As far as great acts, I saw The Levellers in their pomp at a huge outdoor Anti-Nazi event in London as the headliners. It must have been around 1993, I would think. If I remember rightly the crowd was well over 100,000, possibly a lot higher, and we ended up front and center by "stumbling forward by accident" every time there was mayhem for a chorus. Great times.
Who doesn’t. Give them a try. You’ll be a Maggot before you know it. And from there it’s just a short hop to Black Metal, Technical Death Metal, Goregrind, Sludge, Metalcore, Doom and beyond. So many wonderful subgenres to lose yourself in. Not to mention band names from the evocative (Woods of Ypres) to the horrific (Cannibal Corpse) and album covers both sacred (From Mars to Sirius) and profane (Reek of Putrefaction).
That last album cover is not easy to look at. I bought it on initial release and the record store guy in Penny Lane Records refused to handle it and made me put it in a bag before I left the shop. An idea I was fully on board with. It’s not an album cover you want kids on the bus to see. Or anyone come to think of it. I can’t really look at it now, much as I still love Carcass. It was re-released with a clean cover but the original can, of course, be found online. I suggest you don’t bother.
1) This world rushes forward towards its own destruction at an ever faster rate but for some it moves just too fast and they are left behind unable to cope with their reality. Our society shamefully neglects them. The gasroom plays a small part in addressing this with its support for the Samaritans but really government needs to do much more.
2) I am still a little embarrassed that I came on a little too heavy towards one of the forums good guys last week. you know who you are - sorry mate. The internet has many strengths but some downsides too - not least that it has provided a new medium for those seeking power by promoting fear and hatred and distrust amongst the masses and then offering to protect them from the distorted illusion they have created. The old "it may be fine where you are but its terrible over the hill and they are coming your way" mantra has found new life and we are still threatened by the likes of Trump and Johnson and their followers.
I haven't completely given up in my one man campaign to hit back, abandon the outdated God save the Queen/King dirge as our national anthem and replace it with a song with meaning for our times. step forward Elvis...
3) and finally on a lighter note, football is about gently and good naturedly poking the opposition and their supporters. If I held the keys to the PA before the next Bristol rovers game, I don't think I could resist turning up the volume for this one
Your picks didn’t surprise me because you’ve posted or pointed towards several of your favourite bands on here over the years. I struggle with the political stuff, not just because I’ve always tended to be as nearly apolitical as possible - my own picks were highly personal, emotional and introspective - but because I have always had extreme difficulty in following the words of so many songs where the words are clearly more important than the melody. And that is frustrating .
I’m sure many Gasroomers will be surprised by your picks. Perhaps in particular by the third one. Now that to me is a more melodic (and vocally substantially more attractive!!) version of that atrocious thrash which I stumbled across out of curiosity (Toxic Prison Song or some such) - certainly not one of my picks, @Thicketblue !! - and, to a lesser extent, the frenetic Lawrence Arms number picked by @OxfordBlue. Not for me.
@ReturnToSenda: my earlier reference to the toxic lot may have led to your suggestion that I might like Slipknot. I downloaded Psychosocial. 30 seconds was enough, I’m afraid. Definitely a generational, temperamental and emotional thing. Saying which, I find greatest empathy with @Shev and @Erroll_Sims, both of whom come across as lovely guys.
Unforgivably, I only got round to playing Fly Away this morning. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Less than two hours to go to discover MB’s latest picks. One or two surprises, no doubt.
Talking of surprises, mrs micra and I have finally caught up with The Piano on Channel 4. What a wonderful programme. And if you only watch one episode, please make it the first one. Unbelievable.
@DevC interesting choices & thank you for introducing me to Black Water County a band I hadn't come across before but one I will definitely listen to again.
@ReturnToSenda meant to ask this before but which track from The Boxer would you have chosen?
This thread is proving to be wonderful and interesting in equal measure
WTF indeed. It was from an era when extreme metal was still relatively new, bands like Naplam Death and Bolt Thrower getting air play by John Peel in the mid to late 80s. Like movements before it set out to shock and disturb. In this case I think the album cover was a step too far but the band had something. Realised fully on their Heartwork album from the early 90s. A masterpiece of the Death Metal sub genre. Which I appreciate is not everyone’s cup of tea. And much as I love metal in most of its many forms, it’s not my only cup of tea either.
