The Von Detroit Soledad Stripes

I figured, now I have a blog, I have permission to rant / rave as much as I like about gigs, concerts, performances I go to see.

Recently we've been going to a succession of concerts by bands from a fairly closed community in America. It all started when, a couple of years ago, my dear friend Andy loaned me "De Stijl", the second album by a then-unheard-of band called the White Stripes. It was pretty good, and I acquired a couple more of their records. Of course, this was about the same time they made their great break through, but before they achieved the position of "the NMEs favourite wet dream" which they occupy now. And through listening to them, and reading what they had to say, my friends and I discovered a host of similar bands: The Soledad Brothers, the Von Bondies, the Detroit Cobras, etc. They're all vaguely similar, but pretty good to listen to.

Now, we've managed to see each of these bands once in the past 6 months (we've seen the White Stripes twice - not necessarily a good thing), and one very interesting thing has come out of it. It seems the better the band, the smaller the venue. Let me explain...

We've seen the White Stripes twice, as I mentioned. The first time was at Brixton Academy. Now, I'd had my knee operated on, and was fairly immobile, so not in the best of moods for the gig. But they were OK - the acoustics didn't do them justice, and they were slightly po-faced when compared to the inspired lunacy of their support band, Whirlwind Heat (utterly dreadful, but very funny. The bassist had his instrument stolen from him mid-gig by the singer, then spent the rest of the time alternately giving the drummer a shoulder massage and kicking the singer who was writhing on the floor in ecstasy).

The second time was at the Alexandra Palace (I refuse to call it "Ally Pally" because that sounds ridiculous). It's a massive venue and they were mediocre at best. The crowd was full of Hoxton trendies (that's me being as polite as I possibly can) who shoved to the front for "Seven Nation Army" and then buggered off to the bar. Jack White though was a gimp. I swear, I thought many times I was at a Darkness concert. He was wearing skin-tight lycra and every song had a 15-minute guitar solo appended to it. Which is OK for a couple of songs, but gets thoroughly tedious by the tenth song.

So all-in-all, fairly poor.

The next biggest venue was the Astoria, where the Von Bondies played. Here they were supported by The Subways, who were pretty good, in a cut-price-Pixies kind of way. They won the Glastonbury unsigned band competition, and have been touring ever since. Of course, it didn't hurt their chances that the female bassist was wearing the shortest denim skirt since Jordan last stepped outside for a fag...Anyway, so far so good. The next band, Auf Der Maur, were not to my tastes, but lots of people enjoyed them. I maintain that no band needs three guitarists, a keyboard player AND a bassist, but Melissa Auf Der Maur was a compelling frontwoman - she was pretty chatty and engaging.

Then the Von Bondies headlined. I think the NME summed it up best when they said that "there were about 11 songs that couldn't be told apart except for DNA testing". It was a nice trick to have the female backing vocals around the Jason Stollsteimer wail, but there was very little interaction apart from a totally limp "blues-preacher-man" plea at the end "to feel the love". It was totally hackneyed and unconvincing. Coupled with the fairly middling standard of most of the material, you come away with the result "fair-to-middling".

The Soledad Brothers played Jongleurs. Small, and very sweaty, but far more suited to the rootsy blues they were doing. Again they did the "blues-preacher-man" thing, but the difference was, they kept it up from the start of the gig to the end. They chatted, they bantered, and never let the personae drop, thus making it a lot more convincing. That coupled with the mental Baritone sax playing led me to decree that this was a Good Gig.

Finally, we saw the Detroit Cobras last night in ULU. They were far more countrified than any other band we'd seen, but the lead singer was engaging, sarky, and chatty. It made the atmosphere totally different, and consequently, everyone enjoyed the gig far more. Again, another Good Gig.

I'm rushing here a bit, because I'm conscious this is a mammoth post. But basically my point in all that the smallest venue we were at was Jongleurs, and it was the best gig by far, despite the fact that not many people had heard of the band. Conversely, the biggest gig was the Alexandra Palace performance by the White Stripes, and it was limper than Kenneth Williams' left hand. But it got the most coverage, which is slightly unjust. It just goes to show, that although a lot of people may have heard about a band, it doesn't necessarily mean they'll be good live.

It's clear that you can't expect to enjoy a gig by a band on the basis of their reputation alone. Unless they're the Pixies...