Spiked on a Fence of Guitars

This morning I woke up and immediately discovered that I had solved a clue for the crossword puzzle on which I had been stuck the previous day. “Artichoke!” I shouted, or whatever the hell it was. Remembering where I was, I shut off the alarm and leapt happily out of bed in a manner whose theme tune would almost certainly be along the lines of the Muppet Show:

It’s time to get on up
It’s time to get some food
It’s time to get some coffee and then fuck off to work...

This is a marked contrast to Sunday morning. That was not a morning on which Nico would croon softly over the Velvet Underground...I had a hangover you could photograph and my head felt like a Guns N Roses guitar solo falling down the stairs. But in my mangled state I still felt a strange sensation of disappointment and it took me a few cups of coffee to work this one out. Eventually I remembered what I had done the previous night.

Last year, Adam Buxton starred in a comedy-drama called The Last Chancers in which he played the frustrated lead singer of a band going nowhere. He gets the chance to pitch his band to the Industry, and he is determined to put across the fact that his band is full of original ideas. The dialogue went vaguely like this:

“So you’re full of unique musical ideas?”
“Oh yes.”
“What kind of music do you play?”
“Well, sort of spiky, angular guitar pop...”
“So just like everybody else, then.”

Indeed, and this is a lesson we have to learn. Now every nineteen year old in the country spends an hour each morning with a pot of hair gunk; their goal is to define themselves by copying a bunch of nitwit American musicians. This has always been so, but from a musical angle it is depressing to see that the high water mark for angular guitar pop has not yet been reached. The hair thing is merely part of it.

There is a feeling of malaise and making-do here. Many people come together at university because they want to be in a band and frequently they are bound together by the love of a particularly energising music. Currently this would be the bloodline said to begin at the Strokes – betting without, of course, their own influences. The problem is when this bloodline flows undiluted through the veins of the new generation, unsullied by any original ideas.

Many of us argue that this is the industry’s fault for clamouring to sign up clones of whoever is successful at the time, and this is true to a degree. But spend a week bouncing around the average student union and you will find a hell of a lot of average students, all playing average songs that tap into these ever-weakening bloodlines. This is what they want to play. Where the hell is the Good Stuff, the original ideas, the breath-taking punch to the ribs that takes your breath away and steals your soul? Being good or original is not uncommon. Being both is.

And so we arrive at last Saturday night, central London. A band whose name I cannot recall playing at a venue whose name I never learnt. In a world not polluted by NME blight this should have led to something positive, a wonderful and secret discovery of something Good and Hidden.

Instead, they played spiky, angular guitar pop.

They were cheerful and lively and announced that they were about to launch a single, which the played on the night. It was...hell, it was pleasant enough. But balls to pleasant enough. It was any port in the musical storm. This is why I rarely go to the gigs of guitar-based bands unless I know in advance that they are more than Any Good.

So what else can I say? The singer bounced around the small stage like Tigger in a pit full of snakes. The guitarists bobbed back and forth in that familiar and silly guitarist non-dance we have all seen a thousand times. The sweat-laden drummer thrashed about and watered the stage like a lawn sprinkler during the more energetic drumming sequences. Business as usual.

They are not a bad band, just a desperately familiar one...they are the pissed second cousin you do not remember at a wedding who spends the reception jabbering on about how much he is “not a racist but...”, before kissing you on the cheek and demanding your address so he can come and stay at your house next time he is in the area. You cannot quite put your finger on the problem until he throws up on your good shoes.

Still...groups like them are the bread and butter of the band scene and a hell of a lot of people bounce around to their music. And it would be remiss of me to ignore the fact that this band did had one great song that I believe would sit well in the weekday BBC 6 Music schedules.

But, crucially, this wasn’t the single and I have already forgotten how it goes. And, worst of all, the only chance I had at remembering the band’s name was a badge one of their ample-chested minions gave me that promptly fell through the hole in my pocket.

Hmm...one of these days I really must develop a short term memory.