Dirthole at the Dirty Water Club, The 13th Floor Club, and the appeal court rules against adoption reversal

by Parsley on Fri, 2009/02/13 - 3:50am Post to Twitter

PARSLEY’S COMMLOCK

Gig Review : Dirthole at the Dirty Water Club, 06/02/09
Arrived late at this event, but fortunately in enough time to catch the band in all their finery. Yes, suits and gowns were the order of the day for a Dirthole performance that seemed more organised than I’d ever remembered them.

Occasionally guest vocalists, including Bongo Debbie from my own band Dutronc, joined the 8 musicians (4 drummers, 2 guitars, bass and vocals). Speed Of Sound man Kevin Younger and Dirty Water soundman Professor Blinding were on guitar duties. Birthday boy Ashley had an extremely distorted bass sound. Frustratingly he refused to open the ‘surprise bag’ I bought him for his birthday when I was in Greece, so I still don’t know what it was I bought him…

If Che Guevara had a spiky haircut and enjoyed swearing lyrics, he would have been Wajid Yaseen, who sang one song in Swedish and sported a furry hat for another about Stoke Newington.

I’m not sure if it was my imagination, but the 4 drummers seemed to be taking turns to start the songs. There were several ‘surprise’ stops in the middle, and so it suddenly seemed that they were organised until a song would end in some uncoordinated chaos so you didn’t know if they knew the songs better than we did.

There was some audience participation when Wajid wandered into the crowd. Mostly the drummers drummed in tribal unison like a kind of world music gone mad, although there was some interplay from one drummer to another which was fun and surprising. Kirsten Reynolds was resplendent whilst beating the drums in a lovely gown, and unlike the boys’ tidy hair, hers swung to emphasise every beat.

I had a feeling that either they were reaching a new young audience, or one of them was a teacher and had press ganged their entire class into attending. All in all it was a splendid event and a fitting launch pad for their new vinyl album.

Club Review : The 13th Floor Club at The Albany, Gt Portland St 07/02/09 It’s always nice & a surprise to find a whole new place where good things are happening. I was a regular down at The Albany when it used to be Rob Bailey’s club ‘Hipsters’ and I played in a few bands that appeared there and on other nights in the same venue. It was intimate (club code for small) and this meant there was usually a decent atmosphere.

When the Dirty Water Club mailout mentioned this new, appropriately named, incarnation on a Saturday night I went to check it out. The stage is now full of a large screen projecting videos that included The Hollies, The Kinks and The Rolling Stones. The dance sounds were a classic collection of my favourite psych and freakbeat, and the audience was a relaxed mix of some people that were into the styles and music and others just enjoying a night out. Admission was free before 10, and the music carried on till 2.

Very enjoyable bi-monthly event, alternating monthly with a new club starting next month called ‘The Scene’. More info at myspace.com/441654178.

Home News : Appeal Court rules against adoption reversal
I am completely gobsmacked by what passes for sanity in the way our civil society behaves. A couple’s children were taken into care and adopted because they were believed to have abused them. 2 years later it turned out that they were almost certainly not abused at all.

The council refused to admit that they might take a different view if presented with the same evidence again, and the appeal court ruled that returning the adopted children to their real parents would damage them and so they would now have to stay with new parents.

Firstly one wonders what state the appeal court judges think the children of the world at war are in, when their parents are killed or they are made refugees. Secondly one wonders if someone couldn’t sue the judiciary for putting children into care where they can be indoctrinated into a world of crime and drugs.

Apparently they always have the best interests of the children at heart. I think their real children are their lovingly crafted procedures. They will protect them to the death and be utterly loyal to them, whether they are leaving children with parents who will beat them to death, or waking innocent families up in the middle of the night so that the children can be put into the worst kind of ‘care’. Only by blindly obeying these procedures and defending them in ridiculous circumstances, can they convince themselves that they never did anything wrong, even if what they did two years ago is considered madness by any current standard.

parsley@gardenrecords.com [www.gardenrecords.com]