The West Hill Hall in Seven Dials has seen many a legendary music performance and Sunday it was host to the fourth Midwinter Picnic, an all-day music event run by Chris TT and his partner Rifa.
Midwinter Picnic and Chris TT embody much of the Brighton music scene ethos – a DIY spirit of people working hard, and for free, for the love of music. Midwinter Picnic was also a conscious-raiser with a number of protest singers on the bill, as well as a fundraiser for Amnesty International and Arts Emergency Service. And of course, the venue, the West Hill Hall, our city’s equivalent of a village hall, was the perfect venue, intimate and warm, and the very definition of low-fi and community.
If you know these performers, you know that their music speaks better volumes than any review ever could – so this isn’t a music review. What it is, is the flagging up of a most definitely Brighton event that deserves your future attention.
Artists came from all over England to play and a number of Brighton acts were on the bill, starting with Danny Kendall, the band fronted by former La Frange drummer Ben who has “done what all drummers want to do, sing”. The three-piece make a melodious and seductive sound and ‘We’ve Never Been to Singapore’ in particular has the ring of a lovers anthem to it.
The “disgusting uncle” of Brighton pop, as named by Chris TT, Stuart Flynn was the next Brighton singer to perform. Emblematic of Midwinter Picnic, his songs and poems-to-music took us around another musical turn. He used the stage as a prop to his performance, not just a platform to sing from and the first use of the piano made me realise what Midwinter Picnic had been reminding me of – a (well) programmed piano stage at End of the Road festival. By that I mean a stage for an eclectic range of singers and music, being given egalitarian space to perform.
Our next Brighton act was Chris TT. He took us through some of his torchbearer and protest songs and ended with his sublime songs of AA Milne’s poetry. If you were lucky enough to see him perform those last year, you’ll know how profound an experience that is, the poetry of our childhood sung in Chris’s plaintive, powerful and searching voice.
Last Brightonian, and last act of the night, was legendary Nick Pynn. A wall of stringed, looped sound that took us across the globe in its inspiration. Highlight was his introduction of the coco-lele, creating from it not just an immense prog rock guitar sound but a lilting and gentle folk instrumental.
The next events for Midwinter Picnic are a night in May at the Friends Meeting House and an outing for Chris TT’s Jeremy Clarkson concept album, and ‘An Evening with Jim Bob’ in June.
There’s all kinds of difficulties when it comes to writing reviews of live gigs. There’s turning up late and missing support bands. There’s getting a bit drunk and not remembering the gig too well. There’s turning up to a gig you thought you’d be able to get into and finding it was sold out, which is what almost happened at last night’s gig. Thankfully it just turned out that everyone inside the side room in The Brunswick was standing inside the doorway, holding up the queue outside. Once inside though I was faced with a rather unique problem – the support band didn’t actually have a name! So I could tell you that they were a bit ska crossed with German Oom-pah band, and that while they were obviously all tremendous musicians they weren’t especially to my taste but the crowd loved them – what do I know, eh? – but that won’t be that helpful of you want to go and find out more about them, would it? Thankfully, there did leave us with one big clue – they were the band who until recently were Twelve Stone Toddler. I’m not sure quite how and why they aren’t any more, and never saw them in their previous incarnation, but there you are.
Headlining were The Muel, whose album “All Kinds of Love” came out in spring of last year. Since then, they’ve been touring hard. Most recently Sam Walker (who writes all the songs, and whose full first name is where the band name comes from) has been out in Australia playing a string of acoustic shows. It’s very difficult to describe The Muel’s music – it’s a kind of psychedelic rock, centred around Sam, who sings, plays guitar, oh and plays drums from the centre of the stage too. As with the music defying definition, so the supporting cast are very talented and versatile – each of the other band members take on vocal duties at various points in the gig – and guitar player Jim Mortimore (who’s also been playing bass for The Woo!Worths and double bass for The Moulettes recently) also took on steel drum duties. The majority of the set was new songs yet to be recorded and released, that have the same energy as the older stuff, but do a much better job of showcasing the rest of the band and their talents – I was particularly impressed by some of the guitar and piano solos that we were treated to. If you missed the gig, you can catch them again in London at the Slaughtered Lamb in Clerkenwell next monday, and at the Landsdown Arms in Lewes on 11th Feb.