I have no idea of what kind of non-mainstream new music gets major radio airplay these days. I'm a bit too young to remember Peel, but there was Huw Stephens around the late 00s / early 10s - he used to run a pretty decent night at a place called The Social near Oxford Circus. I used to religiously read NME too, although by then it was coming to an end as a weekly mag with a cover price. But, like most people of my generation, I get introduced to pretty much everything by Spotify now.
Have to confess I hadn't read through the entire thread yesterday and missed @micra choice of Richard Thomson's Beeswing as one of his choices. It really is a beautiful song - one of my favourites too. Often I find people tend to prefer the version of a song you first hear rather than necessarily the original and that is certainly the case for me. So for @micra benefit here is my favourite version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onoehPoesAY&ab_channel=stuartbaileymedia and Micra's original https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HApy-Xoix-g&ab_channel=Cleapatr. While we wait in hope for @railwaysteve and family , be interesting to know the independent gasroom view of their preference.
My favourite version of the song was performed at a Mad dog gig but not by Mad Dog himself. He had lost his voice and couldn't perform but they went ahead with the gig anyway (!) with the singing role being performed by other band members, the support acts and random other acts performing in the city popping in for a song, all singing Mad dog songs. Should have been dreadful but most of the audience being seasoned mad doggers and kniowing the songs well. it actually worked brilliantly and is one of my favourite ever gigs. Beeswing was sung absolutely brilliantly that night by the lead singer of the Eskies - a fine Irish folk band. An absolutely memorable performance which sadly isn't preserved on line as far as I know. If anyone can find it, please post it here. Delighted to say I have just discovered that the Eskies have reformed. Don't miss them if you get the chance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF06tQCheWg&ab_channel=RT%C3%89-IRELAND%E2%80%99SNATIONALPUBLICSERVICEMEDIA
They played a couple of times at the White Horse, I found Pauline's pontificating chatting between songs rather boring.
There was a period in the early/mid 90's that saw the White Horse host a number of well known bands. I saw Bad Manners,The selector, UK Subs,Splodgenessbounds there.
The Damned and Kings of Leon and Frank Sidebottom also played there. My favourite gig was Eddy Tempole (Tempole Tudor) mad as a hatter but fantastic and crazy performance that night.
I saw Dream Theater at Wembley going back a few years and one of the support acts was Opeth. During Opeth's set they mentioned that when they came over to England for the first time their debut gig was at the White Horse!
If you want to hear some incredible modern cutting edge metal, check out Thou or The Body. Or better still, from a few years back now. Their The Body and Thou collab album, 'You, whom I have always hated'.
Good to see Bolt Thrower mentioned above. One of the loudest, most brutal gigs I've ever witnessed. Swans holds the record on that front.
I think the band I’ve seen live that I least enjoyed was Audioslave, featuring the late, great Chris Cornell.
Nothing wrong with them as a band, just for some reason I didn’t think their music worked that well live, quite a few introspective mid-tempo tracks rather than the kind of bangers that really translate at a show.
I had a health thing to deal with this morning but @railwaybeth and I are on the case. We have to take it in turns to nominate the music in the car driving home from Wycombe so might take a short while. We might end up doing it separately, which doesn't appear to be against the rules. Please indulge us for a day.
Comments
As far as great acts, I saw The Levellers in their pomp at a huge outdoor Anti-Nazi event in London as the headliners. It must have been around 1993, I would think. If I remember rightly the crowd was well over 100,000, possibly a lot higher, and we ended up front and center by "stumbling forward by accident" every time there was mayhem for a chorus. Great times.
Very left field - Worst band ever seen - Batfish 1990ish. They disbanded the next day!
Best U2 Wembley 1987 when Bono still had a voice.
The Levellers are always good value live, they must be the band I’ve seen the most times.
I wonder if @DevC has looked at this thread?
Who doesn’t. Give them a try. You’ll be a Maggot before you know it. And from there it’s just a short hop to Black Metal, Technical Death Metal, Goregrind, Sludge, Metalcore, Doom and beyond. So many wonderful subgenres to lose yourself in. Not to mention band names from the evocative (Woods of Ypres) to the horrific (Cannibal Corpse) and album covers both sacred (From Mars to Sirius) and profane (Reek of Putrefaction).
