BTW, for those of you not familiar with rock history, London SS is just a provocative name in the spirit of old-school punk, there’s no political connection at all.

Rolling Stones – Sympathy For The Devil
Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath
Led Zeppelin – Black Dog
The Beatles – Helter Skelter
Lou Reed – Vicious
Iggy Pop – Lust For Life
Ian Dury – Spasticus Autisticus
Davie Bowie – Ziggy Stardust
The Damned – New Rose
The Sex Pistols – Pretty Vacant
Buzzcocks – Orgasm Addict
Killing Joke – Wardance

<London SS>

3 Colours Red – Pure
Metallica – Fuel
The Cult – Rain
Sisters Of Mercy – Vision Thing
Star Industry – Lost Generation
Fields Of The Nephilim – Preacher Man

<Drilling Spree>

Soulfly – Back To The Primitive
Fear Factory – Demanufacture
Samael – Jupiterian Vibe
Dimmu Borgir – Dreamside Dominion

<Themira>

Faith No More – Epic
Tool -Stinkfist
NIN – We’re In This Together
Rammstein – Mein Herz Brennt

<Die Kur>

The Smashing Pumpkins – Tonight, Tonight
The Pixies – Monkey Gone To Heaven
The Clash – I Fought The Law
New Model Army – Vengeance
Magazine – Shot By Both Sides

Silber – Flieg
Staubkind – Dein Engel Schweight
Sulpher – One Of Us
Die Kur – New Era
Fear Factory – Powershifter

<Ghost In The Static>

Machine Rox – Deliver Me
Tactical Sekt – Xfixiation ([:SITD:] Remix)
Soman – Eye To Eye
Panzer AG – Filth God

<Null White>

Excessive Force – Conquer Your House II
Razed In Black – Master
Depeche Mode – Wrong (B)
Bauhaus – Lagartija Nick (B)
NIN – Dead Souls

<Global Noise Attack>

Mortiis – Parasite God (B)
Solitary Experiments – Still Alive (B)
Bruderschaft – Forever

<Dreams Divide>

One other fact – it was the third consecutive year where I attended no overseas festivals or gigs. This isn’t something I’ve given up on, it’s just I’ve had other demands on the money of late. InFest, the low-budget indoor festival in Bradford, was still an option, however.

April 2011 – What Is Your Function In Life?

My return to the DJ booth in the role of between-bands DJ came at the first ‘Dark 7′ event at the Camden Underworld, run by Synchrotrax. I’d done a bit of inter-band work in my student days, but that was nearly a decade ago. Anyway, as the name suggested, 7 bands were playing and my job was to fill in the gaps. Having listened to online streams beforehand and soundchecks on the day, I knew well enough what I was faced with and dug out what I believed to be the most relevant tracks to play.

After an initial burst of industrial rock prior to ‘Ghost In The Static’, relevant generally meant various electronic forms of industrial music. In keeping with the theme of the festival, I gave a number of UK bands (Deviant UK, Skinjob, Modulate, Digicore) an airing, most of them for the first time in a set of mine. What I played  seemed to be well received, but of course there needed to be at least one curveball.

In this case, it was before the headline band. My long-standing friends in System:FX were topping the bill tonight, I’d never missed a London show by them and now I was their support DJ. But in addition to an airing of ‘Be My Enemy’ (somewhat pre-emptive of what would come the following year), I’d agreed to preceded their set with The Inkspot’s ‘I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire’. Probably the oddest request I’d ever had, but anyone’s who’s played Fallout 3 (a game we have a joint taste for!) will associate that song as a prelude to some High-Definition Violence.

And with that out of the way, it was time to leave the booth and (finally), let some energy loose down on the dancefloor.  Six month later, and I’d be back in the same venue to play the-bits-between-the-bands at Cybersonik.

August 2011 – 8-Bits!

