No more dancing on the fighting floor

There was a time when local band rivalry was the greatest spectator sport known to mankind. Better than football, cheaper than boxing and far more personal, because the person you were heckling from the crowd would almost certainly be stood behind you in the bar ten minutes later ordering the same £2.80 pint. Scenes thrived on pettiness. They ran on it. Entire gig nights were powered by nothing but passive aggression, wounded egos and photocopied flyers with spelling mistakes. It was glorious.

Back then, when a new band swaggered onto the scene after rehearsing for roughly the length of a school half-term, the reaction wasn’t polite applause and Instagram follows. It was uproar. Real, full-fat outrage. “How come they get that slot and we don’t? We’ve been gigging for years!” You could practically hear guitar strings snapping in jealousy across the coast. Message boards would melt. People would suddenly develop very strong opinions about artistic integrity. It didn’t matter whether the new band were brilliant or terrible; the important thing was that everyone was talking about them, loudly and often.

And that was the magic. Rivalry created momentum. It created stories. It gave gigs stakes. You didn’t just go to see bands; you went to see what would happen. Would someone take a sly dig from the stage? Would someone “accidentally” play louder than the sound limit? Would someone release a demo suspiciously timed to land the same week as someone else’s? The whole thing felt like a soap opera played out through amplifiers and warm lager.

Now? Everyone’s mates.

Everyone’s lovely.

And it’s unbearably dull.

Modern local gig culture feels like a corporate team-building exercise with distortion pedals. Bands arrive early, help each other carry gear, compliment each other’s pedals, tag each other in posts and thank the venue, the sound engineer, the bar staff, the crowd, the dog outside and their mum and dads. After the show they stand in a circle discussing “the scene” like it’s a parish council meeting.

Where once there were pot shots, there are now heart emojis.

Where once there were grudges, there are now collaborative playlists.

Where once a band might finish a set by saying “stick around for the next lot if you like that sort of shit,” now it’s “We absolutely LOVE these guys, give them all your support, buy their merch, stream their single, water their plants while they’re on tour.”

It’s sickening. Positively wholesome. Like watching a documentary about otters holding hands.

Don’t get me wrong, kindness is nice. Community is important. Supporting each other is admirable. But it’s also catastrophically boring to watch. Rivalry was rocket fuel. If another band was getting more gigs, you practised harder. If someone slagged you off online, you wrote better songs out of spite. If someone tried to kick you off the park, you let the football do the talking. Nobody cried about it for too long; they turned the amps up and got better.

The scene used to need a loose cannon. A band to throw the cat among the pigeons. Someone cocky enough to say they deserved the headline slot and reckless enough to try and prove it. You didn’t have to like them. In fact, it was better if you didn’t. The very act of hating them kept the entire ecosystem alive. Arguments led to attention, attention led to crowds, crowds led to gigs, gigs led to bands improving. Spite was the renewable energy of local music.

Now if a band dares to step out of line or take a playful swipe at another, the room fills with the soft rustling of discomfort. Someone somewhere will issue a statement. There will be clarifications. Everyone will agree that we must all remember to be supportive and positive and respectful. This isn’t Christian Aid week, it’s rock and roll, or at least it used to be.

These days the only rivalry left is who can be the most supportive. Who can post the nicest gig review. Who can out-compliment the other bands. The message boards are quiet, the gossip has dried up and the biggest drama of the night is whether the hummus ran out before the headliner.

And maybe that’s healthier. Maybe it’s kinder. Maybe it’s what grown-up scenes are supposed to look like.

But fuck me it’s boring.

Give me arrogance. Give me jealousy. Give me a band bold enough to take a few pot shots from the stage and force everyone else to raise their game. Give me something to talk about on the way home from a gig besides how “supportive the scene felt tonight.”

Because the truth is simple: scenes don’t thrive on politeness. They thrive on friction. And until someone’s brave enough to ruffle a few feathers again, we’ll all just keep smiling politely while the excitement quietly packs up its gear and goes home early.

