Psicle: Windmill, I Love You

Windmill, I Love You
As we're Hanging Around

Windmill, I Love You
As we're grooving on down

You had a dog on your roof
Barking woof woof

Windmill, I Love You
Including the sport

Windmill, you're younger
And I'm feeling my time

Our records all show
You are filthy but fine

When they stopped smoking indoors

To the back room we de-toured

And we're never bored

Despite all of this time

Etc.

Apologies to James Murphy.

Yes it's another hot night at the Windmill in Brixton that most fabulous of places serving the cutting edge of south London and environs whilst sometimes attracting those from foreign climes who are hitting the scene. And tonight covers all bases. Why the disfiguration of that classic (aren't they all?) LCD Soundsystem track I hear you ask. All will be revealed...

Touch and go as to whether Simon can make tonight but having lit the blue touch paper on SeeTickets, and me lighting it on Dice with no booking fee, ha ha, I arrive at the salubrious venue at the appointed minute to have Simon, Jules and Pete moan at me that I'm half an hour late. I'm not. And I guess better than last time when Pete came when he was out by 24 hours.

First band have just started so we buy drinks and venture stage wards (a few steps) to see the eccentricly fascinating Cosydrive in full flow. The singer / performer is a mix of Morrisey tummy revealing crotch rubbing coyness interspersed with a large dose of Iggy twisty turny jump into the crowd grab someone and shout into their face madness. Which is appropriate given the Mancunian's love of the Stooges. The music is not like either to be honest. Our singer's musician is mainly a bass player with a bit of keyboards / synth thrown in and an occasional stint behind the drums to supplement the inevitable backing drum machine and other pre recorded music emanating from the ubiquitous macbook. The latter is finely balanced on a small stool and in constant danger of being trampled by our energetic front man. The bassist guy is unassuming, well I guess in comparison, but gives a certain edge to the band. And it's nice to see someone at least giving a nod to the drums as he's the only one to bother to bring a kit tonight. He goes off for the last song to the bar although he's hardly broken sweat up there but he supportively comes back to the crowd to clap our MozIgg at the end. He's not the only one, although inevitably we find most of the crowd chatting to the band in the beer garden at the interval, but yeah they are pretty damn good. The singer does hit play on his mac for the start of each song and has a great voice synth. Difficult to tell at times if it's his pure histrionic vocals or if it's going through a synth. Anyway thoroughly entertaining and great theatrics even if I was at times worried about my pint going the way of Jon's at Fighting Caravans (see past missives). And I can reveal the LCD connection. This was reminiscent of the garagey NY scene sort of proto punk not the NY Dolls but more Suicide electronic. It seems to be a theme tonight. As even that's a bit lazy of me as Cosydrive are more than that and range from 80s electronic poppiness to full on screeching banging beats. Simon thinks Pseudio 54 (very good Simon, I wish I'd've thought of that!) but I think a little too out there for that dress code A lister disco and more CBGGs of which T shirt Simon is sporting. Always dressed for the occasion hey. A great start and well worth £2 and even £2.20, if you split the cost by band.

After a brief sojourn in the garden, filled with band and their mates and where ShitKid scrounges a rolly off Pete and chucks Simon's temperamental lighter over the fence into next doors garden, we are back inside for Venture Lows. The Ventures are a 3 piece formed of 2 bassists and guitarist / singer. They have a great sound and again seem heavily influenced by NY proto punk although not the electronic side this time but with a lot of jangly stuff going on reminding Pete of Talking Heads early stuff and I concur. But whereas they were guitar heavy this lot are making full use of 2 bassists who never get lower than 7 in the heaviness scale and at times we hit 9 when the 2 bassists are both banging 7 shades out of their guitars with their overdrive pedals full on (Pete checked those out afterwards). At times they played in a trad bass style and others using them like rhythm and even lead guitars. Great sound. Now I’m not being guitaristist (as in anti guitarists) but the basses (for once) were the main focus with the guitarist fuzzily strumming a grungy input at appropriate moments. Good strong vocals though and the guy can certainly hold a tune. Again, computer generated drums and various other stuff including pre song announcements a couple of times. Simon's again getting in on the lazy comparison act but Vampire Weekend is not so far off this lot. And they both have 2 word band names and begin with V. Another one for the see again if we can catch them list.

