A great Anglo-French bill of quality punk and rock n’ roll!
If you’re relatively new to Punktuation, and you’ve wondered why we seem to see this band Shake Some Acton every other week, it’s because it isn’t a band – it’s a promoter called Mannie, & we interviewed him earlier this year. Anyway, he’s a great bloke, he puts on loads of great gigs, and if you like quality punk & rock n’ roll, SSA should be on your radar.
Johnny Moses And The Electric Motherfuckers have the unenviable task of playing an opening slot to only a few folks, but give it their all anyway. There’s a certain band-as-gang aura (albeit a very sharply-dressed gang) to the trio, and it’s hard to imagine that a band could play this tightly without knowing each other like the backs of their hands. The handful of new songs sound great, especially Jonny’s nimble-fingered guitar work on ‘Rivers Of Blood’. Put simply, if you think you like the sound and spirit of first-wave punk, but you don’t like these guys, then you may not be as much of a punk fan as previously thought. A great start.
Trash Culture take a scrappier, more abrasive and confrontational approach. There’s something delightfully unsettling to the likes of ‘Get Out’ and ‘Me Myself And You’, as if they were written following an acrimonious break-up, and they’re delivered by an absolute live wire of a vocalist. He somersaults off the stage; he charges head-first into the crowd; he grabs a chair and balances on it precariously during the closing ‘Can’. Why not? Of all the bands that play this evening, they give the strongest indication that they’ll do as they damn well please, and isn’t that the very essence of punk?
Cold Blossom’s guitarist/bassist (he alternates between the two instruments) has about 20-odd effects pedals, so we anticipate plenty of sonic wizardry à la Tom Morello, and we’re not wrong. The French trio bring a touch of hard rock and grunge to proceedings, and they have an impressive stage presence for just a trio; getting some call-and-response action for ‘All Eyes On Me’ and unleashing the seismic riff of ‘No Blame No Shame’ with palpable glee. You get the sense that the best is yet to come from these folks, but as UK debuts go, this is definitely one that they can be proud of.
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, and although he’s recently taken Australian rock n’ roll legend Angry Anderson (RIP), he’s given us The Spitters. From the moment they take the stage to a wall of guitar noise, brandishing their instruments like machine guns, we know we’re in good hands. The French quartet have long since found the sweet spot between garage rock and power pop, and quite simply, they do not play a single bad song this evening. Whether working up one hell of a sweat during the huge sonic wig-out after ‘You Say No’, or going straight for the jugular on gems like ‘There Are Lights’ and ‘You And I’, they sound absolutely huge, and can’t fail to get us moving. Rock n’ roll is very much alive, people, and Angry Anderson would be proud of this lot.
Cheers to Shake Some Acton for having us and for giving us yet another great reason to leave the house on a mid-week evening! Check out details of future gigs via the link below.
All Photos: ALEX GOOSE
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I spend my days teaching English to foreign students, and my evenings attending as many gigs as possible. Raised mainly on a diet of 90s third-wave punk, my tastes have grown to include just about anything from trad ska to thrash metal. The Ramones are my musical gods.
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