Supporting bands in the age of streaming

Discs shorn of their shells

I used to have an inordinate fondness for physical formats. I once bought a second copy of The Terminator on DVD because the spine of the copy I was given as a present had a slight wrinkle in it. I think it was related to my age and my lack of disposable income (strangely contrary to what you might expect from this particular example, I'll grant you): back when shiny things were a rarity in my life, I wanted to treasure them.

But I've moved 7 times in the past 8 years, and that Terminator DVD box (both, actually) has been one of many victims of my desire to downsize the things that have ended up owning me, to paraphrase one of the few films whose physical packaging I've retained.

I've only mentioned films so far, but it's been the same story for CDs. I'm now a besotted Spotify convert, and most of my jewel cases have bitten the dust. The only medium I haven't yet mostly digitised is books, and even on that front I'm wavering.

But I know the jury is still out on Spotify and its effects on bands' ability to go on putting out music. I don't want plastic boxes cluttering up my life, and I don't want to be responsible for any more landfill than is absolutely necessary. But I still want to support the bands I love. What should I do?

For bands that tour the answer is simple: go see them live. I live in London, so thankfully it's easy for me to see live music whenever I like. Everyone's a winner: I get to see the band I like, they get paid, and I might even pick up a T-shirt.

But what about bands that don't tour the UK? One of my favourite records of the last year or so was Kinski's Cosy Moments, but as far as I can work out Kinski have never toured the UK, and there's no indication they're about to start now. They're also not selling any merch on their site.

Or take The Austerity Program. They've only visited the UK once, I believe. I discovered them by buying their last EP, Backsliders and Apostates Will Burn, randomly because I liked the look of it, back before I had Spotify. But they are on Spotify, and they have a new EP due out in May. Will I buy it on CD, or just stream it whenever I feel like it? I'm not sure.

But I do know that I won't be buying Cosy Moments, which I've already listened to a dozen times. What would be the point? Am I going to rip it to the mp3 player that I still carry around with me in addition to my phone, when I already have it downloaded to my phone via Spotify? And have the case and disc with all their petrochemicals just sit there gathering dust on my shelf, the case to be ditched next time I move, probably in about 6 months' time, to be pecked at by gulls driven mad by the stench of decay? No.

The answer may lie in that temporal distinction. I'm not sure I won't buy the Austerity Program EP I haven't yet heard, but I am sure I won't buy the Kinski record I already, in a sense, possess. Lots of bands have used crowdfunding to get records made that - apparently - otherwise wouldn't have seen the light of day, and if The Austerity Program had asked me for £8 to help them make their new EP, with the promise I'd receive it in 6 or 12 months' time, I'd've happily transferred them the cash. Obviously that wasn't necessary in their case (since the record has already been recorded and mastered), and there's a trust issue to the delayed gratification, but I think the idea that I'm helping bands to get their stuff out there could be extra push I need to fork over cash for something I can otherwise now acquire more easily, cheaply, cleanly and conveniently.

And if the band promise to use nothing but recycled cardboard for their packaging (and to be fair, Backsliders... came in just a sleeve), even better.

JD Smith and Swampmother @ Windmill Brixton

I thought I was done with this "blog", but I suppose while there's great music in venues that aren't at capacity, I can mobilise my fingers for long enough to tell you poor sods what you've missed.

Tonight at Windmill Brixton you missed - I'm assuming, but hey, maybe you were there! - JD Smith and Swampmother, two raw, dirty slide-blues players who captivated their audiences enough to, well, coax this sorry typist out of retirement, for one thing.

Swampmother was maybe the rawer of the two; distortion, foot stomping, things coming off guitars that weren't supposed to ("That's what happens when you get someone to build a guitar for you."). Whereas JD Smith was more classically blues rock; guitar tones that make you wish you had the dusty boots, ageless hat and begravelled voice to forge a successful career out of walking for aeons beside a highway and sleeping under the stars. Deep, heartfelt, soul-galvanizing stuff.

So there you go. You should see them both. Apparently JD Smith will be playing the Windmill again in December. Swampmother I don't know, but she's on the web. Look for her.

