I must confess I rarely garner any enthusiasm to get down to The Cavern these days, in fact live music in Exeter has taken a hell of a downturn in recent times (and I'm not arrogant enough to suggest it is purely since I stepped aside from promoting but...) due to the closure of Tiggas Bar, the ruination of The Hub and it's replacement by the music-cafe-come-trendy-name-drop-indie-hippy-hang-out-my-daughter's-Josh-Stone-dontcha-know Mama Stones it has been sparse pickings.
So it is left to The Cavern to fly the flag for decent music... which they kind of do with the waft of a tattered dish rag in an inconsistent breeze, going for scene punk and metal with a smattering of wider styles thrown at the wall to see what sticks.
So with all the talk of Voodoo Six being the next saviours of British rock and some interesting opening acts it was time to revisit a place I was a fairly regular attendee of before it got a stupid hair cut and put on some nail varnish and 'guy' liner.
First off my lift was late; I had to buy a ticket from a man in a pub and decided it would be a far more rewarding use of time to catch up with old friends rather than see the opening band. I was reliably informed they were thrashy... but unfortunately (well not that unfortunately) I was tucking into a pint of ice cold lager and trading insults with Grifter drummer Foz so I shall review the pub instead.
The John Gandy is much like Exeter really; when I came here 12 years ago it had character and a bohemian vibe that made it unique, it was never the best pub but it had something... Like the council, the owners have managed to rip this out of it, turn up the lights a bit and bring in the same stuff as everywhere else. The refurb has left it, like Exeter High Street, soulless and devoid of personality, a chain pub without a chain, four walls and a bar... still mass produced lager is the same anywhere as long as it's chilled.
On to The Cavern and the taste of slightly less chilled lager in plastic pint glasses. The next band (or maybe even the first - a point no one could clear up) were in mid flow. Watching it kind of took me back to the early nineties... I could have sworn that a normal sized Sebastian Bach was fronting a band playing Megadeth and Slayer cast offs whilst a prepubescent Mick Mars wailed on guitar.
I know that fashion is cyclical but this was a display that you would have thought had been killed off when people ran into the arms of Seattle's miserables, got fat on the turntables of Nu Metal, far too macho and serious in the era of Metalcore and cut themselves to My Chemical Romance... it was cheesy, ballsy and unashamed. They could all play their instruments and wore their influences on there sleeves, good crowd interaction too.
Couldn't say it was something to make me go 'wow' and rush down the front but if I had heard this in 1992 and been old enough to buy a beer legally I'd have loved it.
Next up Grifter are a band immune to trends, quite frankly they play rock and roll and pull their influences from Robert Johnson and the founders of The Blues itself as much as Black Sabbath, Clutch or ZZ Top. It's too easy to dismiss bands with a 'retro' feel as trendy, but they aren't doing this as some band wagon jumping 'next big thing', they exist simply because they want to. They didn't spend ages in front of the mirror working on their rockstar wardrobe; they turned up dressed like they would come round your house or go out to the pub and put on a deliciously unpretentious lesson in having a good time.
Every song is a potential anthem in waiting, spurred on by huge grooves and more hooks than Peter Pan in a hall of mirrors. At times it is almost like an eye opening rifle through your Dad's record collection (well if your Dad was a cool rocker who listened to Motorhead and wasn't some socks and sandal wearing Steely Dan lover) but they manage to inject everything with a modern attitude, that if anything makes these tunes ageless rather than some flash-in-the-pan sound of the moment.
As a live act they are honed through years of hard graft and like the personalities that make up the band themselves they are intelligent, belligerent and articulate and above all fun.
It's so uncomplicated it's untrue, not the music but the concept. Drink beer, rock out and have a good time - they may have sold their souls at a crossroads but you can be sure they haggled themselves a good deal.
So onto Voodoo Six.
It's a hard time to be a British band; largely because we invented the damn genre and have been playing catch up since Iron Maiden released 'Powerslave' - cue every band with a moderate sound and a sniff of success labelled 'the Saviour', the 'next big thing', the best British Band since...'. Christ, the list of casualties is fucking phenomenal: The Almighty, Dub War, One Minute Silence, Kill To This, Murder One, Iron Monkey, Raging Speedhorn, Arcimony, Pulkas, Earthtone9, Pitchshifter, Dogs D'Amour, fuck it - the head stone isn't big enough to list them all.
The point is that as a British Band we'll support them round every toilet in the country until they collapse. We'll refuse to buy any of their stuff when they release it and so they get dropped and fold anyway.
The ones that get through this cycle sell out their roots for a few hundred bucks worth of free tattooing (cough, Lost Prophets) and spending the rest of their careers blowing goats, record execs and most likely each other as touching their groupies would earn them a stretch... in the modern age it has to be a depressing thing to be at the level Voodoo Six are...
However I have to say I don't really rate them. The guitar sound is borrowed from Tom Morello and whilst they are admittedly heavier live than on record it is still an anemic bag really and one that doesn't justify the hype.
I guess they aren't bad, just not my thing which sums it up for me - you have to love or hate an act, have a powerful reaction... indifference is the death knell of a rock n roll band.
Being 32 and having an early start in the morning with the added bonus of middle management responsibilities the prospect of a slightly earlier night was more appealing so I sacked it in half way through.
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