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Sooner Or Crater
Here come your girlfriend’s little brother’s mates, littered with broken drumkits and telling you exactly what they think about EVERYTHING! Of course, you don’t expect them to say what you’d hope they would, but they do; and to your (un)surprise they are The Best Group In The World. Pete, Jason and Gnatty (who is) are from Rugby. “There’s a load of drugs in Rugby. Did you read about that bloke who died? He wuz my mate.” No: What about the riots at your concerts? “We like to see people enjoying themselves.” I needn’t tell you what’s on my mind.
“We hate the Jesus and Mary Chain. We’re going to sort them out. They try to make their music sound bad. We try to make music that sounds good.” In this they succeed effortlessly. Pete and Jason play very loud guitars, while Gnatty plays like Maureen Tucker, because that’s probably the only way he knows. How many Velvet Underground bootlegs do you own, Pete? “None.” No? “Well, two actually.”
Fancy! So why do you all look like you go on youth hostelling missions? “We do sometimes. Youth hostels are very free places. Great. You can do what you want.” Okay.
Other leisure pursuits include the Reverberation Club, which they run with their friends, the (also excellent) High Spirits, playing “fifties, sixties and seventies punk” under the same very psychedelic lights that flood the seated Spacemen during their live shows. The club is regular, at The Blitz (uh-huh?) in Rugby every Thursday. Their shows, where in the club is effectively dragged into your local bar, are sadly much less frequent, and as yet confined to the not very illustrious Rugby-Coventry-Northampton circuit. Their music, resembling at times vintage Suicide, but with guitars replacing electronics, deserves a wider audience. As Pete says, “People out there want it. They’ll love it.”
He knows, you see? But what of this curious electric sitar effort you play, Pete? “It’s called a saz. It’s Turkish.”
Are you neo-hippies? “No. Well, yes.”
THE JAZZ BUTCHER