A review of a gig what I went to last night (and one a couple of days ago) (15)

Two gig nights in one post, so I'll take them day by day, band by band.

Friday Night
Kid Carpet
Totally barking. A bloke on his own, playing anything and everything he had to hand. Which include various samplers, guitars, toy guitars, keyboards etc. You can download some of the songs from his website, if you have the inclination. He started a bit slowly, but once he got into the set it was highly entertaining.

Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players (henceforth: TFSP)
For those who don't know them, TFSP are Daddy (vocals/guitar), Mummy (more guitar/slideshow) and 10 year old daughter, Rachel (drums). They are an actual family from America, who go round yard sales and buy up sets of slides. Then they go home and write little songs about them. Finally, they go out on tour, display the slides and play the songs to paying audiences. I do not know why they do this. I do not know which ways of life they considered and rejected before settling on their chosen way. And what they are mainly doing is writing songs about dead people, probably without permission from the relevant estates. To further verify the relative lack of sanity, Father Trachtenburg is currently sporting really awful facial hair.

However, I do like them, though they'd benefit from a venue where you could see the slides better. And too many of the songs were very short. "Eggs" is good though. At the end of the gig, Rachel was on the merchandise stall selling stuff and signing things, so I got her to sign my ticket. I expect it was the highlight of her evening.

Sunday Night
I nearly had an unused ticket for this one. When buying them I had a moment of confusion. I was supposed to be getting two tickets plus one for me. Which totals three tickets. So with the number "three" in my head, when I went to actually get the tickets, my head translated this into three tickets plus one for myself. Which was one too many. Luckily I met Dom hanging round outside the venue like a tramp, so I let him have the spare one. It's lucky for him it was sold out, otherwise he'd have been able to pay to get in earlier and I'd have been left with a redundant spare.

It's good to see Fibbers sold out on a Sunday night - often Sundays can be quiet even for the better gigs. Tonight may have been benefitting from the return of Students. Also, it looked like some of the Radio 2 audience may have been in (ie older people). It doesn't thrill me that I have to class myself as being at least partly in this category. Onto the bands themselves then:

Sixty6
Are there any nights when these guys don't play at Fibbers? Well, yes obviously there are, and Friday springs to mind as an obvious one. But a quick count tells me that I alone have seen them at least four times this year. I've been less than complimentary about their Feeder inspired tunes before, but they are quite growing on me now. Decent power-pop.

Thirteen Senses
I wanted to see this lot when they played York back in May, but due to having an actuarial dinner (more fun than it sounds) I had to pass. It's good to see them back here so soon. I think so far they have at least three songs in my top twenty of the year. The songs have obvious comparisons to people like Keane, or maybe Starsailor, but the vocals are much more fragile. Mew are a good reference point. Keyboard led, with guitars, lots of arpeggios. If they'd had wanted to play another hour, that would have worked for me. You can hear some songs on their website.

I bought my first t-shirt for quite a while. I've cut back a bit on band t-shirts recently, but I couldn't not get one here. They were also giving out little CDs (about 3", the size of a Gamecube Disc) with an album sampler on them. Nice idea in principle, but I don't really see the advantage over normal size CDs - I'd be surprised if they were any cheaper to produce. And they definitely have a disadvantage if you try to play them in a slot loading CD player. Don't try it kids. They are even slightly too small to make a really good coaster.

The Open
The Open still aren't quite as good as they should be, or indeed as good as large portions of the music press say they are. I'm always up for a bit of epic-indie-rock, but I can do with out the extended guitar sections. It's ok for your final song, for a bit of a big finish, but if you do it in every one it just gets boring. But I like "Just want to live".

AR(SE)-wise, TFSP have scored well, but not quite well enough to take the lead. The Open have done less well, but have tripled their previous score, so they would have to be happy with that. I think it's going to be hard for anyone to topple Puressence during the rest of the year.

The AR(SE) table now looks like this:
5.0: Puressence
4.5: Trachetenburg Family Slideshow Players
3.5: Easyworld / Snow Patrol 1 / Graham Coxon / Keane
3.0: The Open 2 / Thirteen Senses
2.5: Four Day Hombre 1 / Snow Patrol 2
2.0: Delays / Athlete / Dawn of the Replicants
1.5: The Ordinary Boys
1.0: The Open 1 / Jonathan Richman / Four Day Hombre 2 / Simon & Garfunkel

I'm starting to wish that I'd done something more sensible than just reprinting the table each time I update it. Can't be bothered to change it now, and it's not coming back next year (maybe) so just live with it people.

Next gig is going to be The Needles on Thursday. Unless I get a better offer.

Incidentally - sorry that all the last few posts have been music related. It just happens that way sometimes. I'll write about something different next time.