Sorry Ellery Bop. Wangford Time, being slightly at odds with the ever-premature GMT, had me striding into the Palais punctually, The Pale Fountains already onstage.
“IS there any hash around?” muttered a passing duffle-coat. For a horrid moment I thought I’d turned up at one of my own gigs, until the jolt of jangly guitars and sixth-form psychedelia assured me I was, after all, somewhere else.
Destined never to be described as The Mighty Pale Fountains, these graduates of the Roddy Frame School Of Stage Presentation nonetheless faced the phlegm and hit back with spunk “Look I’m sensitive and I’m going to be so for the next 45 minutes, so there!” the singer seemed to be hinting. No broad-mind Killing Joke connoisseurs were going to wreck his semi-acoustic romance with the minor seventh tonight.
Occasional cute little peaks in their performance caught them flying (or was that me?) but ignorance of song-craft let the tunes run out of breath, each one staggering to a clumsy halt. Personality is similarly out of fashion, U understand, and the anti-entertainment stance appears to be still in vogue. Given the choice of companions from the stage to share an evening in the pub, I would have taken the mic stand.
The crowd, possible enraged country fans (I sensed the Merle Haggard Militant Tendancy at work), thickened like an animal for the intro tape. D’ya Wanna Be In My Gang was only two bars old and we switched into tribalism mode. “It’s trad, dad”, I reminded departing Pale Fountains followers.
