Excerpt:
When I entered the Boardwalk on the Sunday night I was instantly drawn to the stage. Behind the drum kit was a huge banner depicting the Strummerville logo but what caught my eye was the ribbon lighting draped along the front of the stage, as well as being wrapped around the huge speakers, it certainly looked set for a hell of a night!
Straight away it was obvious, with the cheeky grin and slight twinkle in his eye, this was no ordinary acoustic set, but Beans on Toast did keep his promise and start with a love song….of sorts. With chorus lines like “Last night I had a girl sucking on my……conversation!” or “sucking on my……dignity!” it was pretty obvious the sort of love he was going for here! The second song, ‘All I Want To Do Is Give You A Flower’ fared no better as it made constant references to prostitutes, paedophiles and gangrape!
The Supernovas had the unenviable task of following this, but these four guys from North London more than held their own. Exploding with drums and guitar, in a style not to dissimilar to The Clashes ‘white Riot’, they opened with their debut single ‘Ace Face’ before heading straight into ‘Shot Down By The Fuzz’, both these and the rest of the set were short sharp and extremely catchy punk.
Next up, in what I have to admit is turning into one hell of a night, was the five piece Rum Shebeen. With Dave Ashby on vocals the crowd really took to this band as he is a born showman, blissfully swinging his arms about in all directions with almost slapstick abandon he relished every moment on stage. Talking to Dave after the show he had this to say; “We’re from Camberwell, as in the Camberwell carrot; basically we got in touch with Strummerville and played a couple of tracks to them! They asked us what do we want to do and from there we’ve released a single, gone on a national tour, played festivals, all of which didn’t seem a feasible reality before”.
Now every leg of the Strummerville tour has a local band and in this case it is the Derby based lyrically alternative dispossessed of Thee Deadtime Philharmonic opening with a song that raises concerns of the senseless killing carried out by soldiers and police alike, singer Murdoch takes to the stage and just seems to spit venom at every syllable. Murdoch explained after the set; “We have been number 1 in the Strummerville download chart for six months now with an old demo version of the song ‘Spine’. But now we have been given help to record a proper version with producer Paul Tipler who worked with Dr Feelgood”.
