A second SHAKE SOME ACTON gig in two nights? Surely too much?? And yet, here I was, this time at the Fiddlers Elbow just two stops down the road from last night’s debauched evening at the Hope & Anchor, this time with a full-on line-up of five bands, promising an evening of cracking garage and punk.
I hadn’t seen talented Johnny Moses for ever, since I had caught him playing with the crazed but excellent Chinese Lungs back in the day. His Electric Motherfuckers opened proceedings with a tight set of controlled rock n roll numbers, concluding with a cool rendition of the Jam’s ‘News of the World’.
Haunted Men from East Anglia were on next. Staking a claim for the most heavily tattooed man of the evening (he absolutely won), frontman Criss Damage, former drummer with Demented Are Go!, gyrated his way around the stage, not to mention his clothing (at least he kept his pants on) and a collection of socks, to pulverise our ears for forty minutes with a storming set of rough and ready garage punk. Criss claimed that the band were all “nice guys”, well, except for the drummer Big Mike Waters, who has been a professional wrestler for many years. Not sure I would be dissing him live on stage, personally.
A lighter note was struck by trio Nervous Twitch, who visually and aurally managed to successfully combine a kind of 1960’s pop feel with a punk energy. Singer/bassist Erin has nailed an aura of Paloma Faith with bite; these guys manage to deliver songs about life and sometimes getting a bit down, but in a really upbeat way. I will want to catch these again soon!
Just when you are thinking you have seen it all, on come The Noir Mates. Their Facebook blurb describes themselves as a “darkly voyeuristic journey into the minefield of modern living“. The Noir Mates are theatre with a musical twist. Hiding in shadows underneath black bolero hats, like a sort of gang of goth cowboys, they managed to pull off a haunting set of unsettling and ominous tunes with hypnotic and occasionally shouty vocals, sometimes in literally in your face shouty. Deeply disturbing.
And so on to Human Toys the headline act of the evening, all the way from Paris, garage punk pair Poupée Mechanik (with her theremin) and Jon von on guitar treated us to an unrelenting three quarters of an hour of raw French Ramones-style guitar and ferocious vocals, with occasional whiny theremin expertly waved by Poupée. Jon just about got the loudest cheer of the night when he invited the crowd to yell “Fuck Trump”. I’m sure he must have been talking about the snooker player, maybe he has a strange kind of grudge.
And so another successful SSA night concluded. I will be going again very soon!
Photographs and review by Phil Watts
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