INTERNATIONAL POP OVERTHROW LONDON DAY 2

GIG: International Pop Overthrow – London Day 2
DATE:: Saturday 25th May 2012
VENUE: The Bull & Gate, Kentish Town Road, Kentish Town, London
COST: £7
OUR VERDICT: No Slowin’ Down

Following the Liverpool week, International Pop Overthrow moves to London. Just one stage this time and 21 bands, again ranging from solo acts with an acoustic guitar to full on rock bands covering different music styles form folk, pop, rock and everything in between!!!!
Whilst we do try to see all of the bands, it is not always possible. Some of the bands / artists just aren’t our cup of tea, some are good and some are just pure nuggets and our blog is a personal account of what we thought of each day, highlights and lowlights included.


We made sure we were at The Bull & Gate for the kick off, as Canadian band Clockwise were first on the bill. This is another band we have seen a number of times at the Liverpool IPO and this was their first outing to the London event.
Tonight we heard a couple of new songs which sounded great. One of them, Jason the bass player did a kind of slow motion set of moves which looked really good and the lead guitarist could have given Slash a run for his money. “Boomtown” was included in the set and they finished on “Rich & Famous” which went down really well with the small but very appreciative audience. A great start to night number two.

CLOCKWISE

Next up a young and (we think) a fairly new band called BordeauXXX, with the 3 x’s stressed at every opportunity they got!!! They were a bit all over the place in terms of the rhythm in each of their songs, changing the rhythm a few times during each number, but the hand claps were good!

Spygenius were up next, another band we’ve seen on a number of occasions and tonight they were very tight, vocals spot on, we could hear the keyboard and the jingly jangly Italis 12 string guitar was in fine tune. Last year’s absent friends were not so absent and just as the band kicked off their set, a group of young Hong Kong tourists came into the club, and sat down on the floor in front of the stage in a very orderly formation. This boosted the audience numbers further and they really seemed to get into this band. With the most excellent “Surf” rounding off their set, we felt this was the best gig we had seen from Spygenius – nice one.

SPYGENIUS

The Penguin Party is a band we recognise from the IPOs but strangely, we have never actually caught any of their gigs. We would describe this band as being formed by a Goth, a Hippy, a Surfer and a drummer! They have a great Ska sound, reminiscent of The Specials with a bit of Mod mixed in (at one stage we heard a touch of the drum beat in the Jam’s “Eton Rifles”), and a touch of pop to round things off. This is a band with a sense of humour as they took the mickey out of one another’s choice of wardrobe, and they went down really well with the audience. Clever and funny songs...the singer was a Lee Mack look-a-like! We liked them.

PENGUIN PARTY

We missed the next band as we caught up with Dave Rave who had dropped by and Clockwise’s bass player, Jason and his lovely wife Grace in the bar outside.

The next band after that was The Standards. We had seen this band in Liverpool and had seen on a Facebook post that they were going to do something different tonight. And they did! Instead of the three-piece we saw in Liverpool, tonight was a two-piece. The set started with keyboard and guitar and sounded terrific. Then the guy playing the keyboard took up his rightful place behind the drumkit and the rest of the set was taken up a notch and was just totally superb. Their last song was “Slow Down” which was just phenomenal and Minty raced off to get their CD from the merch table. We’ve played it since and really loved it, “Slow Down” is a real stand out song.

THE STANDARDS

Minty hadn’t been well all week, so after The Standards we called it a night, said our farewells and headed home. Unfortunately this was our last night for us, as the work rosta doesn’t really allow for late nights on a Sunday, so we missed night number 3.

THE HONG KONG CROWD