Skip The Budgie

The support band is really odd, I mean she is just downright weird. Laura J Martin is like a one woman marching band, playing the flute part over pre-recorded noises, layered singing and some pretty good beats. The engineer struggles a bit with the sound, probably because it is all routed through a looper but she is generally well received, even if it is jsut because the girl is quite clearly insane!

Given the strangeness of the first act, I might be forgiven for wondering whether we were in for more weirdness, whether Alice Russell has taken on a bizarre new DIY direction, but with a blast of furious funk her band debunks my fears and almost literally raises the roof. She seems to have boundless energy and her band is tight and funky.

And the voice is HUGE. There are classic 70s soul-type songs, 80s electro-funk and pure disco and everybody dances like crazy people. I've seen her perform with other people, but here singing her own songs Ms Russell is fearsome, a crowd-pleasing dervish of frightening power who can make you laugh out loud one minute and close to tears the next.

The gig inspires me to seek out her albums, Pot of Gold is the most recent and it is only okay, more laid-back than the live experience and a bit too RnB for my tastes, but on the other hand I really enjoy her 2005 album My Favourite Letters.

On the way home, there is a bible on the seat of the bus.

The old Holy Cross social club¹ in Bedminster is one of those venues with a village hall kind of atmosphere. They have crammed in as many chairs as they can, because tonight we have one of the great modern folk protest bands of the early nineties, who have grown old gracefully and stopped shouting. Chumbawamba seem to have totally reinvented themselves in the last few years, although what they've really done is just get rid of all the electro and keep the close harmonies.

I just love Chumbawamba's acoustic sound these days, they're all great singers and the whole evening is light-hearted and slightly rebellious, they take old songs and change the words so they're about banks and Gordon Brown (Hard Times of Old England) and we all feel righteous and clever. Everyone thinks it's hilarious that they have made an E.P. to celebrate the passing of Dame Thatcher, which you can have sent to your house if you give them a fiver. It's a bit sick, but Chumbawamba still remember all the political songs they used to sing, the reasons why they were so angry back then and so do we, because we're cool too.

The Boy Bands Have Won is a brilliant album, full of humour and beauty and the usual politicking, an example you can hear for yourself as they perform El Fusillado (see also Charlie) - I do not feature in either of these videos, thankfully.

They are ably supported by Jacques, A Robin, who plays quirky French/Spanish sounding acoustic songs, the sort of music you'd hear in the Greenpeace tent or at a protest, although I can't really make out what he's saying - it's either down with the government, or I like boobies, I just can't tell.