The Shambolic Rock'n'Roll Wrestling Sex Party

featuring The Bucky Rage/Filthy Little Secret/The Decoy - 13th Note - 6/8/10
Bit rough and ready, unedited and rambling, but here it is.

Tonight The Decoys are opening the Shambolic Rock'n'Roll Wrestling Sex Party and I'm struggling to understand what's shambolic about them, where the rock'n'roll is, what they hell they have to do with wrestling and more importantly how their set could serve as a catalyst to a sex party.
Now if the evening was billed as a cheese and wine night for baked student musos who want to cling onto their virginity then The Decoys would have fitted it perfectly.
I wouldn't have attended, but it would have been more apt.
Basically their inclusion on the bill is like trying to squeeze a very square peg into a round hole.
It was never going to work.
Even if you used a whole family sized tub of KY Jelly* to lubricate the hole they still couldn't have been forced into it.
While their level of musicianship was impressive it couldn't be described as entertaining.
At best it was bland and at worst self indulgent bollocks.
So thank you to the gods of rawk and roll that Filthy Little Secret were there to save the day.
Sweat and passion were spent in equal measure in a set that threatened to spontaneously combust anyone who got too close.
Howling guitars, throbbing bass lines, thunderous drumming and sleazy yelps are all drawn together and spat out with the sort of disregard for the audiences sensibilities that all good punk rock bands should have.
While they would collectively deny that they are a punk band they are frankly delusional on the matter.
They are one of four bands who are currently playing in the Glasgow area who are charging the paddles and sending a current through the atrophied heart of the local punk scene.
That the majority of punks haven't picked up on this is more about their reluctance to move from a secure comfort zone than a reflection on what the band are churning out on the stage.
Give it a couple of months and what is right under their noses may well serve to give them the kick up the arse that they need and they may even manage to turn up at a gig to play catch up.
If not then it's their loss.
In the interim alcohol had been consumed, dancing had been partaken of and good times have been had by all that were there.
Exhilarating stuff indeed.
The headliners of the night, The Bucky Rage, are another of the four bands who are in a position to shake thing up a bit.
The shambolic and wrestling title of the evening is obviously a reference to them, but while some would take the shambolic tag as a criticism it is actually a huge part of their charm.
Donning Mexican wrestling masks backstage - to protect the identity of the guilty I presume – they take to the stage and plunder and bastardize sixties garage tunes at breakneck speed.
Not really covers as such, but a drunken homage to a scene whose influence can still be heard all these years later.
There are snatches of songs I think I know but they are fleeting and quickly lose ground to a harder and far more bludgeoning sound.
Raw is the main descriptive term that springs to mind. Raw with a capital R.
The small area set aside for the bands obviously isn't enough to contain the them and it isn't long before their guitarist is on the dance floor thrashing about a bit.
He's a large guy and the crowd naturally makes some space for him, but as he returns to the stage they don't have time to reclaim it as the bassist is tagged and immediately jumps in to fill the spot he vacated.
A little later when he returns to the stage the bassist is caught in a headlock by the guy on keyboards and thrown about a bit, but he isn't letting the small matter of a throttling bother him and barely misses a beat.
In fact I'm not sure what would slow them down.
Not even the appearance of another wrestler, aka Jim Spence of The Brutes/The Jackhammers, can hold them back.
He attacks a few members of the band, but they shrug him off and continue the set relentlessly.
As expected something that is driven at so hard can't go on for long though and it is all over as quickly as it began.
All in it was a bit of a hit and run experience, but if given the choice I'd rather have 15 minutes of The Bucky Rage than 2 hours of a more successful and established bands.

*Is there such a thing, and if so why?