Preemptive Retaliation

So I headed out to a gig the other night at the Hug and Pint, a new bar that has (re)opened down the road from me. I was pretty excited, since it was the first gig that I had chosen to go to in, what, a few years now? The main reason behind it was to see Shambles Miller – a young comedic guitarist that I mentioned in my last post – but I was interested in seeing what the support acts and co-headliner had to offer too. Besides, the Hug and Pint is a small, intimate venue which is always a pleasure when it comes to seeing bands.

I kind of regretted that intimacy when two young guys got up on the small stage and launched into a wall of noise made up of rapping, hip hop and just general conversation. The Bin Men flopped round the stage, yelling into their mics the glorious benefits of KP snacks, of the greatness of sweets and how they’ll never earn enough to pay back their student loans. After their set they drunkenly wobbled offstage and were replaced by a spoken word poet, Carly Brown, who guided us through her hatred of fifty shades of grey and lyrically lambasted yet loved her home state of texas. The humour was familiar though, with sarcastic self deprecating lines underscored with rhythm and beat.

And, finally, the headliners came on. I had actually heard Chrissy Barnacle before on a podcast I listen to, but I didn’t realise it until she spoke between songs. When she started playing, I found her songs were perfectly in my taste. They were acoustic and melodic and ethereal and almost twee, and I found myself nodding and tapping my foot when I didn’t even mean to. And then Shambles MIller came on with his self-loathing, tongue in cheek acoustic line up. Man, it was pretty awesome.

This is going to sound hokey, but I love the Scots dialect. Ever since I was little I loved the sardonic lilt of the language, and how insults curve round the mouth like a grin.

Damn, there was a point to this post, about writing, about the ups and downs of the language, but then I listened to some songs and forgot about it.

Shambles Miller – Daredevil (Doing Stuff is Hard)

Chrissy Barnacle – Nightride