So, I had this grand plan to do a write up about what I was looking forward to at Sea Monsters 2 in the week leading up to the gigs. But then I went to a gig last Sunday night, which I wrote up on Monday night. And then I went to a gig on Tuesday (which wasn’t one for the blog). And then Wednesday I went and interviewed the Repeat Prescriptions. Last night I thought it was about time I spent some quality time with my girlfriend, so now here we are on Friday, with the gigs starting on Monday with nothing written.
Thankfully, One Inch Badge, who are putting on the gigs, have done pretty much what I intended to do, and have written up some highlights of some of the twenty three (!!!) bands playing next week.
Personally, I’m looking forward to Us Bear Baby Bones, who I saw supporting Laetitia Sadier last week at the Green Door Store, Black Black Hills, who headlined the Source New Music night a few months ago at the Pavilion Theatre, and Restlesslist, who I haven’t caught live yet but are playing tonight at the Green Door Store.
I don’t quite know how I’m going to have time to fit in time for an update on every gig next week, but keep an eye on the blog, and maybe I’ll find the time to get a little something up.
Here’s a link to the Sea Monsters section of the One Inch Badge website, and here are the links to the band previews they’ve posted so far:
After several months of news, reviews and links, I’ve finally got around to the first Brighton Music Blog interview. It’s a rainy January evening, and I’m meeting Simon Bate and Alex Borg in The Gladstone. They’re two fifths of new band The Repeat Prescriptions, and when they’re in the band, they assume pseudonyms and take on a rather interesting back story…
Simon Bate onstage at the Prince Albert
RO: Hello. Who are you?
SB: We’re the Repeat Prescriptions, and we basically play loud raucous rock’n’roll from a distant past.
RO: Tell us about this distant past…
SB: My name is Smuj E Koknokka, and in the summer of 1965 I moved from Ohio – I was a simple farming lad – to the bright lights and big city of LA, but obviously there was no money in it initially so to subsidise my meagre income as a musician, I got a job in the adult film industry as a fluffer, and I was on the set of Gorged that I met the director Ju Ju Sharp, who was a guitarist, and we formed the Repeat Prescriptions. We penned a lot of songs and did a few gigs, we met this gentrified English chap, who was heavily into the brown acid, called Marmaduke Marshall…
AB: Good Evening
SB: …and he was hanging out with a guy called Sandy Hoxton, who was a drummer, who was a surfer boy, wasn’t he?
AB: He liked girls and he liked riding the waves.
SB: Riding waves and women.
AB: That’s all you really need rhythmically. He was always going to be good on drums, wasn’t he? Sandy ‘Sticks’ Hoxton – the ‘Sticks’ is very important, that has to be there otherwise he gets a little bit diva-ish.
SB: What about Brian ‘O Brian’ Brian?
AB: Well he was playing keys for Hendrix, sessioning on some of his work which we don’t think ever saw the light of day, and it was through a friend of a friend we were put on to him and once he jammed with us there was no turning back and that was it.
SB: It was either him or Manzarek, but he was a little bit busy at the time. So in the late sixties – 68 – there was a very real prospect of being conscripted into the Vietnam war.
AB: Being fit, young men, as we are
SB: So we decided that maybe our market might be in the future so we decided to get cryogenically frozen. Keith Moon agreed that he’d ship us back to Brighton because he thought that when we thawed out in the 21st century we’d be a bit freaked out and that would be the ultimate place.
RO: So you’re back?
SB: Yeah, we’re back. We got thawed out last year. Obviously took us a while for our fingers to actually work again so we could play our instruments, but we’ve just started to do gigs again in Brighton – we played one gig already, we’ve got three booked up so far in the next month or so
RO: Which are?
SB: This Sunday, the 22nd, is the Green Door Store for Sunday Service. Two weeks after that we’re playing the Horse & Groom, up on Islingword Road with the Stash DJs, so that’ll be 50s and 60s rock’n’roll music, and then the 24th of February we’re playing the Brighton Ton Club which is a motorcycle enthusiasts day out.