Payroll Number ZZZZZZ

 

Every workplace has a moment where you realise you’ve quietly stopped being a person and started being a system setting. It usually arrives sometime between your first laminated ID badge and the day someone refers to you as “resource.”

At school they told you the world was wide open. Endless possibilities. Follow your dreams. Reach for the stars. Then one day you find yourself in a windowless building being told, in a voice suspiciously cheerful, “If your console freezes, press Ctrl-Alt-Del.” Not why the console freezes. Not how the machine works. Just push the buttons and keep the line moving.

Your name might still technically be Joe, or Sarah, or Sam, but in the database you’re something far more efficient: 1234. A tidy little number that fits perfectly into a spreadsheet. Numbers don’t need opinions. Numbers don’t need creativity. Numbers definitely don’t need to ask awkward questions in meetings.

The strange thing is how quickly the extraordinary becomes routine. You remember the years of school, the exams, the talk about ambition and potential. All that time spent learning how to think, analyse, question — only to arrive at a job where the most valuable skill is remembering your password and not straying too far during your allocated break.

The break itself is a masterpiece of precision. Long enough to eat a sandwich, short enough to remind you who’s in charge. Wander too far and the clock becomes an enemy. Time, once a vast ocean of possibility, is now a swipe card and a countdown.

And yet, the job pays. That’s the deal. The golden thread holding everything together. The work becomes more boring by the day, but it pays. The phrase becomes a mantra, repeated quietly every Monday morning. It pays. It pays. It pays.

Years pass with impressive efficiency. Promotions arrive, not as bursts of excitement, but as subtle adjustments to job titles and email signatures. Your responsibilities grow in ways that feel suspiciously similar to your previous responsibilities. The machine changes; the button remains.

Eventually someone thanks you for your service. There may be cake. There may be a speech. They’ll tell you how much they appreciate the years you’ve given. Your best years, in fact. You smile, accept the card, and try not to calculate how many thousands of mornings began with the same alarm clock and the same quiet promise: I’m so happy. It’s more boring by the day, but they pay me.

And the truly unsettling part? You might even mean it.

What's in a (band) name?

Hannah of Bitchpups / Forgotten Sleep / Thyrd Eye

There is a curious ritual in the music industry, whispered about in rehearsal rooms and van journeys across rain-soaked motorways: the ceremonial band name sacrifice. A strange rite in which perfectly good bands quietly abandon perfectly good names in the hope that somewhere, in an office in London, a man with a lanyard nods approvingly and says, “Now that sounds marketable.”

And so a band appears on a poster with a new name and nobody bats an eyelid — except the poor sods who’ve been following them for years and suddenly feel like they’ve stumbled into a witness protection programme for guitarists.

Take the classic case of the band who were once Bitchpups*. Then they became Forgotten Sleep. Then Thyrd Eye. Same people, same songs, same van that runs on diesel and optimism — different name. Again. You look at the poster and think nothing of it. But had the old name been there, the headcount might have doubled. Because fans build relationships with names. Promoters remember names. Stickers get printed with names. And then one day the name is gone, sacrificed to the altar of “branding”.
(*arguably Bitchpups is the better name) .

You can practically hear the meeting.

“Love the band. Hate the name.”

A sentence that has probably destroyed more band logos than poor musicianship ever has.

Somewhere out there exists a shadow economy of bands who’ve renamed themselves in the hope of pleasing an A&R rep who may or may not still work at the label by the time the demo is finished exporting. The great irony, of course, is that this act of reinvention rarely results in the promised land of record deals and tour buses. What it does achieve is confusion. Fans wonder where the band went. Promoters wonder if they imagined them. Streaming platforms quietly shrug.

Meanwhile the A&R ego gets a gentle massage and the band starts again from zero.

