The Mekano Set

Please Note: Contents May Offend!

Right, this is going to be another rambling, offensive, opinionated rant that hopefully still manages to amuse. It is of course, way, way too long, even though I deleted a lot of it...

Smudged Eye-Liner

So friday night we headed up to West London and The Playroom. The journey up was a bit hectic: the Bank Holiday rush to escape, or arrive, it was way too warm to be carrying heavy luggage around, and there were the inevitable train delays and Sardine-Sweat-Lodge tube rides. This is why I normally like to set off way too early.

The Playroom takes place six nights a week in the basement of a smart, unpretentious looking bar in Marlborough Village, not too far off Oxford Road {sorry - that should be Oxford Street shouldn't it? "Hit the North!"}, a good sized place, with some neat alcoves, moody lighting and it's own bar. The stage was tiny but things were loud enough to get lost in.

Organizers Jeff and Melissa were really nice and cool. They obviously put a lot of time and effort into the place, and they don't seem snobbish about what styles of music they put on - everything from folk to freeform.

I'm listening to the fabulous 'Let Us Never Speak of it...' by Out Hud. A sweet, jolly, quirky funky American groove thing. Nice. Just what your ears need after you've been listening to fuzzed-up bass chords for six hours.

London Village

The musical line-up for the night couldn't have been much more eclectic. The first act started out as a sort of John Denver with a Chorus Pedal and ended with full-on 1969 rock-freakout antics {the ending of their last song lasted longer than the rest of their set put together}. An interesting young man trapped in the body of a well-preserved older woman. But in the world of us, androgyny is cool, cause it pisses OFF the right kind of people, and turns ON the right kind of people, if you get me.

And cause we're a bit gay looking.

Apart from The Saint, although there's always the gay-skinhead thing isn't there? It was a petty that our Gay-Following was too lazy to come out to play. Ha ha...

I know a lot of people who say things like "I feel like a lesbian trapped inside a man's body", or "I feel like a gay man trapped inside a woman's body". But that just sounds really painful and awkward.

Personally, I see myself as a heterosexual man trapped inside the body of a gay man. Sorry, I've been reading Richard Herring...

I want to be Mark Hollis but I know I'm more like a badly dressed Kenneth Williams

Next up was a young singer / keyboard player who was the only act of the evening who came across like a 'professional' musician: that sort of hair-swishing, anecdote telling, rehearsed-modesty-confidence, MOR, proper-piano playing, American accent singing thang. Very pleasant and really quite cheesy. We all wanted her {Scottish} accent. She even stayed to hear our set which was nice!

Some might say that MOR is the new alternative. But then again, some might say Hitler was just misunderstood. Let's get real people. Soft Rock is Limp Cock: it looks awful, and serves no real purpose other than to amuse young boys. At least Cock Rock has the decency to pretend to be something more than just the crap it is. I mean it's still crap but at least they work up a sweat, they earn your annoyance.

Actually when you think about it, making music with just a voice and an electric piano is actually braver than your average 'rock' band on one level, because on a bad night, badly played rock music can still be louder than the abuse thrown at it. Not that she received any abuse.

Masturbation

Next up were this cheesy-to-the-point-of-being-shocking jazz-pop band who's bass player was the only person to taint the mood of the night with his Spinal Tap 'you want to use MY bass amp?! Don't touch any of the settings, don't actually TOUCH the amp, don't even LOOK at my amp' antics.

There's just something really embarrassing and fake about that kind of A Level / University Music mentality. Like the way you can spot a band that formed whilst studying A Levels at school: a certain awkward 'funk rock' rhythm...

If you're doing what you want and enjoying it, why are you so miserable?

On the wall of a local rehearsal space I noticed a sign advertising lessons in "Personal Stage Craft". Why on earth would someone want to go to a lesson {from someone else!} to learn 'Personal stage craft'?

Anyway, this jazz-pop band were brilliant musicians. Brilliant in the way that porn stars are really good lovers. They look like they know where everything goes, they look like they're having an amazing time, and it's music of a sort, but you're left with the feeling that only the people involved in making it should actually be watching and listening... let alone applauding...

I can see now why 'jazz' is seen as the most masturbatory form of music. I'm sure someone {more than just one person} somewhere has written about the relationship between sex and music.

Totally throwaway lyrics {if the music has to be complex, shifting, of-the-moment, layered etc. why do the lyrics have to be delivered so much as a token, so trivial and thoughtless?}; fretless-six-string-bass solos, pointless anecdotal asides {as if to reassure us that they are unpretentious, out for a good time, just like us as opposed to egotistical and boring}.

Jazz in the way that Kenny G is jazz. Funky in the way that Chris de Burgh is funky

I smell Oxbridge by Calvin Klein. Or was it Royal College by Hugo Boss?

I have to say that I really like a lot of what real jazz is about. I love improvisation, brushed drums, drums that don't worry about time-signatures, total chaos, dischordance, any music that requires that you wear shades 24 hours a day and drink vodka for breakfast gets my vote! And, through no fault of my own, I really love jazz-funk-grooves {the only useful music to be inflicted on my ears as a child: fat bass, cheese-organ, no sax, non-stop lock-grooves elements} and believe it or not early on we had our moments... seriously.

Think about it, jazz has always been uncool with the out-crowd, and largely ignored by the in-crowd, so how could I not be into it?

I'm not really taking sides, I'm just saying that I find some elements of jazz interesting, in the same way that I find some elements of rock really, really boring.

At its best, jazz is at least as anarchic, chaotic, and wild as rock at its best. Miles Davis will always seem more demonic, cool, menacing and enigmatic than the likes of Mick Jagger to my mind. Jagger is one of those dumb-it-down buffoonish types that actively pursues a ludicrous mockney persona. Miles Davis never hid the fact that he was a bit of a git.

