ComEnts

I was at the World AIDS day charity gig at the uni on Tuesday night (I do a lot of work for charridee but hate talking about it...) to watch Pete and the Pirates and I happened to mention to some people that Müf wanted to start gigging in January. To which the slightly delayed response was "When in January?" To cut a long story short I think we might have got ourselves a gig! Woo hoo! Have been sworn temporarily to secrecy by the promoter until it's all finalised but needless to say you'll get all the details when everything's confirmed.

Now this might seem a bit premature bearing in mind we've probably only got just over half the material we need finished at the moment but no-one in the band has any doubt we'll be ready. Great thing about the guys in Müf is that we've all been gigging a lot (and the other three are all really talented) so from the start we've been very tight and the ideas have been flowing like bullshit at a political convention. It's great to have a target date to work towards. I'm very, very excited.

The World AIDS Day gig was great, the first few hours of the night was an open mic night involving loads of very varied acts from around the university. As with all these events the standard was extremely varied but the crowd was very supportive of all the acts. It was a really big crowd too.

Pete and the Pirates went on sometime after 11, by which time the crowd had thinned a bit. It was a bizarre set by them, they played an extended set which included a couple of really long (and really good) instrumental breaks in the middle of their songs. Lead guitarist Dave broke string after string (4 in total) which led to him and Pete swapping guitars when a song really needed a certain string that was broken on another guitar. I have since lent on a long term basis Pete my first ever guitar so that he has a backup... Anyway, I think the ability to change some of your guitar parts so that you play the notes on the strings you have left available is quite a talent. Dave's guitar technique, which seems to be based on the principle that in certain parts of songs it doesn't matter what notes you hit as long as you hit them hard enough, is probably one of the ones that's influenced me most out of the local scene. Whilst the other three keep the tune going Dave's got free reign to play whatever he wants. Sometimes he sticks to the tune, sometimes he doesn't and it sounds utterly discordant and out of time but somehow he gets away with it - for me anyway, I'm sure some people would just say he was just rubbish and ruining the songs. I think they'd have missed the point.

Anyway it wasn't the best that Pete and the Pirates have played their songs, far from it, but it was an excellent example of just getting up and playing your music as you wanted to play it. They exuded the feeling of "we don't care if you like this or not, we love it". When Jonny lost his drumstick and it went flying across the stage he just got up, walked across the stage to pick it up, walked back and joined back in drumming.

I don't know what to make of Pete and the Pirates sometimes, at their best they are one of the best local bands at their worst they are still one of the coolest in their attitude. Their set on Tuesday was a bit of both.

Oh, also in attendance were Morning Runner, I think the second time I saw Pete and the Pirates play was at the College Arms with Morning Runner, great gig that was. I talked to singer Matt a bit, it seems like things are getting very exciting for them. Did everyone see them on the front page of G2 the other day? It's online here.

The new Mad Capsule Markets album arrived today, it's fantastic. A magnificent Japanese metal-techno-punk-60s pop fusion.