Wednesday 24th October 07 - Shoot the Moon, The James Dean Syndrome & Santa's Buggerboyz at Lamp By Philip Wincolmlee Barnes (2/2)

(1/2), (2/2),

I've written about The James Dean Syndrome only recently so, in fairness, I'll keep it brief. I still maintain that their 'blues-spunk explosion' (blame me, not them, for that bit of gonzo phraseology) puts them in the major league of players in this region. They sounded as tight as a...again, I'd best not make too many clumsy analogies here, but I'm sure you get the idea. At their last gig I did find some of their freak-out jams might have risked becoming more interesting for them than for the audience, but here, at The Lamp, they had an urgency and precision of delivery.

They had one of the customary technical hiccups, too, it has to be admitted, which dampened their fiery stride a little; last time an amp blew up, this time the singer and rhythm guitarists got their cables tangled up together. For a band that like to move about a fair bit, and given being on a not particularly large stage, this did hamper them somewhat - like co-joined twins desperately trying to pull an umbilical cord apart. This aside, another confident, focussed and rocking performance from Hull's exponents of why it's good to be alive. Do give up the day jobs, chaps.

Santa's Buggerboyz aren't so much a band, trundling on stage to flog a few tatty wares, as a kind of full on multi-media Dadaist assault. They are probably best known for the year in which they released one album per week. Or, more recently, handing out badges proclaiming that CrackTown Are Dogshit (a running feud which I take to be merely good-natured, rabble-rousing banter). In a moment of near-legendary proportions, they once allegedly upstaged The Fall, by playing that band's set for them whilst Mark E. Smith was too busy pooing himself after destroying his equilibrium through a hedonistic binge. (Note, I did say 'allegedly' there.)

Tonight they took on the mantle of art-rock once more, this time with a set of numbers by Devo, and possibly some of their own. I'm rather ignorant of the aforementioned Devo to be honest, but the SB's (no, that doesn't mean 'sons of bitches') performed a hypnotic, pulsating show of suitably dissonant dimensions. But, at this point, I'll admit that I couldn't say a great deal more about their on stage presence - mainly as they had masked it by the thickest curtain of purple smoke imaginable. The closer you got to the stage (and I'm sure I almost fell into at one point) the harder it was to penetrate this pyrotechnic-style camouflage.

Instead, one only could make them out at all by the blinking lights seemingly attached to their clothes, microphones and instruments. It wasn't altogether certain that they were human at all. A kind of 'Close Encounter with the Third Kind', only with a dirtier, throbbing and more relentless musical backdrop. Highly entertaining, and clearly the band is full of inventive ideas, yet are not po-faced about it at the same time. And long may their colourful, cabaret-like shenanigans continue.

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