Between Dark 7 (actually a little before) and now, I’d been busy. Really busy. In the process, I’d neglected my health, physical, mental, emotional, financial, the lot and hence arrived at InFest 2011 a broken man. Despite everything I’d achieved during the year to date, it had come at great cost. So I made a decision. Have one last 3-day bender, one final weekend of irresponsibility, get it out of the system and then pull myself together and get on with life again. Dosed up on vitamin pills to alleviate the need to ever care about my diet over the weekend, that was indeed the case….

The event as a whole remains something of a blur. I can’t really remember which bands played this year or last, nor how much money I spent. I do remember giving the karaoke machine a go, singing Sham 69′s ‘If The Kids Are United’. In an obscenity-laced London accent. In the middle of West Yorkshire. I probably sung along to VNV Nation even louder, but I believe that’s the idea at their shows.

And earlier that day, I’d finally seen mind.in.a.box live. I’d heard very varied stories about their live shows so far (not that they’d played many), and my curiosity was piqued further when I saw them setting up guitar, drums and other ‘real’ instruments – rarely seen at InFest. They appeared on stage and I was even more confused – were they supposed to be a kind of ‘progressive futurepop’ four-piece, or some kind of synth-enhanced Pink Floyd tribute band?

It’s at times like this that the alcohol really serves it’s purpose, because I stopped caring about genres and realised that whatever it was they were playing, I actually really liked it. I was tripping out during the quiet bits and dancing wilding whenever the drums kicked in. I did, however, long for a no-holds barred anthem. mind.in.a.box are a very ‘technical’ band, which does sometimes impact the ‘instant appeal’ nature of their music. How the hell were they going to end their set on anything other than a drawn-out anticlimax?

Oh, 8-Bits. Not exactly typical of their style, but a perfect set closer, and it still worked surprisingly well with the addition of ‘real’ instruments. Cheered to the rafters (or whatever it was holding the roof up), there was no time for an encore, even if the band had had one to play (looking at tour setlists, they probably didn’t).  But my must-see band of InFest, one who had a varied live reputation so far, had delivered the goods this time.

October 2011 – Shine, Shine Your Light On Me

InFest had given me the drive to get my life back on track, but a couple of months on and I still felt there was something missing from my life. In a year of practical achievements, I was feeling increasingly hollow inside. My body and mind were on the road to recovery, but my soul remained on ice. I was a walking, talking automaton. Something had to give.

My epiphany came from a quite unexpected source.  A VNV Nation concert.  Unexpected, because I’d seen them many, many times before, and whilst I regarded their recent ‘Automatic’ album as a ‘Return to Glory’ release, I wasn’t expecting anything more than some bouncy music interspersed with the between-song chit-chat that’s something of a feature at every VNV gig.  And so it was….new songs mixed with (relatively) old ones, nothing pre-Empires, though.  Dance a lot, sing along with favourite choruses and go nuts during the instant hit and current set-closer ‘Control’.

And then came the encore.  Having cancelled a gig the night before due to voice issues, we had no idea how long Ronan was going to last, but there was enough left in him to manage a quartet of songs.  Including one new track that I’d previously heard at InFest but not really appreciated the true nature of until tonight.  The song was ‘Nova’.  And when the song burst into life a minute or so it, with the trippy LED backdrop as accompaniment, I finally realised what I was missing.

“Shine.  Shine Your Light On Me.  Illuminate Me.  Make Me Complete”

Who was this aimed at?  I don’t yet know, presumably someone I’ve yet to meet. But within the confines of this song, I had found my direction again.  There’s a long way to go, but was no longer adrift and lost.  Back on track for sure.

October 2011 – New Era Is Coming Now

My last of four acts of interband DJing in 2011 was also the longest….the Renaissance II festival. 4pm to 11:30pm, nine bands, a whole range of different styles, and I’d offered to piece the whole thing together. I like a challenge. I’d familiarised myself with the band’s musics before the event had occurred, though some had a clearer musical direction than others. Transitioning from one show to the next was going to test the collection.

