Thursday 10 January 2008

Umbrella - Vanilla Sky

Once in a while a song comes along that, when sung by the original artist sets your nerves on end and you feel the need to puncture your eardrums just to get away from it. Umbrella is such a song. Lucky for us, great pop punkers Vanilla Sky covered it and made a kick ass video to boot. Enjoy!

Saturday 5 January 2008

Boy Hits Car Gig Review - 9th Dec 2007

Yes, I know. This is nearly a month late. I humbly and profusely apologise. I've been busy.



Back to the gig...
The Underworld in Camden is one of my favourite venues to watch bands. It's a basement that smells like spilled beer, BO and vomit (formerly hidden by cigarette smoke now banned by law).
Its small enough to be intimate and large enough to hold a good crowd.

This good sized crowd filled out the club on a Sunday night to watch Californian rockers Boy Hits Car perform the second to last show of thier UK tour.
Chatting to guitarist Mike before the show, he mentioned a new album coming out in March 2008 - so keep your ears out for that.


GUITARIST - MIKE SAYS LOOK OUT FOR THE NEW ALBUM

There was also mention on red tape when they arrived in the country. Due to work permit issues (them not having any) They were deported 12 hours later only to have the permits FedEx'd to them and returning a day later. Damn red tape!!

The first three of the five bands playing aren't worth mentioning. However, the supporting band - Car Crash Television is a band worth keeping tabs on. Queen is an obvious influence as well as Bowie but if I recall correctly, they wore thier punk influences proudly.

Onto the main act...
Blown away. those are the only two words to describe it. Cregg Rondell (vocals and 12 string) blew us away with powerful, yet sensitive delivery of the songs as well as playing that 12 string acoustic and performing barefoot.

FOOT OF CREGG RONDELL

Opening with 'Going to India' then ripping through a set that included that crowd pleaser 'As I watched the sun..', 'Everything', Man without skin' to name a few.
The crowd wouldn't let them leave without an encore which they gladly obliged.

BLONDE CURLS OF CREGG RONDELL

I was invited to hang out afterwards and knock back some Jager, but the huge bouncers had other ideas, so I made my excuses and headed home, happy with the evening.
Besides, I was doing breakfast shift the next morning.