It’s not always about pleasing labels either. Sometimes the name change is tactical. A reset. A disguise. A way of sending the same demo to the same industry gatekeepers and hoping they don’t realise they’ve already ignored it twice under different aliases. The musical equivalent of sticking on a fake moustache and re-entering the queue.

And why? Because the brutal truth is this: the number of bands who actually get signed is microscopic compared to the number of bands who exist. For every band you hear on the radio, there are thousands playing to twenty people in a room that has a dartboard in it. Thousands hauling gear up staircases. Thousands perfecting songs that may never leave their postcode.

The odds are so slim they make lottery tickets look like a sensible pension plan.

Which makes the name-changing carousel all the more tragic and all the more understandable. When the prize is so small and the competition so vast, every tiny perceived advantage feels worth chasing. Even if it means abandoning the identity you built, the one fans shouted back at you from the front row.

But here’s the thing: the bands that last rarely build their future on rebranding exercises. They build it the hard way. Gig by gig. Fan by fan. Room by room. The grass-roots slog that no marketing meeting can replace.

Because a band isn’t a logo. It isn’t a font choice. It isn’t a name dreamt up in a meeting room with free biscuits. It’s the connection that forms when someone hears a song and decides it matters.

Changing your name won’t manufacture that connection. It won’t conjure a fanbase from thin air. And it certainly won’t improve your odds in an industry where the vast majority of bands will never be signed, never be marketed, and never be told they’re “the next big thing”.

So maybe the answer isn’t another reinvention. Maybe the answer is stubbornness. Belief. Refusing to rename yourself for the approval of someone whose opinion is just that — one person’s opinion.

Because the bands who endure aren’t the ones who change their names to fit the industry.

They’re the ones who make the industry learn their name the hard way.

To drum or be drummed

I was reading an old review I had written many years ago after watching a nascent Impaled Existence turn their amps up to No.11, and it got me thinking...
There are two great tribes in live music. Two warring factions who have spent decades proving that moderation is for accountants and people who bring earplugs. On one side: the drum machine disciples. On the other: the guitar maximalists, whose life’s mission is to make sure the drummer exists purely in theory.

Let’s start with the drum machine crowd.

There’s something oddly tragic about a band with stadium-sized ambitions but a suspiciously empty space where a human rhythm section should be. When faced with unemployment, you might reasonably consider retraining as a drummer or keyboard player. It’s a stable profession, provided you don’t mind being replaced by a small grey box with a start/stop button and the emotional range of a microwave. These bands don’t just lack a drummer; they’ve eliminated the possibility of drummer-related excuses. No cancelled gigs due to mysterious wrist injuries. No dramatic fallings-out over tempo. No late arrivals because someone “lost a cymbal”. Just cold, relentless, perfectly punctual beeping.

And yet, for all the reliability, something is missing. Drum machines are technically flawless but spiritually unemployed. They never rush a chorus in excitement. They never hit slightly too hard because the crowd is bouncing. They never look like they’re about to pass out halfway through the encore. They simply exist, dutifully tapping away like an accountant doing cardio.

It’s rhythm without risk. Precision without peril. Bollocks without… well, bollocks.

Still, you have to admire the practicality. A drum machine never demands a bigger share of the van. It never eats the rider. It never breaks up the band because it wants to explore jazz. In the ruthless economy of touring, it’s the perfect employee: silent, obedient, and incapable of forming a side project.

Then we cross the battlefield to the other extreme: bands whose guitars are so loud the drummer might as well be miming in a different postcode.

These are the young, enthusiastic, slightly feral outfits who arrive onstage with fourteen guitars, three working pedals between them, and the firm belief that volume is a personality trait. The drum kit is technically present, often barely mic’d, bravely attempting to exist beneath a tidal wave of distortion. Somewhere back there, a human is working incredibly hard, but the guitars have formed a conspiracy against him.

