Jinx Lennon/The Girobabies/Roscoe Vacant & The Gantin Schreichs - JOllys Sports Bar - 11/11/11 (Kilmarnock)

When you book acts like Roscoe Vacant and the Gantin Screichs, The Girobabies and Jinx Lennon for a gig then the only thing that you can expect is the unexpected.
So it was no surprise that this is what we got.
By the time that Roscoe Vacant led his band into their set the Girobabies hadn't arrived due to missing a train from the city to Satan's skid mark, or Kilmarnock as we like to call it.
It was okay though as the contingency plan of getting Ross Gilchrist of the Gantin Screichs to do a solo set was dealt with minutes before he took to the stage with Roscoe.
Everything started off well, and then soon descended into chaos as Roscoe deviated from playing songs from their debut and his solo material and started into doing a few covers including a burst of Johnny Thunders and a blast of the Ramones.
This was fine with the audience, but Roscoe himself was very disappointed with his performance.
This is live music though and if people wanted to hear a straight run through of the album they could have stayed at home and played the CD.
I didn't personally feel let down and no one else told me that they were either.
So I'd just chalk this up as 'one of those gigs'.
Every band has them and it's not about how the trains wheels come of the tracks, but how you make sure it reaches the station, and taken like that then this was as far removed from the horrible debacle that he thought it was.
As they finished the Girobabies arrived, borrowed some instruments and fired into an acoustic set with fearless, and much drunken abandon.
Similar to the Gantin Screichs set there is no way that anyo0ne could say that this ran smoothly, but the Girobabies aren't about running things smoothly.
There's something of the disaster looming about them.
Every note and utterance could be the one that precedes everything falling apart, but so far I've never seen that actually happen.
Midway through their set Mark gets into a war of words with a heckler in the audience.
It gets heated and they rap comments back and forth with the tension escalating until it looks as if blows will be struck, but that's not what the night is about and just as I think that I might have to intervene it stops and the band fire straight into the next song.
I've spoken to Mark before and said that they are one of the few bands that are playing what I consider real punk music and he disagreed, but my take on punk is that it's all about freedom of expression without boundaries and in that sense I'm right and he's wrong.
He's just to come around to my way of thinking.
Next is the legend that's Jinx Lennon.
Similarly to the Girobabies I would describe him as a punk artists as that is the only singular word that can encapsulate the breadth of what he does.
Poetry, hip hop, ambient noise, acoustic guitar, looping noise and while none of it should make sense there's a primal understanding of it all.
Jinx wants to gouge a reaction from an audience. He wants to use words to dig in deep and pull hard at you. Push you to having to think and make the connections yourself.
It's not easy watching him and he polarizes audiences, sometimes winning over someone before losing them and winning them back all in the space of the one performance.
At one point he is standing there with dark glasses on sharpening a knife and staring straight ahead into a bemused and confused crowd.
Performance art. I mean what the fuck. This is my local seems to be the reaction.
Probably the best way to describe Jinx is in repeating some soundbites from those who had been there.
Scott Lyle - That is the strangest gig that has ever taken place in Jollys.
Mark Hickey - I went home and made myself a cup of tea............I don't drink tea.
Dave Box Miller - I bought two CDs, but I'm scared to listen to them.
Chris Mooney – That fried my brain