12/8: Simon on ‘Our BBQ Could Be Your Life’
Simon/AMY BLUE had this to say:
“hmmmm, great article. about the saturday. have a look at the comments:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/aug/10/underground-punk-stars-eyes?commentpage=1&commentposted=1
Guardian writer asks me: “Were you “Butthole Surfers” lead singer? If so, are you OK? You looked absolutely exhausted. Or was it a James Brown ‘collapse-then-recover’ showman thing?”
Need I say more? .. So JP got ill a week before the show, wanted to can our rehearsal, our only rehearsal we had to prep our butthole surfer covers (though we’d been planning and debating for weeks at this point), we send him abusive texts resembling Anal Cunt song titles. We rehearse, the covers sound alright, job done. Couple of days later I realise we should have left JP in bed, what an absolute twat of a flu/cold it really is, we turn up at the show resembling butthole surfers at the point where they were collecting bottles and cans to trade in for food…
So we were in strung out shape, but soundcheck was fine, a bounce through a song and our spirits are high, we decorate the stage with these fuck-ugly green monkeys I found in Poundland on the way there, loads of our friends are there and people drag themselves away from the free food to watch us, all good, me and jp psyche ourselves up by sitting onstage until it’s time to start, talking bollocks. First song is Ground Zero (a new one, our best song yet?) and it’s flying, brutal and precise, by the first breakdown the temperature onstage is soaring and we’re profusely sweating. No change there. Next song is a spiky stomper called Mascara (Girl) and it’s the spikiest we’ve played it, rock out at the end, awesome. Not On My Watch flies next until two thirds of the way through I realise I’ve blown all my energy on the first couple of songs, the lemsip’s wearing off and I’m fighting off the urge to pass out, as Lex falters in the heat behind me I curtail the song and finish it sloppily, we’re all struggling and it’s like rocking out in treacle, the air has been sucked out of the room it’s so loud. Yellow House (the coolest song on the record says people) rolls by at a more leisurely pace and blood begins to flow back to my brain as we desperately try to remember the butthole’s song Human Cannonball. It’s atrocious, we do a cod-reggae ending all in the wrong tempo and I look over and JP’s singing the words from a piece of paper, it’s truly a what-the-fuck moment, the crowd love it. Another new song On The Way rumbles by and I know we can play better than this, it’s frustrating, it’s unbearably hot, I scream the end out of nothing else but disappointment, have we blown it? We do half of White Noise apprehensively, I try to reserve what energy i have knowing I have another five minutes of shouting and noise but it’s still powerful, then, the last song. The surfers’ song “Something” is a horrid horrid ‘song’ in its own right, five verses, a beavis and butthead riff and noise solos - i slip on a halloween vampire mask that’s just ridiculous and pick up a mic plugged into an octave fuzz pedal and start screaming and grappling at guitar strings, leering at the rest of the band to get them to play heavier and they respond perfectly, the wall of noise they cujour up is so great that the only way to go is forward, I dive off the stage still screaming abuse - the mic becomes unplugged but it’s so loud it’s hard to tell - I collapse onstage and look at the rest of the band who are locked into each other’s groove, it’s brutal grindcore noise that we’ve never done before and I’m very very proud of them and just lie down and enjoy the moment. I don’t remember the song ending, not like we’d rehearsed but the audience is just stunned, they clap and cheer eventually and enthusiasticly. I wonder what the hell we’ve unleashed….
I enjoyed a lot of the other bands through a slight wave of nausea afterwards, the crowd are a bit too cool for school and don’t buy cd’s, but the music from the stage is wonderfully infectious, it’s a good way to spend an evening.
We’re still working The Fortress and the Fatalist but one eye is on where to go next, recording is outlined for October and we’re looking forward to it so much. If the audio of this show is alright maybe we’ll put it up, so many of you probably haven’t heard this record yet! What are you going to do about that…?”
