this must be the most essential album released in the last two years. The choice is yours.

(2005) Never one to resort to barely constructed hyperbole, I only ever let myself be carried away by the tides of my enthusiasm…and if that’s a crime then I’m guilty, guilty of loving you.

The Legend! (NME) 1985
The Legend! (Plan B) 2005

Posted by Everett True on Wednesday, January 18th, 2006
(1 Comment)

Been going through some of my old school reports.
Most of the entries are annoyingly anonymous, if tending towards hectoring and noting my ‘mischievous’ tendencies - aside from a gem, class 3B, Michaelmas term 1973, Brentwood School, English (position, 28 out of 28): “An untidy worker, a deplorable writer. He really must be more thorough and imaginative.”

On the phone to brother Mick earlier today. We were discussing our dad’s tendency to not give books directly to us, but leave them in places we might stumble across them - like the Christian Guide to Sex Education, a short pamphlet published some time in the Seventies. Q: Masturbation - is it sinful? A: No - as long as you think pure thoughts.

Posted by Everett True on Monday, January 9th, 2006
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In Adelaide last month, I jumped up on stage to sing an encore with The Grates. The singer, flustered and radiant, fluffed her intro - and in desperation yelled, “Does anyone in Adelaide know who Everett True is?” To my astonishment, about a dozen people cheered. Who are these strange souls?

In Melbourne, I exchanged anedcdotes about Angus from the ‘dirty, stinking’ Liars with the dapper singer of The Devastations. Conrad’s shirt was open to the third button, but he was charming. I booked myself a support slot with his band in Northcote but sadly had to cancel when the news of my dad filtered through.

Back in England - Chelmsford, to be precise - I felt proud, and extremely humble, when a piece of music that I’d written with Verity Susman a few weeks earlier was played as the coffin departed behind the crematorium’s curtain.

Posted by Everett True on Thursday, January 5th, 2006
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