Week 42 & Week 43 – Thursday 20th October – Sunday 23rd
October – Sŵn – Cardiff – £50
Sŵn - Thursday
“We’re no spring chickens are we?”
Weeks 42 & 43 were covered by our final festival of the
year, Sŵn, which took place in our
hometown over the course of four days and therefore requires no less than four
editions of Gigaweek to do justice. You could say it’s a trilogy in four parts,
but please don’t.
The comment above was made by a grey haired pop music
lecturer, who was referring to himself, thirties-dodging Sandro, and
alarmingly, me. We were in Ten Feet Tall at
the time, waiting for old boys Aidan
Moffat & Bill Wells to appear on stage.
I wanted to tell him how I’d been ID’d as recently as August
and ask him to feel the soft skin on my chin, but I didn’t.
As I looked around at all the youngsters present, and then
back at Sandro’s grey beard and walking stick, I suddenly realised that we were
the only ones who didn’t have any feathers.
I also realised that he was essentially right.
------
Based on my calculations (provided by the best abacus in the galaxy, the Milliard Gargantubrain), there were only a poultry 4,986,449,603
people alive when I was born, compared to 7,000,000,000 now.
I’d always thought I
was special, what with being the 79,881,818,065th
person to have lived since the dawn of time and all, but since I escaped
my mother’s womb, more than 3,333,333,333 billion others have done likewise (mostly
from other mothers’ wombs).
I’m afraid not all of
them were with us that night (which was lucky really, as Ten Feet Tall was heaving). Of those 3,333,333,333 billion, and the 4,986,449,603 others who were
already knocking about when I emerged, around 1,300,000,000 billion have since
found out the answer to the ultimate question.
Not the ultimate
question of life, the universe, and everything, but to the other ultimate
question, “what happens when we die Mummy?” As far as I’m aware, not one of
them has had the good grace to report back, so it’s still a mystery.
Nevertheless,
at least 2,000,000,000 of the Earthlings that remain are younger than me, it
could even be closer to 3,000,000,000. I’ve spent considerable time (the last
five minutes) wondering when I’ll reach the age when there’ll be more people on
the planet who are younger than me, than older. It’s tricky to say, but I’d guess
it’ll be before I’m forty two.
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These thoughts swam around the mini-pond of my mind during
the first day of Sŵn, which was
taking place throughout a number of venues in the city centre and slightly
further afield. Now in its fifth year, Sŵn
is the lovechild of local music promoter Jon Rostron and Radio 1 DJ Huw
Stephens, who’ve also recently created the Welsh Music Prize, which is nice of
them.
The winner of the inaugural WMP was to be announced on
Friday to coincide with Sŵn. Considering The
Joy Formidable were nominated and were sort of headlining that night, I
knew where my money was going. On Gruff
Rhys.
Sŵn was now bigger
than ever before, now running from Thursday to Sunday. Hopefully it will continue
to expand, attract more and more established bands, go on for decades to come,
at some point become a nationwide event, then become global, spread to the
International Space Station (which needs a bit of live music) and beyond, until
the organisers become embroiled in an embezzling scandal and it comes crashing
to earth like a confused Sperm Whale.
This year the line-up was filled by a lengthy list of bands
I’ve never heard of. Unfortunately Fjords
didn’t make the bill, much to the irritation of their manager
Slartibartfast.
A four day wristband was only fifty quid, so it was pretty
good value all things considered. We would have made full use of its value, if
not for one major problem. I was tremendously, excruciatingly, unexaggeratably ill.
-------
I’d been struggling all
week with a horrendous, vicious, debilitating illness (a cold), but I dragged
myself out of bed for Gigaweek.
I had to. In case you
missed it the first time, the real challenge of Gigaweek is nothing to do with
the number of gigs Sandro and I are forced (against our will) to attend, but
the fact that we have to go to at least one, every, single, week of
the year.
There is no margin
for error. There is no flexibility. There are no weeks off. If one of us were
to be bed-ridden for a week, or say, die, we would fail the challenge. We’re
quite strict on the matter.
Obviously, it would
be melodramatic of me to suggest that I’d actually been on death’s door all
week, but I’d been on death’s door all week. I suggested to Sandro that I was
in trouble but he remained calm and his advice was simple.