The final setlist is of course recorded elsewhere on this site. But what that doesn’t tell was the vibe I felt being able to hop between so many different styles over the course of the day. Some bands had pre-show requests, which in this role you naturally try to play, or at least get as close as possible to. NIN and Gary Numan I could handle. But a request that goes ‘Can we have something relevant?  Like some blues.’ was a challenge to say the least.  I know modern rock music is all essentially a child of the blues, but most of the types I play have been pretty heavily bastardised along the way.  That said, cobbling together a set of Cash, Cave, Cohen and a bit of Velvets, it was both perversely relevant and completely off-the-wall.

In amongst this, I still got to see most of the shows. Whilst the bill-toppers Die Kur, MaxDmyz and Global Citizen were all friends already, the rest of the set represented a real sampler of previously-unknown parts of the UK scene. At least the parts of the scene that hadn’t played the two Synchrotrax festivals earlier this year (come to think of it, Global Citizen were at Dark 7 too!).  Which, of course, I’d also DJed at. And to play festivals from both sides, to get the chance to cover the ground I did, that meant a lot.

That’s the end of the story for now.  More will follow with each passing year, until I see every band I like or I pass from this mortal coil.  If you started here, you really should go back to the start and read the whole tale.

Still plenty of time for live music though…..

May 2010 – Who Will Deliver Me From Myself?

Another band that had cheated me thus far was Current 93.  Their tendency to host shows in awkward venues and their well-connected entourage often means the regular punter doesn’t get much of a chance to get tickets for their shows.  Finally, however, I was going to get my chance.  Two shows at the Kentish Town Forum to celebrate David Tibet’s 50th Birthday, and I had a ticket for one of them.

And what did I do to myself the night before?  Poison myself on a reheated curry, that’s what!  I wasn’t quite laid out, but I wasn’t exactly fighting fit, either.  Luckily, mine was a seated ticket, up on the balcony, and dosed up on sufficient pharmaceuticals, I decided that I was going to see this band, illness or otherwise, before they disappeared on another lengthy hiatus. It wasn’t like I was contagious or anything, and it was either sit down at home or sit on the train then sit at the venue. Not exactly a strain on the body. Let’s go!

Living in the outer reaches of East London at the time, it was an unwelcome long journey over to the gig venue. The support band tonight were ‘Nurse With Wound’, not a band I particularly enjoy on CD, but live they made a sufficiently satisfying racket to provide an interesting precursor to the evenings entertainment.  Current 93 themselves duly arrived on stage with about a dozen members. David Tibet is one of those artists who’s talents are as much about getting the right people to play for them as performing himself, but I never realised it took this many people to reproduce the songs live.

He then threw us a curveball by performing a set largely devoid of his best-known songs, instead taking us on a lengthy psychedelic-delusional-avant-garde-rock-quirky-apocalyptic-whatever it is he does journey though his disturbed outlook on reality. Slumped at the far back of the venue nursing a diet cola, I found myself strangely drawn into this bizarre sound emanating from the stage. There was no holding out for some favourite track, no singing along with a well-known chorus. I was a sick man watching a band that required some kind of distorted mindset to fully appreciate. On a healthy day, I would have found this disappointing. But on this occasion, a audio mindfuck from Tibet’s sizeable collective of musical misfits was about the only thing I could stomach. In any sense.

August 2010 – Your Beauty Strikes, Like A Punch Out Of Nowhere

Infest took a year off in 2009, but it returning in 2010 with a revised venue that switched everything around, confusing all us regulars but working surprisingly well considering the last-minute completion of the venue.  The big draw for me was Project Pitchfork, but I wrote about them in the previous part.  Friday night headliner De/Vision were paint-dry tedious, so it ultimately fell to Rotersand to provide me with the one outstanding memory of the festival. I wasn’t bowled over by the fact they were playing, to be honest – they’d played a few years previously and I was hoping for someone who’d not actually played these shores quite so often to top the bill on Saturday night.

I should mention that I’d actually travelled to the festival with the band’s lead singer Rascal Nikov in the car with me. And I can confirm that the guy’s charisma, so apparent on stage, is only amplified in such a confined space. I therefore arrived at the festival in high spirits, filled up on cheap Bradford curry (this one thankfully non-toxic), and despite the disappointing live music on the first night, was just enjoying the weekend as a form of celebration of everything that had happened so far in 2010, how far I’d come and how much fun I thought lay ahead.

