“Unfinished Sympathy” – a BLOOD BROTHERS review/rant
“Like a soul without a mind
And a body without a heart
And I’m missing every part” (Tina Turner)
There’s almost too many great live shows and parties going on here and there’s so much music that feels so fresh and intense and makes me so happy at the moment, it’s awesome.
That’s why I’m totally burned out today and stay at home although it’s Saturday night and Egoexpress is playing, and there’s a lot of nice parties, and a friend celebrates her birthday – have a nice one, Plappi!
Before I shove my lazy body over to watch ‘Anatomy’ on TV I thought I’d share some impressions with you but I will post it as extra blogs, as I already know that some reviews will be a bit longish. I’ll write about Blood Brothers, Panthers, Nurotic Soundsystem plus Elektronisch Rocken minus Sickboy, Yellow Press, Trainspotting Festival, Sophisticated Boom Boom Party, Washer + Jamie Lidell.
BLOOD BROTHERS played at K4 on august 30 with WHITE CIRCLE CRIME CLUB. I missed almost all of WCCC because there were too many people for our 2oo people venue and I spend some time panicking about having to send away 50 or 100 people and with some other promoter stuff. I’m sorry for all those who didn’t get in, especially those who came from other cities but it wouldn’t have been financially feasable to have them play our 600 people room. The band walks the troubled waters between insisting on keeping the door price low but still working with big agencies (which always means ‘money’). The costs for our bigger room would have been too high, even counting those people who didn’t get into the smaller room. I totally appreciate that BLOOD BROTHERS care about keeping ticket prices low and still have smaller things going, like the NEON BLONDE side project and a little t-shirt label, but the bigger things get the more complicated it is to keep all parts of a trade fair.
The 1 1/2 songs I heard of WHITE CIRCLE CRIME CLUB rocked. They seem to have a solid classic noise rock approach to music and they convey that rather energetically.
When BLOOD BROTHERS began to play I went to the first row and simply enjoyed the show in the midst of friends. And it was a ‘show’. They are no band to interact and communicate with the audience but more of the ‘lost in music’ type and cynic poser type which I totally enjoyed. It was all about rhythm obsession (their drummer is a.w.e.s.o.m.e.), sassy dancing, angry biting vocals, about breaksy noise vs little pop tunes. The two singer thing also works a fine treat live.
They kind of took me back to AT THE DRIVE-IN, only with bitterness and cynism where ATD-I had that touching ‘desperation vs hope’ thing going. The only traces of heartfelt emotions in the BLOOD BROTHERS’ music are the little melodies they interweave. ATD-I were one of the first ‘huge’ bands at their time to combine great aggressive music with androgynous moves and with looks you rather found in a disco or soul or any other dance music scene while the punk / hardcore scene was about staying ‘true’ and ‘tough’. I never understood why ‘being true’ should exclude fashion. I never understood why it’s only criticised as ‘fashion’ when it has feminine traits, like painted fingernails, dyed hair, clothes that are too tight etc. (Of course those traits aren’t even called ‘femine’ but ‘gay’ which is understandable as it still is a boys’ scene.) And hey, what’s so bad about dressing up and trying to look cute for each other? Of course – when it turns into beauty standards you have to fulfill to be accepted, then something went wrong. But that actually is a pretty old ‘wrong’ in hardcore/punk. A lot of guys in that scene had always been about wearing the right band button / identity badge at the right place or else you were out! out! out! I’m glad that it all became a bit more of a playful stylish scene since sassy hardcore bands have influenced the kids. Another nice side effect is that this kind of bands brought much more girls out to shows. I wish there it also had brought more girls onto stage. There are still far too few girls in aggressice music. As if they / we weren’t capable of creativelyexpressing anger. Get your beautiful asses up on the stages of this world, ladies, instead of only shaking it to the boys’ tunes!
Ach, now my Saturday night movie starts and I’ve only just written about one band I’ve seen… have to continue later!
There’s some pictures of the BLOOD BROTHERS’ show on www.evemassacre.de in the photo section.