Hazy Recollections and Eardrum Torture

When attending a gig, we like to feel that we’re in control of what we hear and that the artists are performing for us. Of course, not all bands intend to simply entertain. Some invite you to experience something unusual, unexpected and some push your patience even further, subjecting you to some seriously uncomfortable shit. I’ve been to gigs where it’s all out war between the band and the crowd over who will buckle first. Damn right. They just don’t know what’s good for them. Sometimes you need to be offended to be educated.

I recall an evening at the Bullingdon in Oxford, at the beginning of this empty and pointless decade (it was when the pub supported acts of all kinds rather than targeting the blues and folk audience to compete with the nearby Ex-Zodiac O2 Academy). On this memorable night a few local artists were touting their wears. The venue got busier and we, two friends from my halls of residence, got drunker. Snake Bite, the students drink of choice, was being consumed at a fatal rate. It’s the drink you grow to hate and, by the end of the first year, just looking at a pint of its swirling purple madness makes you gag. Ugh! Terrible stuff, but such was University; the days when the future was inviting. Optimism ruled and everything felt on an upward trajectory. It couldn’t last.

Nearing closing time, the pack was getting restless. A combination of sugary alcohol and low key music was boiling their blood. I imagine they were impatient for the cheesy, late night club disco. The fragility of the atmosphere was practically moist in its lusting for what was to come, a band called Holiday Stabbings.

And this was it: two guys with long, greasy hair crouching on the floor like Homo Sapiens fed an electric guitar and a mic'ed cymbal through a vast array of pedals and sound manipulators. By layering drones and whirling sounds from these two instruments, their improvisations were long, painful and, of course, highly pretentious. Tip-toeing around the pedals as best they could, they paced back and forth, tweaking a knob here, adjusting a control there – almost as if they were obeying the whim of a super machine, its anatomy gruesomely sprawled out on the stage.
I was hooked but it seemed I was the only one. “This is fucking awful” said one guy in front, sneering with arrogance. He was the kind of unimaginative twat who gathers all his stylistic accessories from The Matrix.
A few dirty posh girls behind him grimaced in agreement but kept silent. They knew deep down that to raise a fuss would be to fuck with the wrong scene. They were listening to pure mortality being pumped into their ears and no amount of sobbing under the covers in the early hours would make it all go away.

Someone else from the crowd placed a bit of paper on the stage with something written on it and one of the band held it to his face deep under his hair. Disgusted by words to this day I’ll never know, he threw it hilariously away like an angry child would an unwanted toy. So far so weird. Maybe we were being punished for our complacency; we shouldn’t have left our guard down. It reminded me of the headache inducing, now legendary Jesus and The Mary Chain gigs of the 80’s. Holiday Stabbings over-serious, misanthropic bravado was laughable though strangely captivating. Presumably be known to them at the time, this droning, mechanically distorted, tonal death-bringing style was being simultaneously cultivated by many other groups: Sunn O))), OM and Euthedral who is also from Oxford. It’s pretty safe to say that Holiday Stabbings did not go down well. The general public would once again learn to accept being tortured.

Several months later I would set up my own band with the two friends who joined me for the evening. I can’t speak directly for them but the evening inspired me. I realised that in order to make real music you have to ignore the masses, take risks and make enemies. Do it for yourself. With their myspace deleted and no trace of articles or contacts anywhere, I guess Holiday Stabbings were doomed to be despised and lost behind the sofa of history. When you think of the thousands, millions of bands who have fallen victim to the same fate, it’s hard not to feel a sense of melancholy. But yeah yeah, such is life and even the almighty Internet cannot preserve everything. Nothing ever lasts forever.

(© Copyright 2009 Brendan Morgan)