And if there’s one band that are just plain fun to watch live, anywhere, in any mood, at any time of day, it’s Rotersand. A last-minute schedule change had resulted in the band’s setlist being extended by 30 minutes, which entailed have to re-learn a whole bunch of unrehearsed songs. Did that hurt them? Not a chance. With Krischan and Gun providing the highly technical musical accompaniment, it was left to Rascal to play to the crowd. And occasionally wander around it, handing out free stickers.

It’s rare that a band I’ve seen so many times serves as the stand-out act of the entire festival, but Rotersand’s vibe that evening was so in tune with my own feelings. Sure enough, Project Pitchfork put on an excellent performance the following night, and in recorded form they’re still my preferred band of the two. But this InFest was all about Rotersand. I don’t think I stopped dancing for the full 90 minute duration. Unfortunately, 2010 was never quite as good again.

October 2010 – Strap Me Down With Disillusion, Tie Me Up With Lifelines

No, it wasn’t. Two months on and I was once again single, and not substantially advanced in any other sense. And for the second consecutive Halloween, a long awaiting band was making a rare (in this case first-ever) London performance at the Islington Academy. This time it was LeætherStrip, the prolific Danish electro-industrial project who’s one of the few bands I’m into that’s released so many CDs I doubt I could name them all off the top of my head. The band is the solo project of Claus Larsen, and that singularity extended to his live show. One bald, portly Dane in a pink shirt with a single keyboard rack and microphone.  Not exactly an inspiring visual spectacle.

But I was only every into LeætherStrip for the music, and that was very much delivered. It was a couple of bars into ‘Introvert’ that I realised that I’d got myself more drunk than expected (for the second consecutive Halloween) and so decided to sing along as loud as I could (for the second consecutive Halloween). No, make that SHOUT along…..’the Strip isn’t about achieving perfect pitch. The venue wasn’t packed out (for the second consecutive Halloween), but everyone present was a devoted fan who’d clearly waited a long time for this rare performance (for the second, oh, you get the idea!).

Once the new songs were out of the way, we got onto the classics. ‘Adrenaline Rush’, ‘Japanese Bodies’ and of course my own Strip favourite, ‘Strap Me Down’. I honestly didn’t care how little of the music was being played live, I just had a lot of tension to get out of my system, a real post-breakup catharsis. Possibly as a tribute to his first visit to London, Claus dug out his cover for ‘Sex Dwarf’ for the encore. By this time I was probably making ‘woohoohwooh’ noises in time with the synth solo, but there were no sober witnesses to confirm or deny this.

And that was essentially it for live music in 2010. A quick trip to the Pretty Goth Theatre late in November was about as live as it got for the remainder of the year. Onto 2011…..to be continued, or you could go back to the start.

• Mindless Faith – Just Defy
• Fleisch & Waffeln – Meat EP
• Conzoom Records Discover Compilation
• L’ame Immortelle – Momente

You can keep track of my reviewing efforts on my profile.  This doesn’t mean the end for Terminates Here, of course.  All my setlists will be here, as will all my other articles, Top xx Lists, reminisces and other free-form scribblings, plus of course the EOL-Audio Archive, which has the bulk of my reviewing output from times past.

Mentallo + The Fixer – Sacrilege (Angel Of Death Mix)
Placebo Effect – Slashed Open
yelworC – Soulhunter
Dance Or Die – 432
The Klinik – Moving Hands
Vomito Negro – No Hope No Fear
Klutæ – Circus Of Death

<Paresis>

Leech Woman – Tool
God Lives Underwater – No More Love
Hanzel Und Gretyl – Fukken Uber Death Party
The Galan Pixs – Pearl Necklace

