Shonen Knife, BMX Bandits, and The Cords
In which I rave about a gig, and find ways to make it ever so slightly relevant.
Given that I’m inevitably going to run short of things to post about before I start repeating things I thought I’d slightly stretch the remit of the Tuesday posts to include other, music-related things that cross my path, although where possible I’ll try and sneak in a connection to AHFoW - which for today’s post is two thirds fairly easy, and one third a stretch! If anyone objects I can either not do this in the future, or pull it into a separate subscription. Please let me know!
On Saturday afternoon Shonen Knife made their long-promised visit to Sunderland, a city on the Tyne & Wear Metro and therefore fairly easy to get to, and since it was a matinee show, nice and easy to get home from at a sensible time.
I mentioned to Hazel that I was planning to go to this show a while back and she surprised me by saying that she’d like to come along - in retrospect I guess not really that much of a surprise because there’s nothing not to love about Shonen Knife, but she doesn’t say “yes” that often!
Shockingly, for a band as long-established as Shonen Knife this was to be my first time seeing them live, I’m genuinely surprised that in that all of those years living in London and seeing multiple gigs a week that they and I had somehow managed to avoid each other. So, it was quite important that I fill that gap!
The show was to start at 1:30pm which meant leaving home shortly before 12… although since we arrived just after 1, just as the rain started coming down, we could have left it later. However this did mean that, we didn’t get too wet, we got a prime spot close to the stage, and we had some wall to lean on. The last two were fairly important: one, for a good view and two, because we’d have more than three hours on our feet. Beers were bought and we waited for the first of the two support acts.
The Cords
The Cords are, according to their Bandcamp profile: “a Scottish, jangle, DIY indie pop sister duo who channel classic C86 straight from the heart” which is as neat and accurate a one-sentence summation as you could possibly get. Eva does the singing, guitaring, and song intro-ing, while Grace does the drumming. Nothing else required.
Recently they have been turning up on my radar with quite alarming regularity so finding out that they would be playing at a gig I was going to anyway was a nice surprise. They played a 40 minute set of punchy indie pop that - more than at any time in the last six years had me yearning for Indietracks. They were even playing in daylight, and we had just been rained on so we were getting the full Indietracks experience!
They finished their set with a cracking cover of The Pains of Being Pure at Hearts “Come Saturday”:
AHFoW CONNECTION: OK, this is the one that’s a bit of a stretch,,, and took a few hops…
The Cords -> Come Saturday by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart -> Kip Berman of The Pains covered Galaxie 500’s “Tell Me” in the run-up to the Covid-affected Record Store Day release of Copenhagen.
BMX Bandits
Next up were BMX Bandits, who I have seen on quite a few occasions over the years, last time at Glas-Goes Pop last year. This time they were playing as a duo, just Duglas singing (and kazooing) and Andrew doing everything else, including pressing the buttons to start the backing tracks that were making up for the missing band members. Duglas is such an adorably charming performer - sweet and funny and open and honest. The two played 40 minutes leaning fairly heavily on last year’s Dreamers on the Run record. A lovely, and occasionally heartbreaking set.
AHFoW CONNECTION: BMX Bandits covered Galaxie 500’s Tugboat, with help from Angel Corpus Christi, for Elefant Records fantastic Snowstorm: A Tribute to Galaxie 500 album back in 2001.
Shonen Knife
I can honestly say that I have never seen a band enjoy themselves as much as Shonen Knife seem to. They’ve been on this tour for months, and are still the smiley-est band I’ve ever seen… they also rock, much harder than I expected. I mean they were, at times, so close to a metal band that I started to regret my lack of hair. They threw poses, they did the sign of the horns, they came to the front of the stage and head-banged. OK… Raven and Saxon and Girlschool didn’t sing songs about Banana Chips, or Cookie Day, or the power of sweet candy, but the way it made me feel was the same!
They played an hour or so of this beautiful, relentless, power-pop-punk-metal, finished with their lovely cover of The Carpenters Top of the World and left us to go and smile on Glasgow.
Now, they were all so smiley … but not equally so… Risa, played an hour of full-on rock drumming, including occasionally while on her feet, sang a couple of songs, and never stopped looking like she couldn’t believe how wonderful everything is! When she became a member of Shonen Knife 10 years ago she wrote on Facebook that she’d “like to play the drums powerfully and cheerfully with a smile” - achievement unlocked!
AHFoW CONNECTION: Dean Wareham added guest backing vocals to Under My Pillow on Shonen Knife’s 2006 album Genki Shock. This was recorded in Osaka while Luna were on their farewell tour in 2005 - a short clip of the session was released as a deleted scene on the DVD of Tell Me Do You Miss Me:
So, gig over, we headed out back into the rain, back on to the Metro to Whitley Bay, and a walk along the beach home. That was a pretty good Saturday.
I must admit to being quite selective of my gigs these days so rarely go to a show I don’t enjoy, but there are very few that I’ve enjoyed as much as I enjoyed my Saturday afternoon with Shonen Knife, BMX Bandits, and The Cords - and, let’s be honest here, being able to get home while it was still daylight has become something I appreciate more as I get older.
