This Machine Kills Wasps on Wednesday!
Plus twenty years of London Loves, and The Highchurches have acquired a bassist
Come and see my band!
And then there were four.
My band, The Highchurches, are promoted for this week’s gig with the poster tagline “might have a bassist soon”, and that vague promise has come true!
Please welcome El, a rabbit-owning librarian, who recently went to America to watch the total eclipse.
El plays violin and other stringy stuff, and is specifically learning the bass for our gigs, which is delightful.
Tickets remain available for Wednesday’s show at The Folklore Rooms, headlined by the amazing Jason Pegg, who I interviewed last week.
The ticket options include the special and possibly not entirely serious “The Highchurches Will Write A Song On The Topic Of Your Choice” tier.
I have heard rumours of someone planning to buy one of these the night before the show, which is a very mean gambit which gives us no time to write anything good. I am therefore entirely in favour of it.
London Loves (The Mystery Of A Speeding Car)
D-train reminds me it’s been twenty years since we first attempted our Dean Street indie disco, London Loves.
It’s quite strange to imagine putting on a similar night now. Despite the Britpop-heavy branding, ours wasn’t a nostalgia night. New tunes from the likes of Art Brut, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Franz Ferdinand peppered the playlist.
These were songs that got enough radio play to hit that sweet, sweet intersection between stuff we liked and stuff enough people knew about to dance to.
And gave us the freedom to play stuff slightly more niche.
I do occasionally dream of bringing London Loves - or some kind of indie disco - back to life, in Brighton, the place I identify as living in.
Sheffield’s venerable Offbeat shows it can still be done, though Dr Chris has kept up with the indie zeitgeist a lot better than most.
What’s more, his regulars - ranging in age from teenagers to the over-50s - trust him enough to dance to the new and unfamiliar. That takes a lot to build up, as far as I can remember.
Plus, club nights now often play a little bit of everything, and I wonder how an indie night would do in a world where musical tribalism, for better or worse, is mainly known and entirely marketed as a retro pursuit.
Also, I’m not sure where my records are.
Bits and other pieces written by me
🎸 Promoting gigs in the collapsing digital age: tricky.
🇹🇷 A tale of two cities, cocaine, and the dubious concept of “the expat”
🎭 We had a really good Next Level Sketch show last week. Next one is Wednesday 26th June, our last Hoopla show til the autumn.1
That’s it for today! Have a lovely weekend all x
We are, however, performing in Bristol in August!