Alfie had flagged-up on our Message Boards http://dizzytigerstu.proboards58.com that Mumm-Ra had a gig at The Gloucester in Brighton at the end of Januray, as one of three low-key warm-up gigs for the forthcoming NME tour (upon which they'd be opening a bill otherwise consisting of The Automatic, The Horrors and The View, hmm). When the day (Thursday 25th) came, Alfie couldn't make it in the end, but I'd arranged to go straight over to Brighton from work and catch up with some more of our friends anyway. There had been a tiny amount of snow around on the Wednesday morning, and some of this had remained into the Thursday, but the train journey from Bexhill to Brighton was in the drakness of the January evening, so I could see nothing out the carriage windows, and when I reached Brighton there was nothing on the ground. I rang Carolyn when I got off at Brighton Station, and walked down Queens Road, to catch up with her in Borders by the Churchill Shopping Centre. My energy had been flagging when we met, so I grabbed a thick rectangle of hot pizza from a nearby stall, and we made our way via North Laine to the Battle Of Trafalgar, for a pint and a chat. Reuben had been texting to arrange coming over from Hastings too, and Carolyn was fielding messages from Lee and Charlie too, who were the first to find us there. The four of us went along to The Brighton Gloucester, as it turned out to be called, and met Lucy and her cousin Charlotte outside, where we waited in the cold for longer than we wished, feeling a little elderly and out of place compared to the Brighton sixth-form (they probably don't even have sixth-forms nowadays...) students also awaiting entry. The Gloucester turned out to be a cheap and charming venue, rather like Hastings Crypt, but roomier, slightly plusher, and with more angles, walkways and levels, all deep red and curtainy. We found a table and some drinks near the back, and discovered that Mumm-Ra were to be supported by Youngplan, who we'd only recently read about in the Hastings Observer, and a group called Restlesslist. The latter struck-up very shortly afterwards on stage, so we moved all our stuff down towards the front to watch: they turned out to be a pair of scarved Brighton lads (at the University possibly?) playing short, fun, instrumentals on guitars, keyboards, samplers and the like, a post-Go!Team outfit. They gave off the impression of this being their first gig, though there were cheap photocopied flyers scattered about promising a forthcoming single, so maybe they were merely self-deprecatingly shambolic. Reuben and Muz arrived from Hastings, as, unexpectedly, did Del, who'd decided to make the trip on his own. It was only us Hastings residents who had seen Mumm-Ra play before: the last gig all of us had seen them play was an unannounced, post-signing spot one summer Sunday afternoon at Frenchs bar in Hastings, the occasion of Reuben's 18th birthday, I recall. We were all quite curious to see Youngplan too, 'cos they'd fallen on their feet locally with some good reviews, partly helped by the members past-form in a number of regularly-gigging young Hastings bands. I was aware, also, that the Hastings Observer due out at the end of the following week was due to feature an article on both Youngplan and Mumm-Ra, pegging them both as part of an emergent (but clearly made-up) scene called, variously, Rovverbeat or Rotherbeat: terms that I'd initially assumed were invented by the local paper's correspondent Richard Morris, as he'd used them first in his Youngplan review, and then again in an email to me, promising to fit a few words on the forthcoming Dizzy Tiger compilation album in the same edition. (When that copy of the paper came out, on Friday 2nd Feb, it transpired that Rich must've been at the same gig, 'cos a review of it, more accurate than I'm gonna manage here, formed a large part of the article - I was unaware of this at the time.) Anyway, turned out that the paper's comparison of Youngplan to Futureheads (had any of the groups been at Futureheads barnstorming Crypt gig a few years back, alongside Del and I?) wasn't far off the mark, though I detected Maximo Park as a stronger influence, though we were suprised to see three professional photographers appear to the front and right of the stage, snapping away throughout Youngplan's set. The lightbulb of realisation went on in my head then, that there was some kind of management/publicity framework already in place for Youngplan, and that the Rotherbeat creation was going to be part of an attempt at selling a local scene to the national media. (This supposition was given more weight when I studied the copy of Good Meaure Magazine - aka GM! - that I'd picked up at the gig, and saw Mumm-Ra, Youngplan, and even our old mucker Adam from East Magzine, modelling and being interviewed throughout.) The Gloucester had filled-up with kids by this point, many