SHiNDiG, week 3!

So I missed SHiNDiG last week, my bad. I apparently didn’t miss too much, however.

This week, I managed to miss the first band, as Leah had invited some friends over in a little goodbye get together for Hao-Chun (sp?), a friend of hers who is moving to Taiwan.

Mark assures me that I didn’t miss much by describing the first band as being radio-friendly, a little like Soul Decision, only rockier. Hmm, so in other words, they sucked.

The second band, who’s name is Shrimp Meat, was great. A punk trio in the oldest sense of the word, they would’ve looked and sounded right at home at CBGB’s some 20-plus years ago in NYC. They totally rocked. A nice mix of tuneful instrumentals and catchy, intelligent lyrics. Their last song was you’re basic punk anthem called ‘Social Class Warfare’, I assume. The chorus was:

Social class warfare!

Build another fence!

Social class warfare!

Build another fence.

The song ended with the chorus, followed by: ‘you fuck!’. Anyhoo, really, really great band, who’d I’d love to see again, even if they did sound a little dated. Mm – that’s right, and dressed the part too. The bassist was a woman wearing a mesh top over a 1-shouldered thing, under a green hunting-vest. She wore cut of jean-like things over striped stockings & big-assed combat boots. Her hair was all short, except for a section on the top, that was long and kinda hanging over the side. She was even wearing big, angular, dangly earrings. All that was missing from her get-up was egyptian-influenced eye-liner and she’d be full on 1979.


As good as the second band was, I like the last band, Restore even more. They were kindof Drumb’n’Bass meets Portishead, if you will. It didn’t work for me, but totally worked for me. They were very musical, in that they clearly knew their instruments very, very well and knew how to extend/play with the sounds they could make. The lead singer, from Essex, had a very soulful voice and to me, played off the frenetic basslines very well with a mellow, somewhat pleading sound. The only downside was this little Casio electric piano thing that just sounded like crap. However, give them a real keyboardist with real keyboards and it would worked – and would help to fill out the sound a little. They didn’t work for Mark, which I understand. But I don’t think he likes D’n’B, either. He’s a rock boy, and really, they weren’t terribly rocky at all.

Oh yeah, to cap it off, they played a John Zorn tune, which I think is off of that series of Japanese Porno soundtracks he did. It seemed very familiar, but was missing the crazy trumpeting that he does.

A good night out, all around.

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