Weekend Revolution ..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

31-05-2008

Glen Pavilion

Val Verde

Beatnic Prestige

Figure 5

Sergeant

  Every single person who has made a considerable difference to the Scottish music scene in 2008 was at King Tuts for Hogmanay.  It is almost as if an unwritten, unspoken vow was made between several key figures in order to pave the future with music and mayhem of the highest degree.  Some may say that that is nonsense, but when you look at Calum Traynor and Dominic Alari's White Riot club night, and then of course the recent debut of Blair Welsh and Jamie Laverty's Streetrogue Promotions, then this uncanny fact speaks for itself.

  Although this was not the first Weekend Revolution, for me, it certainly was the first one that had caught the town of ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Dunfermline's musically strained – other than P.J Molloys – bloodshot eye.  Making my way towards the Glen Pavilion, I freely admit that I was in the grandest of spirits, and upon reaching the entrance to where I would imagine "the toons" entire population would soon be flooding through, I was filled with a great deal of awe.

  My last memories of this place were from ten years back and to be honest, that only really involved us hanging around, waiting for my mate Stu to finish his work.  But now the pavilion – a place associated with wedding receptions, high school proms and scout quizzes – had the feeling of The Doghouse, Tunnels, Capitol, King Tuts and all my others favourite venues rolled up into one.  It was a sterling display by Miller, no-one in their right mind could state that he had let the side down with this effort so it was now up to the bands to repay him – the revolution was here!

Val Verde

  The last time I had ever seen or heard of Val Verde – not the fictional country used in Commando, Die Hard 2 or Predator – was at an all day festival called Toole Fest.  Well, when I say all day festival, I really mean that when my mates – the Toole's – parental unit went on a two week holiday and left those pair of maniacs in charge, the result was that they emptied the living room of all its furniture and valued possessions in order to set up, what most of us are used to seeing on the NME stage at T in the Park.

  It is fair to say that a good time was had by all, for the day had contained a whole horde of merry revellers – not unlike tonight, a barbeque, Tennents lager and of course, some of the finest musicians Dunfermline had to offer at the time.  I have to admit though, that my favourite part of the day – other than chuckling at the comical wee dog that was utterly baffled as to who all these people were in his house – was when Val Verde took to the stage / where the two and three seated couches used to be.  I think what impressed me most about them that day was how different they sounded to what we had been treated to so far.  Boasting a style verging somewhere in between Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Gomez – two of my favourite bands I may add – was indeed a lot for a lounge to handle, but to its credit, it stood up to the task well.  As for Val Verde, well they had just taken their first steps to becoming touted as being one of Fife's finest bands.

  Fast forward two and a half years and they are now a four piece with lead vocalist Ryan Sharpe also taking up Rhythm Guitar duties.  Walking out to a sizeable – and to my ears – Val Verde daft crowd, I found myself standing with Grant Dickson and Paul Grieves, who in their time have been closely associated with The View and The Law respectively – a tangible compliment in itself.  Together we stood and listened intently to the 1968 Ford Mustang roaring vocals, groovy ska upstrokes mixed with what sounded like an accompaniment of military drumming of songs like That Road and the almighty Billy Magazine, which has a penultimate chorus that sounds like what I assume the Buckfast Abbey Monks chant when they are making their sweet Tonic wine.  Frank Bullit and two hit men in their 1968 Dodge Charger would have a hard enough time dealing with the formidable bar that Val Verde was raising – never mind the rest of the bands on the bill.

  Although in my mind I had no doubt that I was witnessing a great band in the making, I had that evening managed to fall over and land on my head – no thanks to my disgraceful football skills – so found myself constantly looking to Grant and Grievesy for re-assurance.  Loud cheers from both, backed up by a healthy dose of applauding from the now more than mad for it audience, confirmed that my failure to control a suspect cross from Rory Buchanan had not impaired my judgement whatsoever.  Val Verde had set the tone of what was surely going to be an epic night.

Beatnic Prestige

  The tail end of 2007 was owned by the Beatnic Prestige.  Venues across Scotland were being sold out, stages were being invaded by "Dougie fae the Toon", and Beatnic chants were emanating from the midst of French Rugby fans mock scrums courtesy of me, The Face and Traynor.  So when the chimes of midnight struck on the 31-12-2007 thus welcoming in 2008, the Beatnic boys decided that the forthcoming year should be no different, and therefore set about causing the exact same uproar.  Every gig, club night and festival would achieve the same result:

• Aching limbs from bouncing
• Vocal chords stretched from chanting and singing
• My sense of achievement of having annoyed everyone by constantly pointing out such classic Beatnic moves such as Butch's drum solos, Albo's ridiculously amazing guitar playing and of course the Finn shuffle
• And of course the jubilant feeling of have just seen a mega show

  The ethos of the Weekend Revolution was no different, however the atmosphere most certainly was.  Seeing that this was the biggest home crowd that Beatnic Prestige had possibly ever played in front of, the Pavilion's crowd and bands, was almost as hyped up as Kriss Akabusi on a record breaking attempt for consuming as many blue smarties as humanly possible within an hour…AWWOOOOOGA!!