The result is magnificent chaos. A rampaging herd of amplified chainsaws. A sonic avalanche that flattens everything in its path, including rhythm, melody, and occasionally structural coherence. It is loud in the way thunderstorms are loud: impressive, slightly terrifying, and not particularly concerned with subtlety.

And yet it’s still entertaining as hell.

The guitars thrash and roar as if they’ve received reliable intelligence that the apocalypse is starting in the car park. Every riff sounds like it’s trying to outrun the end of the world. The attack is relentless, breathless, and completely uninterested in pacing. Which, ironically, is the one thing both action films and music desperately need.

Because the best action films know when to slow down. They let you breathe before throwing another explosion at your face. The same goes for music. If everything is maximum intensity all the time, the intensity eventually becomes the baseline. The sonic assault stops feeling like an assault and starts feeling like the furniture.

But here’s the thing: sometimes that doesn’t matter. Sometimes chaos is the point. Sometimes the joy is in the sheer commitment to noise, the glorious refusal to turn anything down, and the absolute certainty that subtlety is for cowards.

So here we are, stuck between two extremes. On one side, bands so precise they’ve automated the drummer out of existence. On the other, bands so loud they’ve accidentally done the same thing with amplifiers.

Somewhere in the middle is probably the perfect live sound.

But where’s the fun in that?

The Wonder Kids

Every local scene has at least one. The band who’ve barely tuned their guitars before deciding destiny has already pencilled them in for stadiums. They’ve got the stance, the statements, the social media bio that reads like an acceptance speech, and the absolute certainty that all they need to do now is sit back and wait for the phone to ring.

It’s a beautiful kind of optimism. Dangerous, delusional, and oddly adorable.

You can always spot the moment the hype begins. Usually it starts innocently enough: a strong first gig, a packed room, a handful of people saying “you’re going places.” Someone posts a gushing message the morning after. Suddenly a star is born. A frontman is proclaimed. The band are “gonna make it.” Within hours, the narrative has formed: last night was an I was there gig. History has happened. The rocket has launched.

The band read this, of course. Their mates read it. Their parents read it twice and forward it to relatives. And from that moment on the machine starts pumping smoke up their arses at industrial levels.

The early stage hype is intoxicating. It feels like momentum. It feels like inevitability. It feels like the universe has quietly nodded and said, “Yes, you lot. You’re next.”

But here’s the problem: hype is loud. Reality is quiet. And reality takes ages.

There’s a lyric that nails it perfectly: all of the luvvies are blowing smoke up your arse / the A&R men are knocking at your door / played on the radio it’ll be a hit for sure. That’s the fantasy. The romantic version of the music industry where success is just a phone call you haven’t received yet because it’s probably stuck in traffic.

In the fantasy, your mum and dad love the single and keep saying they’ve given it a play. Your mates say they’re buzzing for Record Store Day. Seventy-five people click “going” on your event page and suddenly this is it. This is the big time. This is rock and roll. All you have to do is exist and wait for destiny to finish loading.

Meanwhile, in the real world, seventy-five people clicking “going” means maybe twenty-five show up. Half of them are in the band after you. The A&R man is not knocking at your door; he is ignoring 300 emails from other bands who were also told they were brilliant. And the radio station? They have never heard of you, but they wish you all the best.

Believing your own hype is one of the most dangerous phases a band can go through because it replaces hunger with expectation. Why graft relentlessly if success is inevitable? Why rehearse twice a week if the industry is already circling? Why play tiny gigs in terrible towns if the big break is surely just around the corner?

It’s the moment a band stops chasing and starts waiting.

And waiting is fatal.

Every scene has watched it happen: a band bursts onto the radar riding a self-hyped wave, everyone talks about them, the buzz grows, the expectations inflate like a paddling pool in July… and then nothing happens. Weeks turn into months, months into years, and the only thing that lands in their lap is their own dinner when they spill it.