<Ghost In The Static>

Aesthetic Perfection – Inhuman
Shiv-R – Pharmaceutical Grade
SAM – Hallucinogen

<Cease2Xist>

And One – Wasted (B)
Tenek – Blinded By You
Method Cell – Push
Assemblage 23 – Let Me Be Your Armour (B)
Ashbury Heights – Anti-Ordinary

<Analog Angel>

Heimatærde – Deus Lo Vult (R)
V2A – Electro-Whore

<Machine Rox>

Fixmer-McCarthy – Free Fall
Pow[d]er Pussy – Yourmove
Straftanz – Die Neue F-Klasse (Ein Panzerleid)

<Kommand + Kontrol>

Dreams Divide – Faces
Project Pitchfork – Drone State (B)
John Foxx – Underpass (R)
Gary Numan – I Die:You Die (B)
Skinny Puppy – Assimilate (R)
:Wumpscut: – Black Death (French Texture)

<Deviant UK>

Laibach – WAT

Set 1 – 11pm-Midnight

The last two songs in this set reflected the date, 24/2.  It’s EBM day!

Suicide Commando – See You In Hell (R)
:Wumpscut: – Soylent Green (R)
Hocico – Poltergeist (B)
Frontline Assembly – Plasticity
Project Pitchfork – Timekiller (R)
Calva Y Nada – Rascheln
Cephalgy – Engel Sterben Nie
Diary Of Dreams – The Plague
Star Industry – The Look (Roxette Cover)
Duran Duran – Save A Prayer
Fischerspooner – Emerge (R)
Depeche Mode – Photographic (Some Bizzare Version) (B)
DAF – Der Mussolini (R)
Front 242 – Tragedy >For You<
Auto Da Feh – Divided We Fall

Set 2 – 1am-2am

Chemlab – Exile On Mainline
Birmingham 6 – Birmingham 6
Nine Inch Nails – Sin (Short)
Sheep On Drugs – 15 Minutes Of Fame
System:FX – Overdrive (Rmx) (R)
Prodigy – Omen
Apollo 440 – Krupa
Bomb The Bass – Megablast
Nitzer Ebb – Let Your Body Learn
Militant Cheerleaders On The Move – Freaks
Spahn Ranch – Heretics Fork (Belief mix) (R)
Editors – Papillon (Tiësto Remix Edit) (R)
IAMX – Think Of England
VNV Nation – Nova (B)

And hence it was not a good year for discovering new bands on stage – though plenty were discovered on CD and online.  Virtually all the gigs I went to this year were for long-established bands, and very few of the sets I saw comprised of much new material – I’d say only Diary Of Dreams, Prodigy and VNV Nation were actively pushing new albums when I saw them (all good ones, to be fair).  Other live acts, as varied as Jean Michel Jarre, Ultravox, DAF, Yes and Orbital, were all content with dishing up crowd-pleasing ‘greatest hits’ sets.  Even the best support acts of the year turned out to be bands like Deviant UK and System:FX, who’d already won me over in previous years.

So while I could spin a tale about dancing in the aisle of the Wembley Arena with a middle-aged raver, or suddenly being reminded that Midge Ure is in fact Scottish, or a two-hour long DoD set, there is really only one vignette, one gig from 2009 that remains imprinted on my memory.  Just One.

October 2009 – The Rest Is Imagination

Project Pitchfork.  A band I’d seen three times before but a long time ago, before I’d really become a fan of their music.  And two of those sets were overburdened with tracks from their confusing ‘Nun’ trilogy.  And the last set I’d seen by them was in 2004.  But finally, another London gig was scheduled.  And it fell on Halloween.  On the day after that I found that I’d actually got the job I’d recently applied for.

With the sole new song ‘If I Could’ opening the set, we soon got the inevitable dancefloor accelerator ‘God Wrote’.  And having drunk my way through the support bands, I was already pretty wasted by this point.  And apparently I wasn’t so much singing along as shouting along.  I REALLY had a lot to get out of my system on this occasion.  And when the opening notes to ‘Human Crossing’ played (the first Pitchy song I’d ever heard), I practically exploded with excitement.

