Tonight we find ourselves in one of Exeter's dingier, lesser known venues, The Hub, for a bit of a ramshackle collection of bands, from Exeter, North Devon, and Liverpool. A very chaotic night ensues, more about that later...
First up, Barnstaple's brilliant Cablecar Catastrophe take to the stage for a quick opening set, bringing out their Bright Eyes, Dashboard Confessional, Automatic, Libertines mash-up rock, trying their hardest to get the small crowd who've turned up already dancing, carrying on like indie troopers regardless of the fact their ill singer threw up three times on the way to the venue. Even with a somewhat miniscule audience the set goes down well, which is more than can be said for the following band The Adventures Of...
Performing with the concept of a Victorian circus act The Adventures Of... appear to be playing a dumbed down show tonight, whilst still sounding like a fetal Kaisers Cheifs playing Horrors tracks, they seem to be missing the stage dramatics that would complete their set, leaving the few people watching looking pretty bemused and unimpressed.
Exeter Americana band Count To Fire are next to take the stage, in an attempt to turn around the slow evening, with a waistcoated, corduroy trousered, plodding set, like a lacklustre Ryan Adams And The Cardinals, think it's best we move on there.
And onto much better things, Liverpool's Screaming Lights manage to reignite the evening. Having been demoted from headliners, in a cynical ploy by the venues management to keep the crowd of mainly Pretty Jacks fans propping up the bar for as long as possible, they still manage to get things moving with a firey selection of urgent, shoegazing, Interpol, Joy Division style numbers, the band looking nonchalent and unshakeable throughout.
Finally South Molton's Pretty Jacks finish off the night with a franctic, drunken brawl of a performance, managing to bang out some brand new tracks, amidst the mess of one too many drinks (due to their late start time), and still able to thrill as much as ever, their Bloc Party riffs and rock'n'roll persona cause mayhem right up until the moment the band are ejected from the venue by the promoters, following a slight skuffle, and a lifelong ban, citing criminal damage to equipment, making for a nicely chaotic end to a nicely chaotic evening.
//Pretty Jacks - The Ripper//------------
First up, Barnstaple's brilliant Cablecar Catastrophe take to the stage for a quick opening set, bringing out their Bright Eyes, Dashboard Confessional, Automatic, Libertines mash-up rock, trying their hardest to get the small crowd who've turned up already dancing, carrying on like indie troopers regardless of the fact their ill singer threw up three times on the way to the venue. Even with a somewhat miniscule audience the set goes down well, which is more than can be said for the following band The Adventures Of...
Performing with the concept of a Victorian circus act The Adventures Of... appear to be playing a dumbed down show tonight, whilst still sounding like a fetal Kaisers Cheifs playing Horrors tracks, they seem to be missing the stage dramatics that would complete their set, leaving the few people watching looking pretty bemused and unimpressed.
Exeter Americana band Count To Fire are next to take the stage, in an attempt to turn around the slow evening, with a waistcoated, corduroy trousered, plodding set, like a lacklustre Ryan Adams And The Cardinals, think it's best we move on there.
And onto much better things, Liverpool's Screaming Lights manage to reignite the evening. Having been demoted from headliners, in a cynical ploy by the venues management to keep the crowd of mainly Pretty Jacks fans propping up the bar for as long as possible, they still manage to get things moving with a firey selection of urgent, shoegazing, Interpol, Joy Division style numbers, the band looking nonchalent and unshakeable throughout.
Finally South Molton's Pretty Jacks finish off the night with a franctic, drunken brawl of a performance, managing to bang out some brand new tracks, amidst the mess of one too many drinks (due to their late start time), and still able to thrill as much as ever, their Bloc Party riffs and rock'n'roll persona cause mayhem right up until the moment the band are ejected from the venue by the promoters, following a slight skuffle, and a lifelong ban, citing criminal damage to equipment, making for a nicely chaotic end to a nicely chaotic evening.//Pretty Jacks - The Ripper//------------
please note:// sound is majorly distorted, my bad, be prepared to whack your volume down, or risk temporary hearing damage. ta (:
3 comments:
ok here goes... if i remember rightly alot of people left after screaming lights (clearly the highlight of the evening) and i think you may have underestimated their pull on the city considering they have played exeter a few times under previous names... 'clockwork' being one of them.... perhaps you should do some more research!hmmmmmm! also, the pretty jacks. judging by your list of 'reflective influences' suggests that they are nothing new and exciting... merely drunken clowns, regurgitating the same old spiel... considering i witnessed the whole evening there is nothing rock n' roll about criminal damage! and if you think that supporting morons like 'the pretty jacks' is a good thing.. then its clearly muppets like yourself that are the reason for rubbish bands getting overexposed... BORING!
Fair comment on the 'Screaming Lights' history there, I'll take that into account as it was lazy on my behalf. They were fantastic, I probably didn't emphasise that enough in the review.
Maybe I should make it more clear somewhere on here that the emphasis of this blog, eventually anyway, is to focus on the North Devon music scene, via any other music that takes my fancy, which is the reason why I wrote mainly on Pretty Jacks and Cablecar Catastrophe, when they might not have technically been the biggest bands on the bill.
But then again I don't really know why I'm justifying myself here when you haven't even cared enough to put a name of any kind to your comment.
But yeah, as for calling me up on my lazy research, I'll take that from you, and aim to do better next time. Thanks.
To the anonymous writer... I think ull find that we brought a 32 seater bus to the hub, which was 3 quaters full. Ok we were drunk... yes we played badly, and although I didnt witness this so called 'criminal damage' i would be genuinly sorry for any of our actions that resulted in things getting battered.
I think to call people that support us morons is not only ridiculous but out of order too. Clearly you felt you needed to get something off your chest and I hope you have found solice in bad mouthing us and our fans in public.
I would like to add that the 'the Hub' that apparently supports local bands and live music, is one of the few music venues that doesnt pay the bands that make the effort to gig and bring support to their venue.
This gig wasnt a true representation of our band, yep we fucked up... stay off the alcohol kids!
Steve, Pretty Jacks bass player
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