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The Presidential, Ashton
Friday May 26th
 There’s a rumour going round that Bran Flakes enthusiast, William
‘Captain Kirk’ Shatner will be making an appearance tonight. It’s
obviously a lie, fabricated by someone at Hangman Records in order to
gain some last minute publicity. Yet regardless, there’s still an air of
excitement buzzing around Ashton’s ‘Presidential.
The local label haven’t been here, or anywhere else for that matter,
since last year’s whopping charity bash, ‘The Gig’, last September, and
now they’re back with a new sampler CD and a great night of live music,
featuring bands from the CD.
‘Quirky, Indie Dudes’, Hobo Heist, kick things off, peddling their
slacker-rock wares in front of an enthusiastic home-town crowd who
respond to every moment of mid-song calm with lairy chants of ‘Hobo!
Hobo!’
Such devotion is clearly deserved by a band that is just, quite simply,
fun to watch. OK, so the songs aren’t the strongest, anthemic tunes ever
written, but then few songs are. Yet as these tunes bounce along on the
back of buoyant basslines and irreverent beats, they don’t half put a
smile on your face.
From a reviewer’s standpoint, Hobo are a difficult band in that they’re
so far removed from the musical norm that it’s frustratingly impossible
to reel ‘em in, wrestle ‘em into a genre and heap lashings of praise and
clichés upon them.
Yet from a gig-goer’s perspective, such uniqueness is definitely
something to be cheerful about. As the boys dance around on stage, you
find yourself swept along in the kooky capricious clatter and enjoying
every minute.
Liverpool rockers Bingo Wings take to the stage next, brilliantly
disguising the fact that they haven’t played live together for almost
four months.
Having re-grouped at the last minute to fill in for an absent
‘Psychedelic Gods Of Rock, Bingo Wings look, and for the most part
sound, like they’ve never been away.
Indeed, it quickly becomes apparent that The Gods’ pulling out is their
loss and our gain as the Liverpool quartet send swooping songs crashing
into every corner of The Pres’ and throttle the place to life.
Highlights come in the form of ‘Burst into Space’, a supersonic,
jet-fuelled blast of pure rock, and a thrilling cover of Metallica’s
‘King Nothing’ that turns up the speed ten-fold on the Hetfield/Ulrich
original. Then, like that scene in The Simpsons when Homer takes an over
abundance of pep and sleeping pulls, the Red Bull-fuelled Bingo clan
seem to nod off for a bit, parking their backsides for a number of slow
jams.
It’s all very nice, yet the longer these songs go on for, the more it
seems like the band have been on stage forever, and the more you just
desperately want them to stand up and get on with it.
Which they eventually do, inspiring some frenzied dancing with a few
more fast-paced covers and inspired originals that leave us wondering
whether we have indeed just witnessed the re-birth of future rock stars.
The whole William Shatner thing may have been a lie, yet one thing is
true, both Hobo Heist and Bingo Wings came, saw, and rocked hard.
Recommended Links:
www.myspace.com/bingowings – Bingo Wings @ Myspace
www.myspace.com/hoboheist – Hobo Heist @ Myspace
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