Saturday, January 13, 2007

Electric Animals / Nigel Clark / Love Bites Birmingham Barfly Friday 12th January 2007


Yeeeh gig time. After a 3 week lull it was good to get back into the saddle again (?!) and hit the Barfly (one of the better venues in dear old Birmingham ). Love Bites, who I am compelled to call a 'feisty female four piece' ('cos that's what a real journo would do) are exactly that. They rock in an '80's poodle perm kinda way and did lot's of posturing and thrashing about. We had a bit of guitar fellatio too...and top marks to Aimee for the beer spray at the end.

It hit me the other day that Nigel Clark is probably one of the few artists that I've followed from the start(ish) of his career (back in 1992 with Dodgy) right through to the current day. Dodgy were, unfairly, lumped in with the whole Britpop thing and didn't really get the success they deserved. The fact that Nigel left the band just as they were starting to get somewhere probably didn't help. I can understand why he did it but can't help wondering whether there's now a little regret? Still, he's back, back, BACK! with an album every bit as good as Dodgy's finest. I suspect if he hit the big time again he'd probably jack it all in again. He seems quite happy playing smaller venues and I'm quite happy to keep watching him (shame he didn't play any Dodgy songs last night though...I hope he doesn't go all Paul Weller on us and refuse to play his classic songs for the next 20 years).

Finally (three bands for four quid...now that's VFM) Electric Animals hit us with a Kasabian/Oasis/Slade (just have a listen to Just Plain Stupid..can't you just hear Noddy belting this out in a 'Coz I Luv you' stylee?)/Led Zep-ish set that was indeed, as their my space page says, peppered with 'filthy, dirty riffs'. Very enjoyable in a familiar kind of way and well worth catching. They are one of many Midlands bands who have the potential to break out and I wouldn't be surprised to see them swept in the record label feeding frenzy that The Twang might cause if they make it big.

There we go then. That's my 2007 gig cherry well and truly popped...I totted up last year's tally the other day and it came to 51. So that's the target to beat. Hmmm, it's going to get messy...

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