SB: So we’re playing at that, we’re going to have burlesque dancers…
RO: Is that part of your rider?
SB: We’re going to have to start making stipulations for future gigs!
AB: I think we need some platforms for them, to the left and right of the stage
SB: Or if we can’t afford platforms, just get them to wear platforms, so they’ll just naturally tower over everyone else
RO: Next question – Are you planning to put any of this onto record?
SB: Yeah, yeah. We’ve come back and everyone’s doing digital stuff at the moment and I don’t really truly believe that you own something if it only exists as a series of ones and noughts, so I think what we’re going to do is release limited seven inch singles.
AB: Get some plastic out
SB: Make something tangible, it’s important that people can get something that can collect and hold that’s a bit unique, so each sleeve will maybe numbered or something like that.
AB: Something to make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.
RO: So, the blog’s all about Brighton – What do you think it is that makes Brighton such a creative place?
AB: It’s the people, isn’t it?
SB: I think Brighton is the closest we’ve got in England to Laurel Canyon in the Sixties, home to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Jim Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, … They were all neighbours and they all used to play with each other, and I think Brighton’s very similar to that.
AB: It’s a little hotbed of creativity. But only seven people in Brighton are from Brighton, apparently.
SB: Everyone seems like they’re imports.
RO: What are your favourite other bands from Brighton?
SB: I love Abi Wade…
AB: …Gentleman Starkey …
SB: … Lolly & The City of Flies, Lost Dog, Rocker Switch *laughs* <it’s worth pointing out that Simon plays with the last two bands mentioned>
RO: Do you think the success of Rizzle Kicks and the Maccabees (currently in the top five in the singles and album charts respectively) will help the music scene in Brighton?
SB: Well, I think anything that puts the spotlight on a particular area is good. It would be nice if we had what happened in Manchester when the baggy scene started up, everyone was looking at Manchester and there were these bands who weren’t even particularly good suddenly getting some sort of recognition.
AB: I’m going to be controversial and I’m going to say that it’s not going to make any difference, just because those two bands are completely different and they’re not really coming out of any scene.
SB: I suppose so. When the punters think of that, they don’t think instantly Maccabees = Brighton.
AB: I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s ever been a big scene in Brighton. There’s been lots of good bands doing their own thing, and just the ones that are really good at whatever do are the ones that shine. So Rizzle Kicks I think are great – I especially like the one about mums, and the video to that is brilliant.
AB: And the Maccabees are great. I think they’ve always been great, personally. That Pelican tune is fantastic considering they’re all about what, 21, 22?
SB: Still? They can’t be 21,22! They’ve always been 21, 22!
AB: They’re probably all 36. Anyway, I like it. It’s not boring drossy run of the mill indie.
RO: What’s your favourite venue to play in Brighton?
SB: I think the Green Door Store was what Brighton always needed. It’s got that Berlin shabby chic. It looks like a bombed out shell of a building.
AB: It’s very industrial there.
RO: It’s good because you can spill your pint and no one cares
AB: You can spill blood and nobody cares!
SB: All the girls I know there wear quite fancy shoes. That massacres your shoes. It’s basically like dancing on emery boards.
AB: It’s an orthopaedic war zone. That would make a good album title.
SB: It’s a concept album!
RO: So you love the Green Door Store…
SB: And the Albert. I think the Albert’s got great sound.
RO: A lot of the stuff that goes on at the Green Door Store kind of feels like the stuff that would have gone on at the Albert before, but it still feels like the Albert has got loads going on all the time. Any other venues you feel warrant a mention?
AB: The Hope. The sweaty Hope. It is incredibly hot. In the summer it’s almost unbearable but it just seems to be the perfect little sweatbox venue that holds about a hundred people. I’ve got a lot of happy memories from there. I’ve played there a few times, put on gigs there. It’s a weird venue, the road it’s on, you get the passing tourist trade and that can make it quite exciting sometimes. I always thought there was an air of danger from that place because you can get anything from football supporters to the complete other end of the spectrum.
