Sunday 31st July 06 - Benefit Gig at Staks Bar (5/8) By Joe Hakim Photos By Roland Standaert

(1/8), (2/8), (3/8), (4/8), (5/8), (6/8), (7/8), (8/8).

Photograph Gallery   Gallery 1,    Gallery 2,    Gallery 3.

The lead singer Ryan has a really distinctive almost feminine vocal quality, and the band hammer it home with their last couple of numbers. Whiskey Bar even threatens to swing into a bit of Kings Of Leon countrified groove. It's the first time that I've seen The Applewhites and I'm suitably impressed. They're another band that I'll be seeing again as soon as possible. After The Applewhites leave the stage, the strange blank feeling - the black cloud of narration - threatens to descend again.

The needless, narcissistic, internal first-person monologue that defines my music musing begins to form in my head, but the appearance a scruffy kid with a guitar shatters it, and I look at the stage thinking, what the fuck is this, then?

This guy on stage has long hair that covers the shoulders of his flannel shirt. His jeans are ripped and patched. There's no attempt to try and dress like the uber-cool Landaus, Applewhites or Dreamers. In fact, no one seems to notice this guy hit the stage at first. He takes his guitar and hits a chord, fiddles with the tuning. And then he plays. It's completely unique. Little acoustic ditties that swing between lumbering falsetto verses and screaming choruses - the guy is really fuckin' belting it out. People that thought that this was a little break for them to get drinks are sonically slapped in the mush and then drawn into this intense performance.

Then he hits us with the clincher, the sucker-punch. Satisfied he has the crowd's attention, the guy launches into a cover of Crazy Right Now. Yep, that's Crazy Right Now the Beyonce track. He dissects the track like a vocal surgeon. A slick American R'n B production from one of the world's most popular female singers is taken apart and then put back together on stage as something totally new.

It is transformed into what I can only describe as a voodoo flecked chant-a-long, and then the chorus hits, screamed out at such a volume that Kurt Cobain's ghost grumbles and leaves the pub. The jaws hitting floors cliché might be one too far, but it's the only one that fits. By the time this guy leaves the stage, everyone in the full place is well and truly gob-smacked. The crowd goes nuts. I later find out that this guy is Matt from the Edible Five Foot Smiths. I am informed that the band is on the hold at the minute, so, right, well...in the unlikely eventuality that Matt is reading this I'd like to make the following appeal: more craziness soon, please - I don't care how or where, but I need this kinda weird-arse shit in my life. Send me a CD. Do a gig in my front room. Just do something...

I don't even have time to recover because The Dirty Dreamers are up next. I grab another pint as the lads take to the stage. They open with Disease and Overload. The Gibsons and Marshalls are cranked up to ear splitting volume and the chunky riffs lead to an all-out assault from the rest of the band. They just fuckin' nail the crowd to the wall. It doesn't let up. 3 Lives kicks in, and I'm like, Jimmy Page? Who the fuck's that? and I'm thinking that the fuckin' roof's gonna blow off the place. The lead singer Ash stomps about waving his maracas in the faces of his band-mates, taunting them, daring them go faster, louder, harder.

Continued..... Next Page (6/8)

Check the thisisUll.com Gallery Photographs courtesy and Copyright ©  Roland Standaert 2005

Photograph Gallery   Gallery 1,    Gallery 2,    Gallery 3.

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