The brutal truth is that hype is a spark, not fuel. It gets people talking, sure. It gets bums on seats once or twice. It gives you a head start most bands would kill for. But hype cannot rehearse your songs. It cannot tighten your set. It cannot write the next single. It cannot drive the van at 2am after playing to twelve people and a dog in a town you’ll never visit again.

Only work does that.

The bands who survive the hype are the ones who treat it like a starting pistol, not a finish line. They read the praise, smile, then go straight back to the rehearsal room. They gig relentlessly. They improve. They learn. They graft. They understand that momentum is something you carry, not something you inherit.

Because the music world is littered with bands who thought the phone would ring and quietly forgot to keep dialling themselves.

The final lyric says it best, and I know cos I fuckin' wrote it ha ha: the publicity and stardom, it gives you thrills — but all those likes and followers won’t pay the bills. And that’s the part nobody puts in the press release. The applause fades, the comments slow, the next hot band appears, and suddenly the hype machine has moved on to its next victim.

The dream isn’t the dangerous bit. Every band needs the dream. The danger is mistaking encouragement for arrival. Thinking the journey is over when it’s barely begun. Believing the story people are telling about you before you’ve actually written it.

So by all means enjoy the praise. Bask in the buzz. Celebrate the good gigs and the packed rooms and the mornings when someone calls you a star.

Just don’t sit by the phone waiting for it to ring.

It won’t.

Not unless you keep making noise.

GIG - The Dry Retch / Spam Javelin / Grenades / MRI @ Swinging Arm, Birkenhead

 Sunday night in Birkenhead, and instead of doing something sensible like preparing for Monday, we pointed the car toward The Swinging Arm for a charity show in aid of the Clatterbridge Cancer Charity. Punk garage rock, shaved heads, packed room — the sort of wholesome community event your grandparents definitely didn’t imagine when they said “get involved locally.”

My band, Spam Javelin, played this event last year and were kindly invited back to fill the slot left by local heroes Sonic Assault, who have apparently imploded. Not completely, mind — two of them resurfaced long enough to jump onstage with a borrowed rhythm section and chug out a single song like a brief and touching punk rock séance.

After a gentle ninety-minute scenic tour of the North Wales coastline (translation: driving and talking nonsense), we arrived just in time to see Decibel finish sweating through their set. I’ve seen them five or six times, so I knew exactly what we’d missed — and besides, I’ll catch them at Curiad Pulse Festival soon, conveniently located near my sofa.

Next up were punk-psychedelic explorers MRI. They admitted to being under-rehearsed, which in our terms just means “rehearsed enough.” Their short, snappy songs were a blessing — proof that not every psychedelic band needs to wander off into a ten-minute jam and forget where they parked. Also, I remain deeply envious of Richie’s Gibson SG, which is frankly doing more for my guitar jealousy than any therapy session could.

Grenades followed and immediately triggered a debate among our camp. Two guitarists, slightly understated volume, and a vibe our Dave described as Pavement. A quick YouTube Music investigation the next day confirmed this was both accurate and complimentary. They may have played one song too many, but when it’s for charity you’re hardly going to wave them off mid-chorus. Their singer also took one for the team and had his greasy mop shaved off, raising £200 in the process. Venue meets barber shop: a winning formula.

Meanwhile, earlier that morning I’d been at home wrestling my battered Marshall amp into harmony with my Boss GT-6 pedal. It’s only taken me about ten years to achieve this technological breakthrough. Standing on stage, basking in the glorious sound of equipment actually cooperating, I couldn’t help wondering why I hadn’t done this sooner. Probably because I’m an idiot.

Spam Javelin did what Spam Javelin does. Loud, fast, job done. People seemed to enjoy it, which is always a relief.

The Dry Retch closed the night with their gloriously filthy, Stooges-tinged, cosmic garage punk chaos and dodgy guitar leads. Unfortunately, although desperately wanting to be their dogs, by this point we were an hour behind schedule and still had a long drive home. So we caught the first five excellent Stalingradient songs before quietly slipping out at 10pm like responsible adults and cursing the fact none of will be in bed before midnight.

