Monday 5 November 2007

it seemed shaky but nice

for some reason my computer has started working again so I'll take the time to do a mega update of sorts.

Friday brought Skalloween to the Exchange in Edinburgh. I went. Here's how it went down:

Barely anyone was there for the first couple of hours (or even later for that matter), didn't stop me from dancing. For the first hour or two, the DJ spun a lot of old ska records, a lot of old Trojan stuff mostly.
First band on were Fandangle. I think they're from the South of England, but the singer was American anyway. Very 90s sounding, like Less Than Jake before they started sounding like Fallout Boy. They did a good cover of What I Got by Sublime, I really enjoyed them.
Another long break with loads of old stuff being played. Surprisingly heard Rudy Can't Fail and Timebomb, surprisingly didn't hear One Step Beyond. Every ska night needs that song. SERIOUSLY.
After that, I was getting pretty tipsy and Bombskare came on. I hadn't seen them before, but I'd heard all about them. They were good, sort of second wave ska sound or two-tone. Obvious comparison is Madness. There was about ten of them but they were a really good laugh.
Wasn't much of a delay between Bombskare and The Toasters. The Toasters were the only band that I had actually heard before, so I actually recognised a couple of tunes. They were tight as fuck and played some really good third wave ska. Think that's about it.

I was going to write about J Church's singer Lance Hahn's recent death too, but I'm in two minds about it. Aw fuck it, here's a little bit on that:

Lance passed away a few weeks ago after being in a coma. J Church are a band that I first discovered about five years ago when I started really falling in love with Jawbreaker. I found J Church through Jawbreaker as they had at one point shared a drummer. This is boring so let me skip to the end:
J Church are the sort of band that I can really dig. They didn't sing about wanting to be famous or anything, they sang songs about the guy who lives on the street, songs about working that job you hated but it was all worth it when that girl came over to talk afterwards, silly songs about wanting to meet Faye Wong. They were a great band, Prophylaxis may well be on of my favourite songs of all time.

That's about all for now, until next time...