Tubelord & Crazy Arm at the Junction, York

I said I'd do this last night, but a turn of events made it impossible. So here I am on a Wednesday morning writing up about our time at The Junction, which was not in a tunnel under the train tracks, as Google Map would have us believe.

Damn you Google Map! Damn you all to hell!

So after fifteen minutes of deciding that The Junction was indeed not in a tunnel and was probably further down the road, we found it. And ho! Joe of Tubelord was there on his Macbook by the door probably Gmail-ing (yes, I'll make anything a verb) someone. So we said hello to him and shook hands with the friendly new bassist, Damien, who came out of nowhere to greet us.

Anyway, like many small venues, it was at the back of a pub that the show was gonna be, so we ended up waiting and having a chit chat with ourselves. Alisha, a course/flatmate of Pill, was especially excited since it's her first gig, ever. And Tubelord thanked Pill for this because he said, "nobody forgets their first gig." Which is true. My first gig was Foals in Oxford, and that set up my expectations for future gigs way too high. The second one was, in fact, Tubelord, which also set the bar pretty fucking high, with the likes of Colour (now defunct) and Blakfish also present that night.

But I digress.

The first band of the night was a band called... Actually I didn't manage to catch the name of the band, and I wasn't that enthusiastic to find out either. They weren't that bad. Just not memorable. Nothing special. Like they were the mandatory worse band of the two support bands.

I shall christen you 'Support Band Number One'

Wait, did I say the worse? I think the second band wasn't that great either. Now I do like punk and used up parts of my teenage life listening to the likes of The Clash, The Ramones and The Sex Pistols with a few other contemporary punk bands inbetween. But By Default ain't the best. Like Green Day before they went commercial, just worse.

By Default

The next band is Crazy Arm. Their blend of country music and punk rock is flawless, and I respect them as fellow vegetarians/vegans as well. Their lyrics are thoughtful, aggressive and angry. Their music has a raw, powerful feel to it that can either encourage you to a mosh or, if you wish, a hoedown. These are people who really believe in what they sing in, and they're likeable people too.



They also get extra points for giving us a lot of free stuff and telling me that I can just download their music for free on the internet. Of course, I was way ahead of them, but as always, I bought the CD online the day after. It's that good. Check it out. It's called 'Born To Ruin.' It's one hell of a piece of work.

Crazy Arm

Then, then, then.... Tubelord! I think I mention them way too much on this blog. But when you put out consistently amazing shows as often as Tubelord, well, then you kind of need to be mentioned. Haha.


They performed one new song, the title of which I still don't know of. They played it the night before as well in Leeds. It's a great tune. Would be nice to have it recorded properly. The new song was the first one they performed in York, and the sound-tech kind of mucked it up. You can hear feedback and the vocals weren't terribly loud. Blah de blah. But hey, after that they got it out of the way for another brilliant set.

Now the main highlight for me was not an amazing specific performance of an amazing specific song (but they did have that anyway with 'I Am Azerrad' being their last song) but Joe getting everyone to sit down while he reads a poem called "Song" by Allen Ginsberg. Yes, civilisation triumphs over chaos. But only for about two minutes. After that, it's back to sweet, sweet chaos.

Poetry in motion, kind of

Tubelord

I'm not sure when the next time I'll be able to catch Tubelord again. Hoping it'll be quite soon. I think I'm in love with Tubelove.

Signing out

Over and out