That last album cover is not easy to look at. I bought it on initial release and the record store guy in Penny Lane Records refused to handle it and made me put it in a bag before I left the shop. An idea I was fully on board with. It’s not an album cover you want kids on the bus to see. Or anyone come to think of it. I can’t really look at it now, much as I still love Carcass. It was re-released with a clean cover but the original can, of course, be found online. I suggest you don’t bother.
I haven't seen it, but from reading about it... What the f***?
Sorry guys. Gasroom-free day, Friday. Will be back in the morning to reply to/comment on posts addressed to me in the last 24 hours.
Not saying it's the best gig I've ever been to, but Black Angels at Shepherds Bush last night were stunning!
After reading the names of the bands? it’s clear that we share our love for the same football team.
This thread has made it even clearer to me that the only thing I've got in common with most Gasroomers is my love of Wycombe Wanderers, lol.
I'll take that as my introduction.....
Songs with meaning for the club and gasroom?
1) This world rushes forward towards its own destruction at an ever faster rate but for some it moves just too fast and they are left behind unable to cope with their reality. Our society shamefully neglects them. The gasroom plays a small part in addressing this with its support for the Samaritans but really government needs to do much more.
So lets lead off with a song written in memory of one of the victims - Lee Bonsall - by his dad https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-25968401
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsRNP_sYJ0g&ab_channel=PeterWagstaff
2) I am still a little embarrassed that I came on a little too heavy towards one of the forums good guys last week. you know who you are - sorry mate. The internet has many strengths but some downsides too - not least that it has provided a new medium for those seeking power by promoting fear and hatred and distrust amongst the masses and then offering to protect them from the distorted illusion they have created. The old "it may be fine where you are but its terrible over the hill and they are coming your way" mantra has found new life and we are still threatened by the likes of Trump and Johnson and their followers.
I haven't completely given up in my one man campaign to hit back, abandon the outdated God save the Queen/King dirge as our national anthem and replace it with a song with meaning for our times. step forward Elvis...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ssd3U_zicAI&ab_channel=ElvisCostelloVEVO
3) and finally on a lighter note, football is about gently and good naturedly poking the opposition and their supporters. If I held the keys to the PA before the next Bristol rovers game, I don't think I could resist turning up the volume for this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_pAc_R-tUw&ab_channel=BlackWaterCounty
Take a bow, @DevC.
Your picks didn’t surprise me because you’ve posted or pointed towards several of your favourite bands on here over the years. I struggle with the political stuff, not just because I’ve always tended to be as nearly apolitical as possible - my own picks were highly personal, emotional and introspective - but because I have always had extreme difficulty in following the words of so many songs where the words are clearly more important than the melody. And that is frustrating .
I’m sure many Gasroomers will be surprised by your picks. Perhaps in particular by the third one. Now that to me is a more melodic (and vocally substantially more attractive!!) version of that atrocious thrash which I stumbled across out of curiosity (Toxic Prison Song or some such) - certainly not one of my picks, @Thicketblue !! - and, to a lesser extent, the frenetic Lawrence Arms number picked by @OxfordBlue. Not for me.
@ReturnToSenda: my earlier reference to the toxic lot may have led to your suggestion that I might like Slipknot. I downloaded Psychosocial. 30 seconds was enough, I’m afraid. Definitely a generational, temperamental and emotional thing. Saying which, I find greatest empathy with @Shev and @Erroll_Sims, both of whom come across as lovely guys.
Unforgivably, I only got round to playing Fly Away this morning. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Less than two hours to go to discover MB’s latest picks. One or two surprises, no doubt.
Talking of surprises, mrs micra and I have finally caught up with The Piano on Channel 4. What a wonderful programme. And if you only watch one episode, please make it the first one. Unbelievable.
I was being a bit cheeky @micra - they're not my cup of tea either - but fair play for giving it a go!
@micra thank you for your kind words 👍️
@DevC interesting choices & thank you for introducing me to Black Water County a band I hadn't come across before but one I will definitely listen to again.
@ReturnToSenda meant to ask this before but which track from The Boxer would you have chosen?
This thread is proving to be wonderful and interesting in equal measure
@DevC You're supposed to also nominate the next person in the chain.
Apartment Story is my favourite track on that album, but Fake Empire is a superb opener.
Oops sorry @drcongo
can’t be the only one surely to be curious about the combined musical tastes of @railwaybeth and @railwaysteve ?
@micra youvd definitely gone in at the deep end with both Slipknot and System! They both have some ‘poppier,’ or more mainstream offerings!
