tales from an ordinary world

1999-01-09

I was sitting at home listening to the radio, feeling kinda bored, when the guy mentioned that the Underground Lovers were going to be playing at Revolver. "Cool !", I thought. I couldn't find anyone to come along with me (they were either uncontactable, not interested, or weren't able to drive...) so I ended up wandering along by myself. That was fine, though. I got there around 11pm, which was apparently when they'd be starting, but one of the support acts were still playing. They weren't half bad, and I wished I'd known who they were (they didn't say at the end, as far as I could tell) - the two women (one playing bass, the other keyboards) were centre stage, both singing, whilst two male guitarists stood off to either side looking suitably moody and introspective, especially the one who started taking a screwdriver to his guitar (for extra effect), during one song. All the while, there were nifty video effects going on on a big screen behind the band - someone was interspersing live shots of individual band members with US Film Archival footage of moon landings and such. It worked really well, but I suppose I'm easily amused at times like these.

The as yet unnamed band cleared off stage, and I was expecting the Underground Lovers to be starting, but it turned out there was another support band to go - Augie March, who I'd heard of, but never actually heard (or seen). They were better than I expected - kinda whiny almost-but-not-quite shoe-gazy guitary stuff, that confused the audience a bit 'cause they were never quite sure when each track finished. The video effects went on as before. I managed to avoid the crowd a bit by squeezing into a corner up the back, next to the steps that went up to the mixing desks - this proved handy later on, 'cause I could stand on the steps and actually see the band !

Finally, around 12:30 or so, the Underground Lovers came on. And they were fan-bloody-tastic, starting off with a few tracks from their soon-to-be-released album Cold Feeling, which I find an intriguing name, given that the last track on their previous album Ways T'Burn was called I Feel So Cold. I guess Vincent just has a fetish for the words "cold" and "feeling" ? They seemed to be having a fair amount of fun on stage, the crowd loved them, and their new bass player did a fine job at keeping those yummy bass lines going. Their old stuff was a good pick of each of their old albums, and they weren't just note-perfect renditions of the album versions either - one song (I forget which) bridged nicely into a completely different take on Losin' It, which worked really well - It's the sign of a great band that they're always able to find new ways to rework their old songs - Having only seen the Underground Lovers two-and-a-half times, I don't know how much they do this, but Ed Kuepper's one of my favourite examples - he's put out two live albums in the last year or two, but they're better than your average live albums, because he's done all the tracks completely differently (even between the two live albums themselves - one being just him with some weird guitar effects, the other being with a back-up band, and so on).

So at around 2am, after their blistering encore with their fantastic old song Promenade, I ducked out into Chapel St, and grabbed a taxi home.