Brothers of the head

Nice to see Desparate Dan and Juju again, even if it meant we had to sit through some truly diabolical bands. 'Bush Guru', the reason for us being at the Clapham Grand on a Friday eve, were the best of the lot. This isn't praise by the way, as the rest of the acts were so utterly bland and formulaic, it didn't take much to rise above them. I'm not a fan of this sort of right-on 'Afrika the Muthaland is weeping' shite, but they were competent players and they did do a song called 'Bulawayo' which must count for something. It was all downhill from there as they were followed by a ghastly Nelly Furtado wannabee (that's 'I'm like a bird' Nelly, not sexed up, Timbaland trippin' 'Man-eater' Nelly) wearing a screaming yellow dress which looked like someone had detonated a cage of canaries into some cling film and wrapped her in the remains.

She was eventually dragged off the stage by some passing PETA activists, only to be replaced
by one of those bands who used to play during break in your school hall. You remember those utterly wet Christian Youth bands, wot had one of those cylindrical hand shaker things and a weird sort of clacker machine that used to randomly mulfunction when they artfully banged it against their pasty thighs. The earnest weenies used to gaze meaningfully down at their synchronistically tapping feet while their leader (who always looked like that Jane from childer telly classic 'Rainbow' ) beseeched us all to 'Caharrmm to ther Lorred.' Not sure why she had a quasi-americano accent, it being seventies Rhodesia n' all. Sheesh, if anything was to drive an impressionable yoof into the arms of Satan it was these people. But I digress. By this stage I was sufficiently numbed by cheap lager and Jazz cigarillos to venture across the Saturday Night Fever Flashing Coloured Disco Floor (TM) the like of which I haven't seen since Sarah's in Harare, with the intention of rudely heckling the God Squad. Lucky for them they dashed off into the wings and cunningly tagged with something even worse. The lead singer of the next crew came on in very nice white jeans and top to compliment her shiny blondeness, but for some mysterious reason, had decided to wear a fluffy white tutu on top of her jeans. This was one stylistic flourish too far, I begged for mercy and Juju n' DD graciously allowed me to escape from what was quite obviously 'Bad Band Hell'.

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