‘Cause it’s oh such a terrible thing…

Living in one of the less fashionable cities in the UK, means that you don’t often get a chance to see any “name” bands. We’ve had a few honourable exceptions - Lambchop, the Buzzcocks and Arthur Lee spring to mind… But generally, it’s got to the stage that I’ll pay to go and see some bands, when really I should know better. Would anyone else pay to see half of The Zombies? (Seriously, don’t do it – think Swinging Blue Jeans, think Pontins…).

Anyway, amazingly, the Paddingtons, NME darlings and feckless punksters came to Glaws yesterday, and played to a Guild Hall full of similarly energetic and, er… feckless young things. They went down very well, flinging themselves around stage, banging out their sing-along punky anthems. I did think they literally chucked away their best song (“Some Old Girl”), by doing it straight away, but the singer did show an impressive mastery of just about all the mic stand tricks I’ve ever seen…

It’s such a terrible thing being old...

You might have guessed from my tone, however, that it just made me feel what a terrible old wreck I am, far too old for this sort of thing. I couldn’t get away from thinking how hard it was to hear the songs, everything was so loud and bass-y. Still, they are a fine band, and I’m pretty sure there are some downloads available, if you’ve not heard them; but really, you should just go and buy the album, it’s pretty decent.

The first band of the evening, however, were also pretty good. Ripchord are from Wolverhampton and played a clutch of really catchy popsongs, which managed to attract even this old trout’s attention. As well as writing good songs, they also ticked a number of other boxes as far as I’m concerned (Playing Gloucester - for a start; Having a girl drummer; Using an encouraging number of ah’s and na-na-na’s in their choruses; Being willing to talk to me afterwards…). They also played a terrific set, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I did actually take photos with the intention of using them here like a proper blogger, but really, the pictures were so bad (and, somehow, upside down) that if I’d posted them here, their mothers might well have been after me…

Ripchord have a Myspace page and you can download four songs from there, all great, but the one I’ve chosen is “Terrible Thing”, which has a particularly catchy guitar riff which reminds me of Johnny Marr, and a number of 80’s Indie bands whose names I can’t think of at the moment. Enjoy! Dance!

Terrible Thing

Sorry lads, in my self-obsessed way, I’ve nicked your title and applied it to my own feelings about being old and crap. Suffice to say, Ripchord look to me to be ridiculously young and not at all crap….

(Oh and by the way, the line previous to the chorus line sounds to me like “And if you want to, then I’ll give you buttered toast”, which would be rather wonderful, but I’m fairly certain I’ve misheard it...)