And so it went on, concluding on ‘Existence’, and then the inevitable encore of ‘Timekiller’, which is the one Pitchfork track all the people who aren’t otherwise fans of the band know.  Of course, I still had enough energy to dance to it, and emerged to the most refreshing autumn night breeze I’d ever felt.  The strange thing was, when the band returned to the same venue in Jan 2011, I found the whole affair rather disappointing, partially due to my frame of mind at the time but also due to an iffy setlist that hardly offered any of my favourite tunes.

But doesn’t matter – I’d had my definitive Pitchfork moment, and with the new job sorted I was well set for 2010…….or, if this the first bit you read, go back to the start.

Die Krupps came and went in style a month later, and the live show following my favourite album of 2007 (Star Industry – Last Crusades) arrived over the Easter weekend.   But looking back, these two events were just very good shows without any real significance outside of the quality of the music.

No, the three tales I have for you now all reflect different aspects of my live music experiences.  They are not all positive, but they all have to be told.

April 2008 – Wriggle Like A Fucking Eel

Whitehouse.  One of the most extreme industrial music projects in history.  I’d bought three albums by then before deciding a fourth wouldn’t make any difference.  But I knew I had to see this project live.  Once.  Just Once.  I just knew I had to subject myself to the full onslaught of this projects sonic defecation, blasted through a PA, with no hope of escape.  Naturally, the Elektrowerkz was chosen as the venue (like they’d get to play anywhere bigger).  What surprised me was the audience.  They didn’t look alternative at all.  Was this some kind of counter-counter-culture? And why were there so many of them?  Didn’t think bands like this had that kind of following.

Turns out most of them were present due to an article in avant-garde music mag ‘The Wire’.  It seems power electronics were the flavour of the month amongst the beard-stroking elitist quarter of the music community.  You’d expect me to get on quite well with such people, and I would as well, but I actually felt completely out of place.  The opening band didn’t improve matters, sounding and looking for all the world like some bloke spending 40 minutes tuning his guitar whilst his mate does a drum solo.  I took a look at the CD stall, but it was full of generically-named discs that were obviously trying to put an ironic face on the clearly extreme music thereon.  I took my wallet to the bar instead. I was  going to have to drink my way through this.

And then came Whitehouse.  There’s only two of them, but their live show is no more (less) than a constant barrage of juddering, scathing, pain-inducing wave of electronic noise, with one of both of them occasionally screaming into a microphone.  And the term pain-inducing wasn’t a metaphor.  I was literally hurting under the intensity of it all.  After 40 minutes, I realised that I shouldn’t be subjecting myself to this and walked out.

The Wire Crowd 1 – 0 Jonny

May 2008 – Wir sind geboren um Spielmann zu sein

WGT 2008 was proving to be a slight disappointment compared with previous years.  OK, we had Persophone out in the medieval village and the surprise of Fields of the Nephilim not actually being complete shit.  Halfway through the last day, and I’d just left the woeful Miss Construction in the Tittydome in the hope of finding something a little more engaging.  I knew I wanted to see Corvus Corax headline the Agra that night, but I decided to quit the EBM early and catch some more mitteralter.

I had seen Salty Morty (as I usually call them) before, but their shows were always during crowded line-ups where I had little capacity to remember exactly what they were like.  Right now, however, I was all ears.  Anything was better than Chris Pohl doing ‘Miss Combichrist’ or whatever it was.  They come on stage, and the first two minutes were a complete mess.  Then someone in the sound booth presses a magic button and the bands music and stage show instantly comes to life.  The band’s rollicking medieval rock sound came to the fore and the Agra was won over.  This was going to be a good one.

There were plenty of tracks from their new album (acquired shortly after, still my favourite by them), but this was not one of those shows where the setlist really mattered.  This was Salty Morty playing the troubadours, or whatever the equivalent middle German equivalent is.  And after a festival of workmanlike performances, this was exactly what my weekend needed.  Finally the party atmosphere was underway, and not a moment too soon.