All in all: loud music, shaved heads, a room full of people raising money for a good cause, and only mild hearing damage. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday night.

You're a cog in the machine

The employment contract never says “we own the best hours of your life.” It prefers softer language. Opportunity. Career pathway. Competitive salary. It feels less like surrender when it arrives in a branded folder.

The first day is full of optimism and ergonomic chairs. You sit up straight, open a fresh notebook, and imagine the future as a staircase. Promotions. Raises. Recognition. A version of yourself with sharper clothes and fewer worries.

You don’t realise you’ve stepped onto a treadmill until the view stops changing.

Work introduces itself as purpose, then gradually reveals itself as maintenance. Maintenance of rent. Maintenance of bills. Maintenance of a lifestyle calibrated precisely to require the next pay day. The machine hums gently, and you discover your job is not to build it, but to keep feeding it.

You become a cog, but a very professional cog. A cog with performance reviews and a branded mug.

The language shifts subtly. You are not tired; you are “experiencing pressure.” You are not unhappy; you are “seeking new challenges.” You are not trapped; you are “valuing stability.” Words rearrange themselves until exhaustion sounds like a personality trait.

Stress becomes background noise. A faint ringing that follows you home, sits beside you on the sofa, and climbs into bed with you. You wake up tired because even your dreams have deadlines.

There is a peculiar pride in being busy. The busier you are, the more important you must be. The calendar fills, the inbox swells, and somewhere in the chaos you begin to measure your worth in unread emails. You tell yourself this is temporary. A busy season. A demanding year. A short sprint.

The sprint quietly becomes a marathon with no finish line.

Your identity begins to merge with your role. “What do you do?” people ask, and you answer with your job title, as if it were your species. Hobbies shrink. Weekdays blur. Sundays develop a nervous twitch around 4pm. The office creeps into your vocabulary, then your thoughts, then your bloodstream.

You are told not to be bullied, not to be pressured, not to be manipulated. The posters say so. The training modules confirm it. The corporate intranet celebrates it in cheerful fonts. Yet the pressure arrives anyway, disguised as targets. The manipulation arrives disguised as incentives. The coercion arrives disguised as teamwork.

No one raises their voice. The deadlines do the shouting for them.

You promise yourself balance. Work-life balance. The phrase suggests a delicate set of scales, perfectly poised. In reality it’s more like a seesaw with a concrete block on one end and a weekend on the other. You cling to Friday evenings like a lifeboat. Two days of recovery before the tide pulls you back out.

Years pass in quarterly increments.

Retirement appears on the horizon like a distant coastline. Freedom waits there, you tell yourself. Rest. Travel. The hobbies you postponed. The friendships you rescheduled. The version of life you pencilled in for later.

Later becomes the most expensive promise you ever make.

Because the body keeps score. The late nights, the early alarms, the meals eaten in haste, the stress stored in muscle and bone. By the time the finish line arrives, you are exhausted from the race you barely remember entering.

You finally step off the treadmill and discover your knees hurt. Your back aches. Your energy has a bedtime. The world opens up just as your stamina begins to close down.

You have time now. Time in abundance. Time you once imagined like a golden field stretching forever. And yet time feels different when it arrives at the end rather than the middle. Slower. Heavier. A reward that tastes of soured irony.

You realise the machine never hated you. It didn’t even notice you. Machines don’t hate their cogs. They just replace them when the teeth wear down.

And still, the most rebellious thought creeps in: maybe the lie was not that work had value. Maybe the lie was that it deserved all of you.

You were told to smile. To stay positive. To not take the blame. To not believe the lies. Good advice, printed neatly and ignored efficiently.

Because the system never needed you to believe the lie.

It only needed you to keep showing up.