Torres @ The Lexington

I love The Lexington. It has separate standard pub and gig spaces, so the music doesn't have to take over your evening if you don't want it to. Its gig space is wide and shallow, meaning that wherever you stand you get a good view and feel intimately connected to the performer. And it has a great range of draught and bottled beer and probaby the biggest selection of bourbons this side of the deep south. Plus it trusts you not to chuck any of those bottled beers at the performers, which is nice. No plastic cups of Tuborg here...

Torres is a singer-songwriter from Nashville. From the cover of her pseudonymically self-titled debut album and the fact that Pitchfork described her voice as one that "conveys raw, urgent desperation, the sort we flinch from instinctually" and her lyrics as "full of tricky, messy subject matter--loaded poses of female need, abjection, subjugation, dominance", I half expected the experience of seeing her live to be a bit like that episode of friends where Chandler gets trapped in the front row of some vagina monologues-esque play.

I was relieved to see that she was to be accompanied by a bassist and a drummer, and actually I needn't have worried at all. Yes Torres is brilliantly capable of conveying raw, urgent desperation, even live, but she also knows not to bludgeon her audience to death with it. This was her first gig in Europe, and she balanced endearing tentative attempts to connect with her audience between songs with extremely impressive vocal displays during them, steadily winning over her initially rather reticent crowd. As an aside, I do enjoy it when someone extrapolates from a roomful of a couple of hundred people to a city of some 8 million. "Hello London!"

Presumably Torres has extensive performing experience under her belt from her home country. On the basis of this showing, her first tour on these shores will not be her last.

Not bad for a Monday night

If you arrived at this post via the Trash Talk tag, this is not a Trash Talk review. All it is is a blog post that in 5 years' time will remind me that I saw Trash Talk tonight, the reason being that today I know I've been to Underworld once before, about 5 years ago, but cannot for the life of me remember who, why, who with, etc...

All that will come back to me is buying beers and tequilas together. This is perhaps self-explanatory.

The most significant thing about tonight was that Brew Dog, once you get past all the brash self-mythologising, sells some damn good beers. Even at a time when most pubs and bars now offer at least a beer or two more exciting than the standard 2007 fare of Stella, San Miguel and Heineken, Brew Dog stands out.

Some of their own beers are pretty damn great. I've drunk some before, of course, but tonight I was reminded of how good their Punk IPA and 5AM Saint are. More esoterically though, some of the bottled beers they offer are alone worth the trip from Brixton to Camden. The Founders All Day IPA was rather nice, but the Stone Levitation was outright fantastic. It also boasts the finest bottle I've seen this side of... No, just the finest bottle I've seen:

Little surprise then that we were 5-10 minutes late for Trash Talk, and when it comes to hardcore you can't hang about: we only got about 20 minutes. Gig Buddy loved those 20 minutes, but I was more 50-50. My favourite hardcore so far is Sick of it All, which is partly due to their lyrics, and I couldn't hear word jack of Trash Talk.

Musically some of it was pretty good, but some of it was a bit eh.

The venue and crowd were pretty impressive: Underworld is split-level, and from what I could see from up above, the entire bottom row was kicking off for the duration. Crowd surfing, kicking the shit out of the spotlights, you name it.

The downside was more sweaty teenagers pushing back past me than it seemed could have been possible without gaps developing up front - what were they, popping back up out of a wormhole every 20 seconds? - but they probably needed to rehydrate, bless 'em.

I don't know about hardcore. I don't think even Sick of it All like Yours Truly, which is the album of theirs I've taken to heart and embedded there, so maybe I and that genre just don't mesh.

But craft beers and I do. Oh yes.

Bo Ningen @ Royal Festival Hall

I'd been looking forward to this for weeks, and I was still blown away.

Bo Ningen played the Royal Festival Hall as part of Yoko Ono's curation of this year's Meltdown festival. Iggy and The Stooges played a sold-out gig elsewhere in the building earlier on in the evening for some lucky buggers, but actually we were all (potentially) lucky buggers today because Bo Ningen played for free for an unrestricted crowd in the Clore Ballroom.

And boy were they good value.