Their set ended on ‘Spielmannsschwur’.  For the 99% of your unfamiliar with this track, the overriding feature of this song is a ‘Whoa-oh-oh-oh’ type of chorus.  The band’s frontman obviously knew the anthemic potential of such a line, as he got the audience to practice it a couple of times before letting the band start the song.  Just to make sure, you know?  And everytime we got to the chorus, the whole Agra, me included, were singing along.  And after the song was done, we kept on singing it.  And after the next song too!  Even after the singer went stage diving.  It’s what I call a ’101 Moment’ – harking back memories of Mode live recording where the audience carried on singing the chorus of ‘Everything Counts’ long after the band had finished the song.

Faun came on, proficient but slightly anti-climatic in the circumstances, and Corvus Corax did their thing with style and spirit.  But Saltatio Mortis won the day, and the entire festival for me.  With issues such as currency fluctuations, house moves and bicycle purchases to content with, this would in fact be my final WGT to date.  But at least I had one final memory to take back from my highly enjoyable quartet of mid-00s sojourns to the biggest dark scene festival in the world.

August 2008 – InFestation Again

The cloud over my state of mind during WGT 2008 might have actually had something to do with a failing relationship at the time.  By the time of InFest, we’d been split for almost two months, but the intervening period was something of a ‘dead’ period with little of consequence occurring anywhere in my life.  This was a necessary festival, a kind of three-day ‘pick myself up and move on’ point.  And it worked.  Somehow, I got myself back on track thanks to a weekend of drunken madness in Bradford.

The trouble is, I can’t remember why it was so good.  Yes, Front 242 were headlining, but that was right at the end.  Heimataerde doing their first UK show – c’mon, I saw their live debut!  And One?  Good fun but hardly deep?  But that may be missing the point – this weekend wasn’t supposed to have a point!  Have fun, dance to some music you like, catch up with friends, eat incredibly poor quality food and have no functioning voice box left at the end of it all.  Mission very much accomplished, I think!

There would be plenty more live action before the year was out, plus the beginning of Terminates Here as my alter-ego, my first steps on Facebook and my return to the DJ booth after a six-year hiatus.

And now to 2009..or if this is where you started, you’ll probably want to go back to the start.

But what of 2007, the year which either delivered everything I wanted or led me to give up even trying, at least for a year or so.  No more EOL-Audio.  No more big house at the end of the Picadilly line.  And no more being single.  Everything changed this year.  I didn’t exactly take a break from the scene that year, but I was never any less involved that I was in 2007.  Naturally, things all changed again in 2008 such that I’d pick things up again and also restart much-missed activities such as DJing again, but that’s a story for a later part.  I did still go to SOME gigs this year, and here’s the story of the best ones.

April 2007 – I’ve Got Nothing To Lose and Everything To Win

Remember the tale of The Water Rats in 2004?  For the whole affair to die within a year just seemed wrong.  It couldn’t end there, and sure enough Earth Loop Recall re-assembled with a revised line-up and did a couple of ‘old songs’ shows (one in Cheltenham, and one I went to in London) before cracking on with the new material.  Madame JoJos was chosen as the, erm, intimate setting for the London show.

It wasn’t quite the line-up that burnt bright and burnt out a few years previous, but with an added live drummer, the 2007-vintage ELR set took on a more cathartic dimension than the original band.  Sure enough, the assorted mix of old fans, goths and indie rockers seemed happy enough with the set as it was being delivered.  All the old favourites were getting a look in, plus a brief sample of some new material.

But a couple of us wanted more.  During the full-throttle, all-bets-are-off blast of ‘Optimism Creeping In’, we gave each other a couple of knowing glances, followed by a couple of knowing prods.  Then a shove or two.  Fuck it, we thought.  This gig wouldn’t be completed without a mosh pit.

A third body joined us before the end of the song, which was to be the penultimate one for the night.  Luckily, the last song just happened to be ‘Like Machines’.  Eight minutes in length, there would be ample time to slog it out down on the dancefloor.  So that’s what we did.  From the starting duo, we’d willingly pulled at least another dozen from the still rather sparse crowd in JoJos.