  As expected, the Beatnic showed no mercy and powered through a set that was as impressive as I have seen them play.  Jim McNab, as always was on form with the Fife banter – something to which he excels at – and the band near ripped the place down with ease.  The many months of hard practising, fine tuning and constant gigging had paid off royally! 

  The Beatnic Prestige is getting to the same point as last year, and if they continue with same steadfast formula as they have been, then it will not be long before the really important heads are turned and the champagne corks are popped.  Jack Kerouac, who was best known for his heavy involvement in the Beat Generation – where the term Beatnik would eventually stem from – once wrote: -

 "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle, you see the blue centre-light pop, and everybody goes ahh..."

  To me nothing sums up their slice of the Weekend Revolution better than the above, perhaps instead of "ahh" though, I think "We are the Beatnic, the Beatnic Prestige" is slightly more appropriate…PEARFECT!!

Figure 5

  Hemodynamics elicited by an impulse of neuronal activity as predicted by a dynamical biophysical model (see Friston et al 2000a for details).  A burst of neuronal activity causes an increase in flow inducing signal that decays with first order kinetics and is down regulated by local flow.  This signal increases rCBF with dilates the venous capillaries, increasing volume (v).  Concurrently, venous blood is expelled from the venous pool decreasing deoxyhemoglobin content (q).  The resulting fall is deoxyhemoglobin concentration leads to a transient increases in BOLD (blood oxygenation level dependent) signal and a subsequent undershoot.

  I have absolutely no idea as to the meaning of what I have just typed there.  Because the Weekend Revolution saw me making my debut to Figure 5, I thought it best to research into them a little bit.  The above is the result of my futile attempt.  Now I'm not entirely sure if one of them is perhaps some sort of mad scientist and the above is the formula for Count Dracula's very own brand of Cheerio's – more likely I've clicked on the wrong link – but what I am sure of is when Figure 5 took to that stage, they had swagger and look of a band that was about to aspire to statements such as:

"Have no doubt; this is a proper rock band" (NME)

"A vicious blend of sixties fuelled punk pop" (Art Rocker Magazine)

"Utterly infectious guitar pop that's begging for the big time" (The List)

  As soon as they kicked off what was to be 30 minutes of psyched up Garage Punk, I instantly knew that the above plaudits were deserved.  In 2007, Figure 5 had had festivals such as T in the Park, Rockness and Belladrum thrown at them.  Not to mention the XFM Winter Wonderland with the Stereophonics.  The phrase "took it all in their stride" was definitely applicable.  But it was now 2008 though and The Weekend Revolution demanded nothing but freak beat, mariachi and skiffle-toned rousing psychedelic pop played from the heart.  We were not disappointed and when they played tunes such as Never Believe and former single Nitty Gritty, well you would be forgiven for thinking you had been transported to the UFO Club and were witnessing The Coral and Syd Barrett jamming, with special guest Sergio Leone in the corner filming it for future Clint Eastwood endeavours.  What we had here was a band that could pull of their influences incredibly well, and the sign of that in my opinion is that you couldn't tell what their influences were.  On the risk of using a boring descriptive such as it was indeed a special performance, I'll round this off with my own statement for them to aspire to.

"Figure 5 give a performance that would even inspire a Sunday school teacher to bump Church and go on a 4 day bender" (Tomas Bird)

Sergeant

  With already such an impressive line up under the Weekend Revolutions belt, the fact that Sergeant had still to play made the anticipation all the more nerve racking.  I can never pin point as to why I get nervous for them coming on.  With their perfect pop based structures, accompanied by Mercers invigorating and refreshing lyrics that pretty much define everyone's summery smiles (for me it's drinking Tennents), they need not worry in the slightest – so why should I?  What ever this nervous disposition relates to, it does not last long, for as soon the lads take to the stage and burst into the now John Leckie'd finely tuned set, the mayhem that follows, far outweighs any butterflies – yes, even the ones that flutter near the Sizewell B nuclear plant in Suffolk.

  Storming through their already instant classics – which has favourable hints from say bands like The Stone Roses or The Las – such as Swiftly Does It, Counting down the Days and Away with the Fairies, it almost as if the crowd and the band are as one, much like a Super Soaker and Lonnie Johnson would be on a warm July evening.  The faces in attendance were painted with sheer wildness and I did not recognise a single one of them.  I knew some of the old school would be somewhere in this sea of bodies, but this further proved – in my eyes at least – that their fan base was spreading nicely throughout the Kingdom of Fife.

  It was not long before we reached the end of the Weekend Revolution as It All Comes Back To Me was hurled into the crowd causing the entire place to nearly collapse in on itself – well the security barriers anyway.  These had already been severely tested earlier on when the legions of Rory Buchanan fans had obviously got a little too carried away with themselves – myself included – but it was all in conjunction with the nature of music and mayhem so no harm was done.

  I was gladder than glad that Miller had managed to secure Sergeant.  As bands get bigger and bigger, the smaller towns sometimes seem to miss out as the circuit the current Scottish music scene revolves on, does not yet incorporate the Dunfermline's and Bathgate's etc.  Thankfully, with the continued selfless work of everyone mentioned in this, music and mayhem will soon flow everywhere – something to which I am more than delighted about.

Tomas Bird

Field Officer in Acts of Mayhem