At its worst, jazz is like a modern day Disney Films Premake of American Psycho. It simply shouldn't be witnessed by mortal minds.

At a gig before Christmas we were talking to a sound-man who was obviously a serious metal / industrial head. We were pointing out that 'someone like him' should be well up for a bit of noise, chaos, feedback, anarchy. He seemed bemused and pointed out that he 'likes control, conformity' and that he 'likes to know what's going to happen next'.

I think it's odd that the people who take offense at any anti-Beatles / anti-Stones leanings were, largely, not even born when the likes of Jagger were even remotely entertaining. Yeah, sure, I've heard all about how the Stones were sex on a stick back in the 60's, but I'm not a child or a teen of the 60's - just because I like music doesn't mean I HAVE to respect the Beatles or the Stones. Yawn.

{Deleted bit about not wishing to fuck the corpse of rock music}

But fuck instead the way that just because a band uses heavy guitars it gets called Punk and if it uses a drum machine it gets called Poncey. Heavy Metal is not Punk. Punk at its best is just as much about radical / humanitarian politics {real anarchist / Marxist philosophy is very much concerned with humanitarian values} / individuality / originality as it is about chaotic sound and acting like someone who belongs in day-care.

Man, Out Hud's 'One Life to Leave' is a thing of beauty.

I'm always really fascinated by the different mentalities and attitudes of musicians and I was intrigued by the way that the bass player from this band put so much time and effort into things like deciding what stool he was going to sit on. Ace.

Doing music I never know how to behave, so I don't think about it too much. Usually I'm too preocuppied to think about it. Pretending to have a great time when you are too pissed or too scared to remember where to put your hands is just pointless.

"Magic" is a song by Mick Smiley that features on the soundtrack to the film Ghostbusters. Largely, it isn't very good. But then about half way through it all gets 'recorded backwards then reversed' and it sounds like Ladytron and John Fryer have forced their way into the studio and turned all the levels up to 'Spooky reverse-reverb Phil Spectre Cool'.

And so next up were us like

We played for about 25 miles and the set just totally flew-by, loads of fun, loud enough to 'let go', a really good sound {apparently}, no technical troubles at all and a really chilled sound guy {Beth: "We sing through guitar effects." Sound Man: "Cool."} sic.

Miss Finn, Mr. Saint, and anyone else who'd seen us live before were in for a different experience in that they could definitely hear what I was doing too. I figured I should make a point of being more audible as a few people have been convinced that my guitar {a twelve string electric that is shaped like a 1970's Vox Phantom - a particularly ugly looking object as used by The Beat, The Velvet Underpants, and Ian Curtis amongst others} is purely 'just for show'. Plus, the sound guy accidentally left my mic turned on so you could probably hear me singing as well. What a crazy world eh?

Bank Holiday Weekend meant that while we were heading away from the beach, everybody else was heading towards it, but we got people dancing which was 4ucking wicked. They even asked permission. Dancing = good!

So the set flew by from my point of view. It was quite short because the laptop we use to sequence the drums, sound effects, synthbasslines and some of the live-sampling seems to be on it's last legs. And we didn't want to push it. We're lucky it's still working at all considering I accidentally emptied an entire mug of black coffee into its workings a couple of weeks ago.

It really started acting up the night before the gig. Sparks literally flew. It's antiquated 400Mhz processor {it's a Mac so it's not as bad as it sounds} is no longer able to handle the number of layers we are working with and getting it to live-sample maybe 8 seconds + of sound is just way too risky. So it's time to move on and we're hopefully going to invest in something a little bit more 21st Century... God knows what this will do to our material!

We couldn't hang around for much of Fell Before Finnish but they sounded a lot more interesting than your average white boys with guitars band in that they weren't attempting to rip-off Franz Ferdinand or Muse. Nice. Such a small gesture really... but well worth the effort as I'm sure they'd tell you. although one of them may or may not have made off with one of Patrick's stomp boxes...

Post-Pop Band's Five-in-a-Bed Romp Exclusive

Then it was off to the NME night at KoKo Club where we saw something of Death From Above 1979's set. Looks like a superb venue {imagine a classy, over-priced Muppet Show theatre}, and is obviously a clear result of a general return to 'coolness' for live music in general.

I know how dumb this sounds but it's only now that dance music is no longer the 'in' thing do I feel good about doing songs like D.H.J. It's not all that dancey but I'm sure you get my point... if I have one...

On 'record', DFA actually sound pretty conventional {the Lemmy-like bass guitar riffage easily filling the space of other instruments}. Very rawk. But live they were like a two-man Ministry. All strobes and sweat and smoke. Rawk.

The rest is a bit of a blur, but we were up and dancing until the early hours of the morning. Was good to have a late one for the first time in months.

We stayed over until saturday, It was so nice to hang out as a band {although maybe sleeping five-to-a-bed was a bit too much?}. Must do more of that.

Must also give a mention to the marvelous Mr. Woolly who is like some kind of unofficial band go-getter / publicist / action man. Well done that man!

I was sort of half asleep for most of saturday, but we had a wander round Denmark Street for some new bits and pieces {a new distortion pedal and 'special mic stand' for Miss Finn}.

Anyway, we've been invited back to The Playroom on Friday 24th June. We'll be supporting Amanda Ghost who sounds really interesting and someone who we might actually have stuff in common with musically! Wonderful, but typical Mekano Set luck, it's also the week of Glastonbury, and Patrick is going to Glastonbury. And he's going to attempt to leave Glastonbury for the gig, and then return. It's possible in theory... Fingers crossed on that one.

Later for you,

The Mekano Set