Once again, the band would self-destruct within a year after another run of increasingly inconsistent shows and this time haven’t been heard from again.  I personally haven’t triggered a mosh-pit since then, either.  Must have grown out of them or something.

May 2007 – Would She Give It As A Gift?

2007 wasn’t a great year for big-name band-bagging, but one exception was Orchestral Manoevre Manuevre Manovres OMD.  The band had recently announced their reformation, and we’d got some decent seats for their live comeback.  Hammersmith Apollo balcony front row.  Having not yet recorded any new material, they were touring behind their Architecture and Morality album from 1983.  ‘Play entire classic album live’ was something of a trend at the time, but this was the only time I’d see a show of this kind.  And I didn’t even know the album all that well.

Still, the stage set looked pretty decent, and once Andy McCluskey walked on singing the opening tones of ‘Sealand’, it briefly looked like we were going to get a polished performance.  Briefly, because next up was ‘The New Stone Age’, where he promptly picked up a guitar and started DANCING.  I didn’t know prior to coming that this was  meant to be a ‘feature’ of OMD shows,  but this guy was proper ‘Dad grooving away at the School Disco’ style.  Roll with the Cringes, Jonny – the music still sounds pretty good.

A few tracks later, and it all made sense, because it was time for ‘Maid Of Orleans’.  I’m no religious man, but somehow the Catholic imagery, combined with a mixture of heartfelt vocal delivery, waltz-time and uncontrolled limb movement combined to truly encapsulate the OMD live experience.  A song I’d only sort of liked before had become my dead-cert favourite.  If the audience reaction was anything to go by, it was most people’s favourite already.

With the album performed within 40 minutes, the second half of the show was all their other hit singles, not a bad song amongst them, but somehow, Maid of Orleans stood out, head and wobbly shoulders over the rest.  You can’t dance Andy, but you can’t half write a decent tune.

We’re getting to the era where videophones are common.  Therefore, this very performance has been captured by another in the crowd, just so you can understand what I mean.

May 2007 – Welcome To Paradise

WGT didn’t seem as necessary this year, given everything that had occurred, so I treated it more as a celebration of everything that had happened.  Such experiences as the only Retrosic live show to date, Heimataerde’s stage debut and watching Punto Omega outside in a thunderstorm might all have made it into this review in lesser years, but there was one overriding memory from Leipzig 2007.  Front 242.

OK, I’d seen them twice before – a workmanlike show in London late 2000 (when they were still touring their acid techno remixes) and a much-delayed performance in Stockholm the previous year.  But somehow I knew they could do better.  The band that had influenced so much of my favourite music had a reputation for an energizing live show and I was yet to feel it.  Until Saturday night at WGT 2007.

Despite Psyclon Nine’s best attempt at alienating the audience, the venue was packed to the gills by showtime.  And this time the magic worked.  A set loaded with classic tracks, performed in the proper, authentic manner, and a 8000-strong crowd set in motion by the pounding body beats.  The songs got more and more anthemic, the sing-alongs got louder (and less tuneful), and by the time we got to ‘Headhunter’ the whole venue was caught up in the frenzy of this 100% dead-cert classic track being performed live by the original artists.  Germany loves it’s classic EBM, and I do, too.

The encore was inevitable.  And they still had one surprise up their sleeves.  Kampfberiet?  A slow, almost-forgotten album track from their debut release?  Surely not?  Yet the slow, menacing treatment they gave this song served as a counterpoint to what we’d already heard.  The insertion of a few lines of ‘Radioactivity’ in Jean-Luc’s vocal paid tribute to their own influences, too.  The point was made, though.  The Frontmen had another side, more subtle and less confrontational.

Then of course came ‘Punish Your Machine’, just to prove they were in fact unsubtle and confrontational most of the time after all.  But what the hell, I’d had my definitive 242 experience.

The rest of the year wandered along, with relatively few gigs (and no more festivals) in it’s latter half – my attentions were elsewhere at the time.   Still, things would wake up in 2008.…..Or, if this is the first bit you read, you’ll want to go back to the start.