Thursday, September 20, 2007
You Can Sleep While I Drive
To Lancaster and LAWM, a music night put on by a generous spirited promoter in a room above a pub.
We met Looby there and a couple of his friends, A and M, and it was very good.
It was a 'find a patch of floor that's not too sticky and sit on it' sort of event, a kind of lo-fi Crufts with less poodles and no Clare Balding. To raise the stakes, someone (ie. emphatically not me) kicked over my drink so I asked the girl behind the bar if I could borrow a mop. She looked at me as if I'd asked her to go and find the nearest 24 hour Tesco then buy one out of her own wages. When she returned from downstairs, mop in hand, she refused to let me do my own mopping, shooting me with a withering glance that said “Yeah, like I'm going to let a man who can't keep his own glass upright loose with the pub mop.” I felt like I was putting the men's movement back twenty years.
The bands weren't anyone I'd heard of before.
There was a German girl called Golden Disko Ship, presumably not from birth, who wore a tin foil blouson and made an enjoyably raucous din with the aid of a guitar, a MacBook, and a dancing electric kitten whose eyes lit up in time with the racket.
Next up was Pacific Ocean Fire, who look and sound like they're from Texas but are actually from Leicester. They were pretty good in spite of, or perhaps even because of that.
After that it was the turn of The Lovely Eggs: two grown adults who performed with the willful petulance of over-indulged ten year olds, and oddly enough sported the same pudding bowl haircuts that my dad created for me when I was that age. They quickly drove a large section of the audience to the downstairs bar – us included – until their set was over and it was safe to return.
The main act was Josh T. Pearson, who is a curious egg indeed. Like Johnny Cash undergoing primal scream therapy, he was the hairiest singer I've ever seen and wore a cowboy hat and extremely tight trousers, which could explain a lot. His style was to build layer upon layer of acoustic guitar reverb until it was virtually unlistenable and then wail “Jesus, why do you hate me?” and suchlike as a kind of tormented icing on the Cake Of Angst.
At one point I scribbled a note and showed it to Girlfriend which read “He sings like a man having his leg sawn off.” I enjoyed it enormously but not enough to buy a CD afterwards.
We both enjoyed meeting A & M too, so much so that I offered the latter a lift home to save her ordering a taxi, batting away her Thanks, but it's quite a way actuallys with nonchalent Don't be dafts, and her But it's in the opposite direction of where you're goings with gallant It's no problem at alls.
And of course I didn't mind, though to her credit it was every bit as far as she'd said, only doubled, which I'd forgotten to take into consideration, on account of it being utterly in the wrong direction.
Still. You can't beat rural North Lancashire at ridiculous o'clock on a school night, driving along in a considerably more reliable motorcar with the jukebox on, the stars shining brightly in the black, black sky like beacons to guide you home, and your true love by your side, alternately gently snoozing and singing along to some of the drippiest 70's schmaltz known to man, and not dribbling in the slightest.
We met Looby there and a couple of his friends, A and M, and it was very good.
It was a 'find a patch of floor that's not too sticky and sit on it' sort of event, a kind of lo-fi Crufts with less poodles and no Clare Balding. To raise the stakes, someone (ie. emphatically not me) kicked over my drink so I asked the girl behind the bar if I could borrow a mop. She looked at me as if I'd asked her to go and find the nearest 24 hour Tesco then buy one out of her own wages. When she returned from downstairs, mop in hand, she refused to let me do my own mopping, shooting me with a withering glance that said “Yeah, like I'm going to let a man who can't keep his own glass upright loose with the pub mop.” I felt like I was putting the men's movement back twenty years.
The bands weren't anyone I'd heard of before.
There was a German girl called Golden Disko Ship, presumably not from birth, who wore a tin foil blouson and made an enjoyably raucous din with the aid of a guitar, a MacBook, and a dancing electric kitten whose eyes lit up in time with the racket.
Next up was Pacific Ocean Fire, who look and sound like they're from Texas but are actually from Leicester. They were pretty good in spite of, or perhaps even because of that.
After that it was the turn of The Lovely Eggs: two grown adults who performed with the willful petulance of over-indulged ten year olds, and oddly enough sported the same pudding bowl haircuts that my dad created for me when I was that age. They quickly drove a large section of the audience to the downstairs bar – us included – until their set was over and it was safe to return.
The main act was Josh T. Pearson, who is a curious egg indeed. Like Johnny Cash undergoing primal scream therapy, he was the hairiest singer I've ever seen and wore a cowboy hat and extremely tight trousers, which could explain a lot. His style was to build layer upon layer of acoustic guitar reverb until it was virtually unlistenable and then wail “Jesus, why do you hate me?” and suchlike as a kind of tormented icing on the Cake Of Angst.
At one point I scribbled a note and showed it to Girlfriend which read “He sings like a man having his leg sawn off.” I enjoyed it enormously but not enough to buy a CD afterwards.
We both enjoyed meeting A & M too, so much so that I offered the latter a lift home to save her ordering a taxi, batting away her Thanks, but it's quite a way actuallys with nonchalent Don't be dafts, and her But it's in the opposite direction of where you're goings with gallant It's no problem at alls.
And of course I didn't mind, though to her credit it was every bit as far as she'd said, only doubled, which I'd forgotten to take into consideration, on account of it being utterly in the wrong direction.
Still. You can't beat rural North Lancashire at ridiculous o'clock on a school night, driving along in a considerably more reliable motorcar with the jukebox on, the stars shining brightly in the black, black sky like beacons to guide you home, and your true love by your side, alternately gently snoozing and singing along to some of the drippiest 70's schmaltz known to man, and not dribbling in the slightest.

It kind of goes without saying, but this is my blog. I own it. Slightly daft MP3 disclaimer: All MP3's are posted here for a limited time only. Music is not posted here with the intention to profit or violate copyright. In the unlikely event that you are the creator or copyright owner of a song published on this site and you want it to be removed, let me know.