It was an absolute belter of a set. I'd sort of seen the band twice before - once at the Windmill Brixton, but with an unusual lineup, and once supporting I forget who, on which occasion I arrived just late enough to regret not arriving earlier. So this was my first proper time, and as I said, even though I'd seen enough before to expect good things, this was all that and then a whole lot more.

Bo Ningen play noise rock, but in exactly the right proportions. Just the right amount of noise to keep things teetering, and just the right amount of rock to keep things grooving. They're satisfying as fuck.

They played to a large crowd this evening, and seemed to enjoy the hell out of it, which set up some kind of positive feedback loop between crowd and band that kept reinforcing and reinforcing until I felt like the tendons in my neck were gonna twang loose like an overplucked guitar string.

I only just hung onto my head.

Bo Ningen are going right to the top of my 'see em whenever you can' list. This was the best gig of my year so far by quite some margin. In fact, right now I can't remember the last time I saw anything as good.

Tolerance Manoeuvre, Bodebrixen, Small Gang, Bored Spies @WindmillBrixton

Another great night at Windmill Brixton.

Tolerance Manoeuvre were playing when I arrived, and once I'd bought a pint I moseyed over. They're a guitar-cello-trumpet trio who play rather downbeat, forlorn pieces. The result is more interesting than depressing though, and they were well received, including by me.

Bodebrixen are a Danish fivesome who specialise in summery upbeat indie pop. They look and sound like the kind of band you see supplying good times for cool Spanish 20-somethings in smartphone adverts, but they're good enough not to be annoying. Their lead singer is a disarmingly direct and chipper little fellow who buzzes about on and offstage like he has the fast-twitch muscle fibre proportions of a particularly frolicsome squirrel. At one point he started flinging handfuls of shimmering confetti-like stuff ino the surprised crowd. I don't know how well this went down with the guy who had to sweep it up afterwards, but everyone else enjoyed it.

Bodebrixen's combination of energy, fun and quality music was irresistible, and had they played for another 10 minutes or so I might have lost my grip on my reserve and started dancing. A lucky escape. If you have the chance to see these guys, take it.

Of the four bands, Small Gang are the one I'd be most likely to listen to in a non-live situation. Their set was somewhat two-speed, with songs starting out middling, quiet and slow and then suddenly switching into something harder, faster and rather fantastic to climax. What does Sting know - give me climaxes any day.

Final band Bored Spies had been billed as a Singaporean trio, but four people took to the stage. I assume the fourth guy had infilrated the band without their noticing in order to do some spying of his own. It's the only possible explanation.

Anyway, they were a comparatively restrained bunch. Cherie Ko's vocals, for example, were breathy to the point of being indecipherable, and bassist Panther Lau was happy just to have access to an instrument that worked, on loan from Small Gang. On the other hand, hulking drummer Orestes Morfín appeared able to conform to this low-key approach only through an enormous effort of will, achieving impressive control for such a large and ferocious-looking guy.

I enjoyed the set and would happily see the band again, but the thing I enjoyed most about them was the T-shirts they had on sale at the other end of the room. I picked one up afterwards for the low low price of £8:

That made 4 bands, 3 pints, and 1 T-shirt, all for £20. Bonza.

Rock interactions: share them here!

About an hour ago I passed Cherie Ko of Bored Spies her water bottle mid-gig at Windmill Brixton. This got me thinking: what is my biggest/greatest/most memorable/take to the grave ever rock interaction?

For me it has to be the time that, for about 1.5 seconds about 4 years ago, I had my hand held by the awesome Juliette Lewis. I remember feeling like I was on fire for the rest of the night, and my nerves continued to buzz for the rest of the week.

Other examples:

Gig Buddy recently chatted to Metz' frontman on the plane to or back from (I'm not clear yet) Primavera.

My oldest mate has one of Chino Moreno's hats from about 12 years ago.

My drum teacher has recorded with Steve Albini.

Alright, so what's yours? Share them below the line...

P.S.
I fully expect to get to get no replies to this post, but David Bowie, if you happen to read it, could you please comment: "I am David Bowie"? Thank you.