RO: And what about the Hippodrome – the old Mecca Bingo Hall down on Middle street, which has apparently been bought up and is being done slowly up by Live Nation who used to be Mean Fiddler. It’s got history – the Beatles and the Stones played back in the 60s.
AB: Whenever a building of that historical significance, it’s great.
SB: I think it’s inevitable in a city the size of Brighton there’s going to have to be something like that. There is still a city centre gap…
AB: …and it’s going to have to be someone with some money and some clout to make it a successful operation. The only way that would work otherwise would be if you got some kind of community syndicate project to sort it out. That’s obviously not happened so somebody with some clout and some money’s gone in there.
SB: I still think places like the Albert and are going to be perfect for the homegrown bands, because they’re really nice places to go.
AB: It’s going to be touring bands that play at the Hippodrome, anyway.
SB: Anywhere would be better than the Brighton Centre. That’s a horrendous place to see bands. You might as well stick a ghetto blaster in the King Alfred Centre for the sort of sounds you get in there.
AB: I have a feeling it’ll be about the same capacity as the Dome, which does seem to go for the “still touring at the age of 60” middle of the road vibe
SB: It’s a seated thing isn’t it?
AB: That’s why all the good gigs are in places like the Hope or the Green Door Store. So many good ones happen when it’s just you and a fifty or a hundred people.
RO: Last Question: Brighton or Hove?
Both: BRIGHTON!
AB: Hove’s full of estate agents.
SB: Hove’s a little bit snooty. I love this side of Brighton. I love the area where I live.
AB: There’s nothing to do in Hove, except get on a bus and come into Brighton.
SB: Stick us down for two Brightons!
The Repeat Prescriptions play the headline slot at 9pm for the Sunday Service at the Green Door Store on 22nd Jan.
Every third Sunday of the month, Brighton Folk is held, at the Brunswick pub. It’s been running for a few years now and is a pretty established part of the Brighton music scene. Last night, two local acts were on the bill – The Galleons and Peanut Albinos. The evening started off, as ever, with Amy Hill playing a few of her own folk songs.
Amy Hill
The Galleons reminded me a lot of Tunng – they were quite folky with occasional time signature changes, and the interplay between vocalists Ben and Beth hark at their sound too, sometimes harmonising and other times swapping melodies. Six people on stage was quite a squeeze, especially with the bassist swapping between conventional electric bass and a futuristic looking upright electric bass. Still, they managed a lot better than last time I saw them, when they were shoehorned into a tiny corner at the Constant Service in Hanover. With that bit more space, they managed a bigger sound, one which will hopefully be brought to life even more when their new album hits the shelves in a few weeks time
The Galleons
Peanut Albinos might have been playing in the side room at a pub in Hove, but when you closed your eyes, you might as well have been in a whiskey bar in America. Actually, if you ignored the rest of the pub and just looked at the stage, you could easily imagine the same. Sonically, it’s as if Tom Waits were fronting an stateside version of The Pogues. It’s music to get drunk, dance and sing along to. They brought their own crowd along, but they didn’t need to – even without them there, they would have raised the roof.
As you may have seen on Facebook or Twitter recently, there’s a lot of buzz around the upcoming Graham Coxon tour, where he’s offering local bands the opportunity to be the support act. The Brighton gig is on 23rd April at the Concorde 2. If you click through to here, you can see the bands who have been nominated so far. I say that – all you get is how many “suggestions” (which I guess is how may times it’s been tweeted of facebook’ed about) a band has had so far. You don’t get any of the important information, like, say, the band name unless you start a video, then click into the video to bring up the information about it, which is a bit poor in my opinion. It looks like a few bands have got strong campaigns going already, but if your favourite band doesn’t have the most votes, don’t worry, because the final decision is down to Graham Coxon.
So there’s a lot of words on this blog, and quite a few pictures, but the best way of you truly appreciating the music we’re writing about is for you to listen to it. So we’ve started a Brighton Music Blog spotify Playlist, which we’ll update regularly with the bands we’re writing about (if they’re on there).
One thing I’ll ask though, is that if you like what you hear, go and see the bands live and go and buy their records, because it is all about supporting local music. Take a look at this graphic to see why listening to Spotify, with it’s ads or subscription isn’t nearly enough.
