Heaven or Las Vegas - Elgin in Musical Ruin?

Well I’ll tell you this dear readers . . . I saw the worst live band of my life in the capital only the other day. This band were so utterly depressing all I could do to contain my derision was drink. And drink I duly did, I drank and drank and drank till I was almost civil towards a white tracksuit clad Glaswegian who inadvertently showered my blazer with spittle as he smiled, slurred and promised not to tell anyone I was from Aberdeen. But I don’t want to name this band for two reasons. Firstly they looked properly mental, so mental even bicep baring belligerents like myself know better than to ‘mess’. Secondly whilst the place was packed nobody, bar ‘tracksuit boy’, seemed to be making any efforts at all to dance/smile/clap/foot tap/sway/listen to any of the drivel they were peddling as music, thusly I can deduce they have a fanbase of nil and to reduce this fanbase by the 1000 a week who read my tripe would just be cruel (yeah I was surprised by that statistic too! 1000 visits a week . . . I feel not only honoured but mildly scared).

Anyway I’m yabbering, the point is this band were sooooo poor and annoying I actually became quite aggravated. The next day, a 45 minute cross town early morning walk (don’t ask), misadventure with a letting agent, chaffing boxers, touchy kidneys and poorly styled hair also contributed to my overall mood of despondency. On the train back to Elgin later that day I indulged in a McEwans which was warm and soured my mood further, at the Kirkcaldy stop I was joined by a young woman who persisted in pressing me about what I thought with regards to everything in her copy of The Sun, in Aberdeen my MP3 player died and in frustration I broke the screen with a deft right hook.

Checking my mail after returning from this rather unproductive Edinburgh jaunt, I was confronted with a crumpled 2nd hand Bukowski book I’d ordered online, an unusually pleasant bank statement and a couple of promo CD’s for my listening pleasure.

So vitriolic was my temperament on my homecoming that I decided to utterly abuse the albums submitted for review. I read the spiel about the bands in the cover letter, decided I didn’t like the sound of them and prepared myself for the ensuing critical savaging I was primed to mete out.

The albums sent to me were Billyclub’s new release No justice and a two band effort Skateboarding Down Merlins Hill With Penny Harry by Picture Frame Seduction and True Sounds of the Revolution. All three groups, both albums - were punk.

But punk is dead right? What’s there to be punk about these days? Punk was a reaction, a movement against the lack of jobs, the lack of understanding, the lack of unity, the lack of political awareness, the lack of decent music, the lack of individuality and the general shitness of everything. Personally the things which piss me off the most? Reality TV shows, Silas selling their clothes almost exclusively in Japan, licensing hours and Michael Harts continued and scandalous absence from the Scotland squad. I mean if punk was about raging against ludicrous house prices, wet summers and the poor live action Transformers movie then by all means I can see why it’s still relevant. What I’m getting at here is what’s really so wrong about the world that punk still needs to exist? Aren’t our problems these days just a bit minor?

Anyway this was going to be my opening gambit, ridicule the genre then follow up with the bullet in the head . . . a succinct destruction of the musical merits of the albums in question. But I couldn’t do it. When I put No Justice in the CD player it took me back almost a decade.

You see punk was once my favourite music. Some of the first CD’s I bought were punk. The Sex Pistols, Clash, Sham 69, Generation X, Tenpole Tudor, Ramones then onto NOFX, Fabulous Disaster and Samiam. And you know what? Punk, what it stood for back when I first listened to it, well it’s message meant fuck all to me then just as it means fuck all now. It was just good music to pogo dance and drink beer to. Punk for me was teen excess, energy and mischief rolled into a music form which was undeniably niche. But as the years went on and the likes of Morrissey, Eno, Guided By Voices and Stephen Merritt hijacked my CD collection, punk just became a bit distant.

Slowly as I ploughed through Billyclub’s album No Justice I began to recollect some of the really great punk stuff I had in my collection. I also started to consider whether the original spirit of punk could still be alive. Perhaps it wasn’t necessarily killed off by the punk/pop bands of the 90’s?

Funnily enough Billyclub’s album touches on the theme of justice more than once. Justice for real bands (Changing Times), justice for murdered children (No Justice) and justice for the electorate (Liar). And no matter what your views or politics are you can’t help but listen and feel that Mok, Karl, Jon and Andy believe in what they are singing. You sense its their grievance and therefore by default the listeners. Sure it’s lyrically simplistic, but when a band are this hardcore (yup they make one hell of a noise) they only need their audience to make out the keywords to pass on their message.

What’s also great about Billyclub is that they are no spring chickens, I’m not saying the guys look like they are due bus passes and hip replacements, I’m saying they look like they’ve lived. Which sort of makes the focus of their energy, their unappeasable desire to make themselves heard, slightly more credible than a quartet of spindly 18 year olds with ludicrous hair, whose worst life experience to date involve getting dumped by their girlfriend of six weeks and wetting themselves after a lager shandy too many. Billyclub look and sound like the really raw West Coast punk bands of the US. As a result they aren’t so much rallying against a war, unemployment, or even their perceived lack of justice in the world they are rallying against a self obsessed, superficial society which seems to have lost its soul . . . and that I think is as punk to me as anything.

Picture Frame Seduction

The Sounds of The Revolution and their elder mentors Picture Frame Seduction are again hardcore punk. I’ll not lie here, neither quite got me going the same way Billyclub did, but both bands confirmed my feeling that the punk scene may still have something to offer. PFS are actually an original Welsh 70’s punk group, though from listening to their music you would suspect latterly its been US West Coast bands which have made the biggest impression on them.

Whilst the idea of two bands sharing a single album isn't something I'm overly enamoured with, the two bands here work quite well played alongside one another. PFS and SOTR are certainly cut from the same cloth. Because of this it's perhaps to be expected that there are just a few too many references to rising up and revolutions for my liking - its punk backtracking. But riding the cliche wagon isn't something either band relies on, there are tunes here which range from the bizarre to the droll and the albums a whole lot more interesting because of it. Anyway if your not a lyrical nit picker like myself you'll find plenty in the rough and ready musicianship here to keep you entertained. Punk it would appear isn't quite as dead as I'd thought.

And whilst I may not be trading in my new charcoal finely pinstriped 3/4 length coat and Pronto Uomo brown hand stitched shoes for a donkey jacket, ripped Levi's and stomping boots anytime soon you may well catch me blasting out some Billyclub as i enjoy The Times and pint of IPA.

Written By Hammond