WTF indeed. It was from an era when extreme metal was still relatively new, bands like Naplam Death and Bolt Thrower getting air play by John Peel in the mid to late 80s. Like movements before it set out to shock and disturb. In this case I think the album cover was a step too far but the band had something. Realised fully on their Heartwork album from the early 90s. A masterpiece of the Death Metal sub genre. Which I appreciate is not everyone’s cup of tea. And much as I love metal in most of its many forms, it’s not my only cup of tea either.
I have no idea of what kind of non-mainstream new music gets major radio airplay these days. I'm a bit too young to remember Peel, but there was Huw Stephens around the late 00s / early 10s - he used to run a pretty decent night at a place called The Social near Oxford Circus. I used to religiously read NME too, although by then it was coming to an end as a weekly mag with a cover price. But, like most people of my generation, I get introduced to pretty much everything by Spotify now.
Have to confess I hadn't read through the entire thread yesterday and missed @micra choice of Richard Thomson's Beeswing as one of his choices. It really is a beautiful song - one of my favourites too. Often I find people tend to prefer the version of a song you first hear rather than necessarily the original and that is certainly the case for me. So for @micra benefit here is my favourite version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onoehPoesAY&ab_channel=stuartbaileymedia and Micra's original https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HApy-Xoix-g&ab_channel=Cleapatr. While we wait in hope for @railwaysteve and family , be interesting to know the independent gasroom view of their preference.
My favourite version of the song was performed at a Mad dog gig but not by Mad Dog himself. He had lost his voice and couldn't perform but they went ahead with the gig anyway (!) with the singing role being performed by other band members, the support acts and random other acts performing in the city popping in for a song, all singing Mad dog songs. Should have been dreadful but most of the audience being seasoned mad doggers and kniowing the songs well. it actually worked brilliantly and is one of my favourite ever gigs. Beeswing was sung absolutely brilliantly that night by the lead singer of the Eskies - a fine Irish folk band. An absolutely memorable performance which sadly isn't preserved on line as far as I know. If anyone can find it, please post it here. Delighted to say I have just discovered that the Eskies have reformed. Don't miss them if you get the chance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF06tQCheWg&ab_channel=RT%C3%89-IRELAND%E2%80%99SNATIONALPUBLICSERVICEMEDIA
Finally, if I may, I almost included yesterday a song that divides opinions. It really moves me but most people I have show it to seem to greet it with a bit of a "meh" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XQrKAr-uaU&ab_channel=TheClazeBand. Views welcomed.
I'll shut up now!
They played a couple of times at the White Horse, I found Pauline's pontificating chatting between songs rather boring.
There was a period in the early/mid 90's that saw the White Horse host a number of well known bands. I saw Bad Manners,The selector, UK Subs,Splodgenessbounds there.
The Damned and Kings of Leon and Frank Sidebottom also played there. My favourite gig was Eddy Tempole (Tempole Tudor) mad as a hatter but fantastic and crazy performance that night.
Just discovered that Bitty McLean is ex Posh and Hull striker Aaron McLean uncle.
I saw Dream Theater at Wembley going back a few years and one of the support acts was Opeth. During Opeth's set they mentioned that when they came over to England for the first time their debut gig was at the White Horse!
If you want to hear some incredible modern cutting edge metal, check out Thou or The Body. Or better still, from a few years back now. Their The Body and Thou collab album, 'You, whom I have always hated'.
Good to see Bolt Thrower mentioned above. One of the loudest, most brutal gigs I've ever witnessed. Swans holds the record on that front.
I think the band I’ve seen live that I least enjoyed was Audioslave, featuring the late, great Chris Cornell.
Nothing wrong with them as a band, just for some reason I didn’t think their music worked that well live, quite a few introspective mid-tempo tracks rather than the kind of bangers that really translate at a show.
@DevC: that’s not the recording of Beeswing that I posted. It was this (in my opinion better) one.
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=YsKEMZW8VmE&feature=share
i also like this Celtic sounding version:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=AEDzJ84A9yE&feature=share
Not my usual thing, @micra but I like the Richard Thompson version and agree that it's better than the one posted previously.
I had a health thing to deal with this morning but @railwaybeth and I are on the case. We have to take it in turns to nominate the music in the car driving home from Wycombe so might take a short while. We might end up doing it separately, which doesn't appear to be against the rules. Please indulge us for a day.