“Don’t Panic.”
I did panic. Lots.
Even so, I made it out of my house and was glad I did. Not only did I avoid the
bulldozers, but Thursday turned out to be comfortably the best day of Sŵn (as far as we were concerned), even if the line-up wasn’t necessarily
the strongest of the weekend.
-------
Beginning downstairs in Clwb
Ifor Bach, we caught the last couple of songs from a duo called Algiers, who didn’t appear to be
Algerian, though I didn’t get to check their passports. My critical opinion is
that they were loud.
Thrillingly, we then headed upstairs, where a band named Banded Puma were slated to play. They
weren’t quite as loud. Their most memorable song was a catchy number called something
along the lines of ‘Mr Thomas’.
It was only afterwards when we were back downstairs, that we
realised we’d just unwittingly seen Charlotte Church perform. She was a surprise
guest and was showcasing new songs, meaning there was no ‘Crazy Chick’ which I would have instantly recognised.
Hymns were the
last band we saw in Clwb. Another duo,
this time from Leicester but possessing Algerian passports, they played pretty blunt
post-punk rock in the mould of Disaster
Area. They weren’t bad, combining awkwardness with humour very well between
songs, intentionally or not.
-------
Onward Sandro and I
travelled, to a very busy Undertone,
where we saw a couple of punky bands called Caves
and The Cut Ups. They were both very popular, not really to my
tastes, but mostly harmless.
It was then that we
headed upstairs into Ten Feet Tall
and our fateful meeting with the rooster and Messrs. Moffat and Wells. The
latter two are beardy, Scottish musicians, best known for being in Arab Strap and the Bill Wells Octet respectively.
At times their
performance was as much a poetry reading as a gig, but it wasn’t Vogon poetry and
was actually very enjoyable. Even so, we left a little before the end to see Welsh
band Yr Ods in O’Neill’s, which was equally busy.
Yr Ods are clearly talented and had a good collection of songs, sung
in both English and Welsh. They were also most definitely spring chickens. I’m
talking over 5,500,000,000 billion people on the planet when they were born,
young. The audience seemed to include most of their school mates, unless I was
just becoming more and more paranoid.
“Are you OK Marvin?”
Sandro asked.
I was in deep
thought. “I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed,” I replied,
“and my name’s not Marvin.”
“I don’t care,” he
replied.
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The last band we saw that evening were Oxford
Psychedelic-Pop band Fixers. They
were scheduled to begin at quarter past midnight but actually began one minute
earlier. I wouldn’t normally mention such an innocuous fact (you know I would),
but from about five past onwards, a lovely gentleman in the front row began to
loudly voice his disapproval at their lengthy soundcheck.
“One-two, one-two!? We didn’t pay for this! This is
bollocks!” he said likably.
Fixers front-man clearly
felt compelled to apologise, before seemingly realising that they weren’t in
the wrong after all. “Apologies for the slight delay,” he said looking a bit
ruffled. “. . . even though we’re now starting a minute before we were due to!”
he added with a glare towards the friendly heckler.
At this, Sandro’s favourite four letter word was yelled from
somewhere to describe the offender, who seemed to disappear back up his own
backside thereafter.
Fixers did enough
to earn my prestigious band of the day award, although by this time I was pretty
far gone so I’m not sure exactly why. I made a mental note to listen to them
once my ears had sobered up.
-------
Our evening wasn’t
quite over, as our wristbands allowed us free entry to Glam, the venue I’d been refused entry to all the way back in Week
16 in April. I looked out for the infamous bouncer, Knobhead, but he was
clearly hiding in fear.
John Rostron had popped
up at virtually every venue we’d been to and now Huw Stephens was present for a
DJ set in Glam. Aside from the
omission of Neil young’s ‘Heart of Gold’ I
felt it was flawless.
Similarly, Sandro
declared Huw’s handiwork as “perfect, except for the inclusion of The Wombats.” He drowned them out with a
few Jaeger Bombs, and I almost forgot that I was on the verge of death and
joined him, before we said to Huw “So long, and thanks for all the hits.”
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