sound of the suburbs

First up, a word about last Friday's gig. Excellent! I fully realise that 99.89% do not know and probably don't care who Otis Wood are, but hell it's my blog......... It was a true pleasure to see Florian, Ludovic and Philippe together on stage for one last time, and complemented by a second guitarist to beef up the sound and leave Florian to concentrate on his vocal duties. The first 2 numbers were maybe just a little bit stiff but they wasted no time in responding to the hot reception from the full house and in so doing succeeding in raising the temperature even higher. Don't ask me how long they played for as I don't count time when I am enjoying myself this much. I spoke to Ludovic earlier today and was pleased to hear that the show was recorded, and so with a little luck and effort on my part we will have one or two tracks up here in a week or so! As for Rinocerose, no surprise with the quality of their performance, I was very happy to see that it was a real show that included a guest vocalist Mark Gardener who many of you will remember as having been the vocalist from Ride.
Keeping the theme of Le Rockstore's 20 birthday going with the Peel Sessions presents me with no difficulty at all, as many artists that graced the BBC studios have also visited 20 rue de Verdun ; Add N To (X), Atari Teenage Riot, Auteurs, Bluetones, Boo Radleys, Captain Sensible, Cat Power, Clotaire K, Cop Shoot Cop, Dirtbombs, Dream City Filmclub, Frank Black, Gallon Drunk, Gong, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Hole, I Am Kloot, Inspiral Carpets, Jesus & Mary Chain, Kills, Laika, Lemonheads, Les Thugs, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Magma, Manic Street Preachers, Menswear, Meteors, Moose, Motorhead, Napalm Death, Natacha Atlas, New Fast Automatic Daffodils, Palace Music, PJ Harvey, Prefab Sprout, Pulp, Quasi, Ride, Royal Trux, Sebadoh, Senser, Sleeper, Sloy, Smog, Steel Pulse, Stereolab, Stranglers, Th' Faith Healers, Thee Hypnotics, Tortoise, Ukrainians, Voodoo Queens, Wedding Present and Yo La Tengo. This list might contain some mistakes or have some, unintentional exclusions, though what it does do is pay testament to the varied taste and respect for music, values shared by Peel and Le Rockstore.
As I have already mentioned the lions share of the nineties were spent in Montpellier and more exactly at Le Rockstore, now the exact year I cannot remember but it must have been the earlier part of the decade that someone organised a death metal/ thrash metal/ speed metal/ grindcore festival, on of all days a Sunday and in an ex church! I cannot remember for the life of me, how many band were playing but I do remember that the gig started early afternoon and that the headliners were Napalm Death. I know that in the past I have been none to kind to Napalm Death. Having been young once myself I know full well the value uf shock and the pleasure of pushing boundaries. This style of music was hardly my cup of tea, at this period I was well into my thirties, though always having been keen to try out new styles I had purchased the Peel Sessions compilation Hardcore holocaust but it had left me cold. Fifi needed someone to work the bar during the gig and so it was that I was present for the whole gig. What did impress me about the different performances was the energy level and the communion between the bands and their audience who I might mention were very young, I must have served 10 glasses of water for each glass of beer! Napalm Death's very first Peel session dated from 13 September 1988 and featured 12 songs in less than 6 minutes, here for your pleasure are six of them, in two files 'The Kill/Prison Without Walls/Dead Part 1' and 'Deceiver/Lucid Fairytale/In Extremis' my original copy of the Peel Sessions album was on vinyl and has long since disappeared from my collection, the files come courtesy of the blog Orang Aural. Napalm Death's original drummer and founding member Mick Harris would appear to be a keen surfer and has visited Sound of the Suburbs on a number of occasions and has been polite enough to leave comments, I know because he took light humoured offence to my earlier comments on the band, I hope this makes up for it, Mick! I don't think you were still with Napalm Death when they played Montpellier but I'm sure you would have loved the gig.