of whom were down front watching the bands, others I'm sure just taking advantage of the seriously cheap drinks, and waiting for a dancefloor snogging moment to come along. Mumm-Ra took to the stage bolstered by Youngplan's Dale (on guitar & vocals) and, now, four professional photographers. Noo cheerily admitted to having them only just having invented Rotherbeat, and I shouted up that people could pretty much Read All About It in next week's Hastings Observer, if anyone was listening. The band whooshed through their now largely-familiar set of singles ('What Would Steve Do?', 'Song B', 'Out Of The Question', that one that came free with the NME, etc) along with presently-unreleased songs like 'She Got You High;', which we all remembered from the Frenchs gig. What Mumm-Ra have lost in ramshackle, sitar-embellished, somewhat prog-seriousness (as in every gig we saw them play prior to Frenchs, eg at The Crypt, The Ypresstock festival, various Smugglers gigs) they've made up for in a technicolour conciseness and abundance of tunes (for a taster of the 'old' Mumm-Ra, I could point you in the direction of the Basement studio back in Hastings, which still appeared to have a few copies of the Tsunami Appeal cd album knocking about - proceeds to the Disasters Emergency Committee - that featured Mumm-Ra alongside Del's Burn Burn Burn, and several other Hastings artists). They went down superbly with the crowd, but it didn't seem too long before the lights were back up and the following Indie Club night was beginning, at which point we all headed outside and scattered onto various nightbuses Westwards, and Mumm-Ra (by their onstage admission) went back to Behill to mark the 6th anniversary of their debut gig, up in the cold night on Galley Hill in Bexhill. The next morning, on the train back to Bexhill, I was able now to see the vast tracts of snow that had clung onto the North side of the South Downs, between Lewes and Eastbourne. As an Old Man, I can only say that those Mumm-Ra boys must've caught their death of cold.
A couple of days later, and I was back down the aforementioned Smugglers, this time to help celebrate our friend Xanten's birthday. She'd arranged with Ewen for Cloudesley Shovell to play, and so Billy, Louis and John were all soundchecking when I arrived. Aside from Xanten and her housemate, we were also jined by Jamie, Reuben and Wookie, whilst Marcus turned up and sat with Matt and his partner. I think I very breifly saw Rufus appear with Alice and some others, but they must've headed off elsewhere, 'cos I couldn't find them later. Meanwhile, Christa was stationed up the back with Paul and some of their friends, collaring me for the odd kiss as I passed to and from the toilets. Cloudesely Shovell powered through their denim-rock, stomping all over the line between taking the actual music very seriously, but taking the piss out of themselves and their mates relentlessly. A special treat had been word-of-mouth advertised for the evening, namely the debut gig of that Dickensian waif, 'Little' Jimmy (where Cloudesley Shovell hark back sartorailly to the 1970's, Jimmy actually harks back to the 1870's...). Things looked a bit dicey when a guy wandered into the bar (and, yes, he did have a Borat moustache, and responded to shouts of Bohemian Rhapsody!" by muttering a few lines from 'I Wan To Break Free') and wouldn't walk away from the microphone, until Ewen intervened (there had been some suspicion that this guy was gonna be some comical birthday stripogram-style treat for Xanten, but he was actually just a bit random). Thereupon, Jimmy plugged in his electric, requested "A bit of volume" and, brilliantly, howled through a non-stop 20 minute set of Mary Chain feedback and yelping at top speed. There was a bunch of rather long faces at the bar, and some very stupid grins from the rest of us down the front: and Marcus' assertion that Jimmy just might be the "new Dean" only took a battering if you conveniently ignored the fact that, even before The Ital Jets, Dean was a total teenage metaller. I dunno whether we'll ever see Jimmy onstage at Smugglers again after that, but, Jesus, he needs to be pushed back onstage again at as many other venues in the town as we can find, as soon and as often as possible, the feisty little fucker. After that interlude, Cloudesley Shovell's second set of thrilling stoner-boogie ("And this song's called 'Robot Colossus'...") was as a fair balm to soothe the ears. We'd agreed (also on the Boards) to Indie Stu that we were gonna go round to the Brass Monkey, to catch Tim Hoyte supporting the excellent I Am Kloot, but (possibly 'cos Kloot was down from Manchester?) a few texts, and a trip round the corner by Marcus, established that the Monkey had opened earlier than usual, and we'd missed them, so we stayed getting trolleyed in Smugglers instead. Happy Birthday, Xanten! God bless us, every one!