Week 31

Week 31 – Tuesday 2^nd August - Wibidi - Undertone, Cardiff - £8
 
“Marley, Kravitz, de la Rocha and Faulkner. Even the ginger God of dreadlocks is smiling down on us tonight. . .”

We kicked off August with a trip to see the finest dreadlocked artist from Cardiff since Leigh Bailey, singer of the incomparable ‘Leighton James Don’t Like Us’.

“What better way to begin a new month, than with a trip to a new venue, to see a new band?” I asked aloud as we approached that new venue, before Sandro reeled off a dozen suggestions, including a Whoopi Goldberg marathon.

The new band in question was Wibidi, a ‘side-project’ of Daf, Cian and Guto of Super Furry Animals fame, featuring the eponymous Wibidi as front-man. (If you can pronounce all of their names correctly, you’re a better woman than me.) Daf has form for this kind of side-project, having had Rhys Ifans front his other, other band The Peth, who Sandro and I saw at The Globe a couple of years ago. While Wibidi doesn’t quite have the draw or reputation of Ifans, we thought he must have had something about him, and were intrigued to find out what it was.

Like many of the gigs we’ve seen, the show was presented by Wales’ finest live music promoters Sŵn, and it was due to be Wibidi’s first of three gigs in three nights, with others at Clwb Ifor Bach and The Globe to follow. However, we discovered alarmingly that the latter gig had been cancelled amid whispers of a possible closure. Sandro and I were keen to investigate further, considering that Gigaweek would surely be buggered without The Globe, but that could wait.

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The new venue we were visiting was called Undertone, which is the basement of the city centre’s Ten Feet Tall. It’s a delightfully dingy dungeon and neither of us had ever been to a gig there before. We’d made the brave and unprecedented decision to not purchase tickets until our arrival at the door. “It could be sold out, you know?” Sandro warned as we approached.

Naturally, when we arrived just after eight o’clock, it was completely empty. We retreated upstairs to the safety of Ten Feet Tall, where we purchased a couple of manly Skittles cocktails. The macho cocktails were far superior to the average girlish ale, and were a bargain at six fifty for two, with the added benefit of enabling me to drink through a straw without fear of being called a tart, even by Sandro.

At around ten to nine, I’d finished slurping my Skittles and we made our descent back into the dark dungeon. Thankfully, it had filled up while we’d been away, and there were now two other people present. One thing the basement boasts is a couple of comfy sofas, and with no sign of any imminent support we bought a pint of Stella 4 for the hazardous price of two pound fifty each and sat on said sofas. 

Of course, I’m not normally one to drink heavily on a Tuesday, but beer in the basement was dangerously cheap, with bottles of Bud 66 two pound a pop and we had nearly an hour to sample a few lagers before the show finally got underway.

The man who kicked things off was a rapper who was a ringer for N-Dubz’s Dappy, complete with tea cosy hat and short legs, named Enbe.

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Enbe was a local boy who looked young and a little nervous. He took to the small stage alone equipped with a microphone, while gentle hip-hop beats backed him up. It wasn’t easy to fully appreciate his quick fire lyrics, but he seemed to have an intimate knowledge of the female anatomy, and he was keen to share this wisdom with the audience. Either that or my mind was wandering, which was worrying considering I was still thinking about Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit.

The audience now included the three Furries, the unmistakeable Wibidi himself and what seemed like a legion of his friends and family. Wibidi, who hails from the Butetown area of Cardiff and whose real name is Rashid Omar, was wearing a yellow and green T-Shirt with a number 7 on the back, clearly in homage to Henrik Larsson, the Jamaican Swede. Wibidi wasn’t raised in Jamaica, but if Bob Marley had been brought up in Tiger Bay, he may have turned out a bit like Wibs. He may have turned out completely differently of course, but the comparison was clear: they both had dreadlocks.

By all accounts, prior to this band Wibidi has been a DJ on Radio Cardiff, a community radio station that promotes the kind of music that taps into Butetown’s multicultural heritage, such as the mellow reggae of the legendary Marley. Having played football against many kids from Butetown and Grangetown growing up, I can confirm that none of them were mellow, and one pair of shin pads was never enough, so I was expecting a violent performance tonight.

The man from Tiger Bay and his band will shortly be releasing a debut album called Tigerbaby, and presumably what they played tonight will make up the meat of that album. It wasn’t until gone ten o’clock that they were able to finally get going. There was the guarantee of at least three accomplished musicians and they didn’t disappoint, departing from the furry sound slightly to produce a fusion of rock, reggae, funk and soul with a front-man who was nothing like the placid Gruff Rhys, but thankfully he didn’t put in any horror two-footed challenges.

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The opener was a crunching statement of intent and struck a chord with the ideology of Gigaweek. “What keeps you home at night?” Wibidi sang, in a song that wondered what kept people indoors in the evening, rather than out and about with Sandro and me, things such as: possible liver damage, tooth decay and gum disease. His vocals were rasping and he danced around the small stage with shapes that evoked Shakira-like choreography.

Wibs was joined on stage by a rapper (not Enbe) for half of their songs, though the Undertone stage couldn’t quite squeeze the entire band on, with Cian in the Wizard of Oz role, playing just behind a curtain off one side. With 3/5 of the Furries involved, the music was always going to be strong, and Wibidi was clearly a colourful character, but as Sandro pointed out during our post-gig pint and discussion at Lloyds Bar, the lyrics may have been a weak point. 

It’s a bit difficult to judge lyrical content based on one live performance, but that wasn’t going to stop us. Sandro, an acclaimed bard, thought that Wibidi was trying too hard, to make as many rhymes as he could, and I must say I understood. Also, if my hearing was correct, and I admit I should have it checked, the chorus to the final song was particularly crass: “I praised her smile and her hair / Are you kidding, did you see her fuckin’ ass?”

All things considered though, we were well entertained. Wibidi could well prove to be the biggest thing to come out of Tiger Bay since Shirley Bassey, and the biggest rising star with dreads since the ginger Predator himself, Newton Faulkner.

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August

30-5 - Wibidi - ✓
6-12 - ?
13-19 - ?
20-26 - Reading

27-2 - Reading