It's been quite a while since I last went to A London Calling night and also my second visit to the new 12 Bar Club in its new home in Highbury. I was hoping they had sorted out the sound problems since my first visit and it seems they are getting there on that front.
We got there in time to see 3 of the 5 bands playing the night. The first band were The East End Baddoes who play proper old school fighting in the middle of East India Dock Road Oi! Yes I'm guessing the song titles as the first song seemed to be called Destroy Me and it came on like a second rate Sham 69 begging to be allowed to play a show at the old Bridge House while being told to sod off they don't let Quentin's play there 'cos it's the wrong side of the canal. Still the Michelin Man pummeled the drums into submission on the Bovver Boy anthem they then played as if they wanted a scuffle more than a beer.
I really liked Don't Wanna Be a Prisoner. That seemed to be about asserting your own personality and the Quentin Geezer on vocals was really working it even if he wasn't high enough in the mix. Yes, he'd probably nut me for calling him a Quentin but that's how it goes. The boys living on the Golden Wonder always got touchy if you called 'em Quentins.
They did a cover of Yesterday's Heroes. I'll leave you to work out if it was The Bay City Rollers or 4 Skins or Barclay James Harvest song of that name, but either way a good slice of the audience was singing along to it and the banter between the band and audience was good-natured even when he accused us all of being Stereotypes.
Poplar Boys was all about the band's heritage as a bunch of Quentins from the Chrisp and how they aren't as hard as the Custom House boys or the Canning Town mob come to that. I have to say having worked the Chrisp once or twice way back when they sounded typical of the guys that we'd have to have an eye on all day long...Oi and Proud seemed to be the next song also celebrating the scene they come from and it had about the best guitar solo of the bands set.
They dedicated Lost Generation to Absent Friends and Colin from Runnin' Riots who died just after last year's Rebellion Festival. They then closed with the band's perfect anthem Alcoholic Heroes, a great song that both of the friends I went with spent the rest of the weekend singing.
Next on and playing their first ever London show and only (I think) second or third gig were The Struggle: a new Northern Oi! Band featuring the two Chris Wrights. The Singer from Crashed Out and the bassist from Gimp Fist! They opened with debut single Cortex Selector which is a good street punk song.
After this, Chris the singer made the right choice by telling the sound man to put more vocals in his monitor which meant they had the best vocal sound of the night. Wake Up is indeed a wake-up call to bring about change and make this a better place to live. This Is My Life sounded like a manifesto although I didn't hear anything about walking huge great dogs and Inking tattoos but I may have missed those lines, still it was a bit raggedy round the edges but not bad.
Hidden Truth Forgotten Youth sounds like the title of a pamphlet of some small agit-punk group trying to recruit new members but the song was good and angry and the two Chris' seemed to be meshing together nicely. They dedicated the next song to all "the Jimmies" in the audience and I hope they got the message. Showing they want to make things better was also at the core of This Is Our Time To Shine which although it sermonizes a bit has a good message among the urgent Oi! Racket the band were making. I really liked the song they did about a Bomber that had some real fury at its core and flew by with a crushing riff at its centre.
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They listed all The Reasons why they want things to change and I think I agreed with most of the ones I could figure out but need to hear the song properly to figure it all out. They finished with Take A Look At you: a touch messy but it will no doubt sound better once they've played a few more gigs. The Struggle will be well worth looking out for on street punk and Oi! bills and hopefully at Rebellion in the future.
Then it was time for some cricket Oi! from Yorkshire's finest purveyors of the genre and one of the bands we discovered at last year's Rebellion festival, Geoffrey Oi!cott. They were down playing a rare London show to help promote their third album that is being released to coincide with this year's Rebellion. They opened with Bail Jumpers that felt like they were trying to score 12 runs off the first over of a test match: an unheard of level of urgency to their game.
That was followed by one of the new songs, The Incredible Shrinking Dickie Bird,which has more mixed metaphors than most bands have pints of beer at a gig. It's great fun and like most of their songs has it's tongue slightly in cheek. Welcome To Yorkshire certainly doesn't fit in Highbury even if we are very close to Piebury Corner (ha!) I can't think of a single Ginnel in the area.
Glory Glory Gary Thompson does what you'd expect it to do and had the singer bouncing around like he was trying to stop a six for much of the song. That was followed by No One Hits Like Geoffrey Oi!Cott; the band's tribute to the maestro himself and while the singer played air guitar on his cricket bat at least this time they didn't hit any balls into the crowd like last time we saw them.
The band outdid themselves in the punning stakes with Fanny Batter On A Sticky Wicket: a real tongue-twister of a song that must have been hell to learn to sing but damn it sounded good. LBW got loads of us singing along to the chorus and was followed by the slightly controversial Robin Hood Was A Yorkshireman. Fights have broken out over less but they seemed to get away with it and the singer's vocals were getting throatier and more enjoyable with every tune.
Pictures of Lillee made me want to see Willey bowling to Lillee once more back in the golden days of cricket before (as usual) they closed with Dawn Of The Dickie Birds, leaving many of us wanting another six overs but not getting them. Either way it was a good end to a fun night in the 12 bar, though we might possibly have missed another band that played afterwards.
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