The Go! Team, on Jools Holland last night

Knocked off my f**king feet by these. Wow.

Here's a copy of the excited e-mail I sent my mate (the drummer in the last band I was in, years ago) today:

.......out of the blue, really. I was flat out on the sofa and too f**ked to be bothered switching off Jools Smugger-than-Blair Holland, so I stiffened my nerve and decided to sweat it out.

First up was Robert Plant's new band: much as you'd expect, and he looks every decade of his near- incalculable-without-supercomputer age - it was OK but no more than that. Next up zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz 'scuse
me I tend to nod off whenever Athlete zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz are mentioned zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Next up The Fall: Mark E. Smith, see comments re R. Plant above. Still a decent sound but-ah it sounds a bit tired-ah whenever Smith-ah starts to speak-ahhhh.

By this time I'm almost comatose. The Smug one wanders onto screen and says Blah Blah First time on television, everyone says they're good, let's find out, here they are, they're from Brighton, here's The Go! Team.

I was sitting upright within two seconds. Remember when we saw Cornershop at Buckley Tiv, when they were a noise band with sitars instead of a dreadful slow-dance band? Remember, they started, and you and I looked at each other, smiled, and without a word we moved up to the front? It was that kind of a moment. The sound was pitching and rolling, heaving and dipping, there seemed to be about fourteen of them up there but it was probably about six or eight, there was this girl on the drums and she was *playing*
them instead of just beating them, there's this ongoing cacophany with distorted guitar competing with a flute and this little black girl up front boogieing in chavvy tracksuit alternating between rap and a really sweet
song - no, not just the chorus, she was mixing it all up, singing this melody which shouldn't have belonged over that incredibly mishmashed backing BUT it did......

.....and most importantly of all, they were clearly all having a frigging GREAT TIME up there.

The show continued as before, except now I was simply waiting for them to come back on again, just in case that was their only decent song. They got another number in, eventually, and it was as good as the first, except this one had no discernible song, you know, it was just your basic free-for-all good time stomp with ALL sorts of things going on. It's like standing in a corridor and listening to three different styles of music coming out of three different doors, and somehow they all chime together, despite the mess.

Dave - for the first time in f**k knows how long, I've heard something *different*. When they're playing, you actually (pause for effect) ***can't be sure what's coming next***.

And so today, for the first time in over a decade, I went out looking for a specific CD. I found it in the Dance section at HMV. Only a tenner, cos it's only 35 mins long. I have to say that they sounded better live, because this disc sounds like it's been mixed in a public lav by someone either herbed off his face or not paying attention. Although the question is begged: exactly HOW do you produce THAT? And yet throughout the racket (which includes, wait for it, a banjo here, a f**king RECORDER there, a brass section here, a cheap piano there and this buzzy distort all over the place) you still get this feeling that throughout the musicians are jubilant in their enjoyment of the noise they're making.

Dave, you might hate this band, really you might. Seriously, it could go either way. For me, though, they're extraordinary - because I've been so bored with music for so long and haven't wanted to listen to anything, at any time, by anyone. It's not the fault of today's bands, it's the result of decades of paying attention. Eventually, everything tastes like chicken.
My palate has tired and I'd thought it couldn't be excited by anything ever again. These exuberant (and possibly partly deaf) kids have made my day.

Posted By: Suggy on May 21st 2005 at 21:43:22

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