The scottish power-pop band The Hazey Janes came back to Brighton last night for a gig at the Green Door Store.
Support came from the Pure Conjecture, a Brighton supergroup of sorts featuring members of Electric Soft Parade, Brakes, British Sea Power, Tenderfoot and Restlesslist.However this was no rambling indie rock in the usual style of those bands.
When lead man Matt Eaton nervously started what was only the band’s second gig you could be forgiven for thinking that he was a terrible singer fronting a makeshift soul band. By the third song the audience was convinced that not only were this group a completely brilliant funk machine in the style of the Dap Kings but that Matt Eaton was one of the finest soul singers on the planet. As he grew in confidence the sound just got bigger and punchier. This was foot-tapping stuff of the top order.
Matt covered Barry White with some verve, and then broke down the show-stopping I love My Car with a long joke about black boxes and working in tele-sales told over a rumbling beat and which made him completely own the stage, working a treat.
Pure Conjecture have an album in the can, apparently recorded in four days featuring a full line-up of 14 people including a horn section. On the basis of this gig it should be brilliant.
Headliners The Hazey Janes had a lot to live up to, following their support.
A big beaty four-piece playing power pop in the style of early 90s American bands such as Velvet Crush, they started in Scotland more than a decade ago but still carry a lot of youthful energy and passion in their music. When they let rip, as they did every other song, the waves of energy were felt around the room. This was garage rock of the highest order. They have a new CD to sell, but if you get the chance to see them live don’t miss it.
Congratulations to Rizzle Kicks on their Brit Award Nomination for Best British Single for their track Heart Skips a Beat with Olly Murs. Good to see Brighton represented!
The full list of nominations for Best British single is:
Adele – Someone Like You
Ed Sheeran – The A Team
Example – Changed The Way You Kissed Me
Jessie J Ft B.o.B. – Price Tag
JLS Ft Dev – She Makes Me Wanna
Military Wives/Gareth Malone – Wherever You Are
Olly Murs Ft Rizzle Kicks – Heart Skips A Beat
One Direction – What Makes You Beautiful
Pixie Lott – All About Tonight
The Wanted – Glad You Came
What if everything we thought about the state of the music industry was wrong? What if the short term view taken by labels where bands get dropped if they don’t go supernova on their first album wasn’t the case, and bands were allowed to ripen with age? Well, maybe that is the case. Because the new Maccabees album, their third for Polydor, is the sound of a band who have quietly grown up.
Just to confuse matters more, they’ve got in Tim Goldsworthy to produce the record. He’s best known with his work with David Holmes and Hercules & Love Affair, but the album isn’t a dance record in the slightest. It’s all very confusing indeed.
And if all you’ve heard so far is the single, Pelican, you might well be wondering what on earth I’m going on about, because that’s exactly what you would expect from the band responsible for Love You Better which was all over the radio a few years ago:
So, just to recap, The Maccabees have grown up, but they’ve put out a single which sounds like The Maccabees everyone knows and loves, and they’ve brought in a dance producer, but made a grown up rock album. Are you still with me? Good.
Given to The Wild is a far more ambitious album than 2009’s Wall of Arms. While a couple of tracks hark back to the choppy guitar sound of old, most of the backing now is laden with reverb and echo and the songs are bigger and slower. Their peers are now no longer bands like the Futureheads – they’ve moved up a league and will now be joining record collections across the country alongside bands like Doves and Elbow. Sonically, there are more parallels with Doves – the chiming guitars, and the ability to still pull out a more upbeat song when called for. This is an album with much wider appeal – their spiky indie now replaced with a shimmering wall of sound which will hopefully propel Brighton’s brightest hope to the big league. Tracks like Child or Heave are slow motion masterpieces that have the potential to open up the band to a whole new audience, but still sit happily alongside tracks like Went Away or Feel To Follow which could easily be singles that the old fans will embrace.
Their gig at the Dome in March is already sold out, as are their upcoming dates in London, which bodes very well. This could be The Maccabees year.
Brighton Music Blog 
