Dogboys Vs Monsters

So here I am sitting with my four variants of posters and pea-sized bit of plasticine reflecting that Friday night was quite a spectacular one in a number of ways. Went down to meet the lads from Flipron at five o’clock-ish, and it became apparent straight away that not too many people were going to turn up. There was a football do in the club opposite, and one just up the road where Kevin Radcliffe had been assigned to chat (rather them than me) and of all things Nobby Stiles’ son was going to tell jokes, and the outlook wasn’t good. To top it all off it was rainy, windy and grey outside, but knowing just what kind of band Flipron were it was worth forging on whatever the scenario.

The lads arrived just after 5.30 and I pulled the short straw of the heavy amp (I offered to carry Jesse’s banjulele in part-exchange but he said he didn’t have it!) to haul up the club steps. The lads from the Robin Hood of covers’ bands The Con Artists were all there and as the Flipron guys unpacked their myriad instruments from antique boxes they must have thought I was insane. The soundcheck re-assured them though and frontman Jonny set sail on a wave of phonecalls to pals that the Capetown Robber who recently hacked into his account couldn’t hope to finance. Safe now to have a cider, a sense of calm and quiet exultation accompanying the strains of ‘Skeletons on Holiday’ and Jonny’s eager canvassing in the background: “Steve, you’ve got to hear this!”

Credit to Jonny’s Con Artists for kicking off the music “scene” (hate that word – can’t wait for an anti-scene, as ever) in my hometown area, and it was great to be able to pair them with possibly the most original and creative, certainly downright strange yet still brilliantly Pop band in the UK. The Con Artists kicked off proceedings at 8.30, cutting a slightly more effeminate sight than usual behind Flipron’s Hawaiian island-effect stage garlands, and were again fantastic. I’m not in the least a fan of The Fratellis, Razorlight, Kasabian or The View of course (okay I do like ‘Same Jeans’, I admit), but the way the lads play them takes away any sense of cock-rocking ego that those bands themselves stupidly project, cutting straight to the indie magic at their core.

The Undertones, The Magic Numbers, Manics, Beatles, and those great Killers singles, it’s another (albeit quieter than they’re used to – where are all the Beartup fans?) feast of indie fun that kicks the Monophonics clean over the fence. 9.30 and they make a clean break, moving aside for our new Somerset pals. Adam plays a few tracks out from the system and … what’s this? – a little bit of Roy Smeck that I hope Flipron frontman Jesse (he of the deepest esoteric tastes) notices! The inspired Hawaiian tones of ‘On With The Dance’ segue into one of the most surreal and best gigs I’ve ever seen. ‘Rusty Casino’s Casino Rustique’ with its fine tale of No Entry resignation, ‘Big and Clever’ with it’s brilliant defiant riposte of “my arse is big, my arse is clever cos it knows you want to kick it but it knows that you will never ever ever get close enough to give it a try” (remember this one being one of the first songs to really get at me when I saw them for the first time last year – wonder if anyone has that feeling tonight?), ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on the Dead’, ‘Hanging Round the Lean-to with Grandad’, ‘Big Baboon’ and, oh yes, ‘Skeletons on Holiday’ replete as it only is with Jesse’s pre-song monologue genius.

Even a call for ‘Viscous Car and Love Poem’! Fucking ace. Am I dreaming? My younger brother and his pals absolutely love it, and it’s a shame more kids aren’t here to witness it all. Fucking Kevin Radcliffe. Or the weather. Or Nobby Stiles’ son. When Budd stands and makes heroic shapes with his accordion towards the end it’s like folk ingenuity liberating rock’n’roll from its hellish current incarnation, but I’m sure the lightning that I seem to remember flickering around him as he stood there amidst the shaded garland forest is merely a fragment of my over-active imagination. Perhaps not.

Outlandish, poetic, instrumental indie orchestration to die for, the show is fucking ace. Even the landlord is singing their praises like a large songbird in my ear, and the lads seem genuinely moved by the post-song acclamation. Come the end they have more to pack up than most, and do it while chatting to enthusiastic new fans and well-wishers. The people here tonight I feel are genuinely intrigued and beguiled by a genuinely intriguing and beguiling band. The romance of the unlikely turns to a euphoric tingle of realisation, and Flipron are most definitely the new folk heroes of the Valleys.

© Miwsig