Having had Shitkid accost us in the garden previously whilst only whispering as she seemed to say that she had something wrong with her voice we were a little worried that the finale would be a damp squib. Here I'm referring to the front woman as ShitKid as I thought she was a solo artist but we have two women on stage so maybe that's the collective band name. Just as well Pete didn't say "here's the papers no problem Shit Kid" to her earlier. She looked a bit feisty to be honest especially when Simon's lighter didn't work for her. Me telling her to hold it to warm it up and shake about a bit earned me a withering look. To be fair it was about 25 degrees tonight. Our duo start off with an alternative take on modern R&B sort of poppiness but soon fall into full on danceable beats overlaid with a really heavy guitar out grunging all bands before in the shoe gazing stakes. As ever with backing tracks the musicians dabble with various real instruments but it's mainly the singer with a guitar and the keyboard / synthist with the great haircut a little in the background supporting our Kid. Towards the end the keyboardist shows off her head bangingly excellent grunge credentials on the 6 strings by giving us a dose of thrash. Thrash, not thrush. Hee hee, that made me chuckle, I'll remember to use it as a future blog title or maybe it should be our band name Pete. A perfect band name for us to make our Windmill debut. Sorry, I'm off piste and day dreaming. Of course the main beats are computerised. I guess that’s the thing these days, you lay down the basics and then you have the freedom to mess about on top of those. Our ciggie scrounging vocalist seems just as moody on stage although we are close enough to tell that really she's having a ball and lapping up the adulation. Simon thinks Joan Jett but that's a lazier and more tenuous comparison than most of my Hawkwind ones (none tonight notice, but there again....) so maybe I'll ignore future musings by him. And who's blog is this anyways? Jeez it's like having an editorial board writing these now. He even blamed Pete for saying that the first guy was like Steve Hillage but I think that's cos we were chatting about the upcoming Thursday night Glade set by The Orb. But I must thank Jules for her pics as she had a height advantage (stood on the comfy chairs whatever next?!) and a better camera. Anyway. Go see the typically Scandanavian moodiness and musical weirdness that is ShitKid (oh god, is that a bigoted description of Scandanavians? Sorry)

Not bad for 6 quid. 3 bands. 3 singers. 3 bassists although not evenly spread. Quarter of a drummer. 2 synth players. 3 macbooks (I assume they were all macs). 4 punters over 30 (bar regulars who Jules
confirmed get in for free and the bar staff). Another great night at the legendary venue.

A beautiful cycle home on Debbie's Old Dutch with a slight breeze one of those summer nights when it's getting a little chillier but it's nice to be cooled down a bit. Then getting in to hear about the terrible bombing at the Manchester Ariana Grande gig. Good to see Manchester coming together and some of the taxi drivers saying about how they ferried kids home for free brought a tear to my eye. Much more so than the city's football clubs donating a measly £1m between them (on wages of about £1.2m a year each). Whatever differences we have in our incredibly diverse land the fabric of society will not be rent asunder, despite the best efforts of neo liberals and bigots who hate and are scared of a collective society and wish to deny it to further their selfish goals. We are individuals, as the Windmill adequately demonstrates, but we are also a society reliant on each other's good will. Life is not just about cash transactions and policing those you disagree with. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. As Manchester's reaction to the bombing showed quite clearly. I can't say more cos it's election time purdah so I can rant in the pub but not publish stuff.

Hmmm. Right. So I've gone off on one and quoted an ex Beatle. That is a first for my blog I think (the latter, not ranting). So just to get back on track here's the last verse, altogether now....

Windmill, I love yoouu

But your dance floor's too smaaall

It could be a little biggerrr

In which case we'd have had a few moooore

Of us jumping about !

To ShitKid who end !
With a bangingly great finaleeee........