“Never again,” I once said. “Never judge someone, lest you be judged yourself,” someone else once said.
“Fix,” someone else said – or shouted. And standing in front of a crowd of West Lothian teenagers I’m, for a second, questioning the wisdom of getting involved in the hoary world of judging music. Publicly at least – I judge music all the time, writing reviews for is this music? and whatever mainstream publications deign to pay me.
And while I’d love to say that I’ve been lured back to a Battle of the Bands out of some altruistic notion that I can “give something back, and quite possibly “make a difference”, this is, I’m, afraid, a job.
And no different in essence to all the times I’ve sat on panels, and listened to demos and answered questions from bands on how to best present themselves to the press, and indeed talking to budding writers on how to get on in the ‘biz’.
Just that usually, I’m sat round a table offering friendly advice, face-to-face. Where there’s no winners and losers, and no hordes of fans (or friends) of the bands awaiting with bated breath the decision on whether it’ll be their mates who scoop the prize.
Of course – as any good journalist should – I’m sensationalising things a little. It’s good-natured heckling from the crowd, shouts from the fans of ten bands – from eight different schools from as many different West Lothian towns all trying to drown each other out as the announcement draws closer.
Though when I utter the words “Flip Banshee” it does quieten down a little. Before building up to a crescendo of noise. Mostly disapproving it seems, and as the singer from the winning band confesses, none of their mates came along. Which, I assume, should dispel any accusations of crowd pressure on the result.
Things kicked off – began, that is – two hours earlier, at the Regal Theatre in Bathgate – a busy wee town closer to Edinburgh than Glasgow, and as I discovered a ten-minute drive from my own house. It’s perhaps seen as some sort of jewel in the crown in West Lothian – well, it was deemed prettier than Blackburn by certain TV people who decided to film Susan Boyle there rather than her hometown. Bathgate itself has, as far as I’m aware, not produced that many musical talents – The Fire And I the most recent band to make (small) waves locally, while with Ms Boyle officially nothing more than a “nee’bor”, honours might have gone to Prick Decay, a band who some years ago were feted by one Thurston Moore thanks to his encountering some home-releases via their own Chocolate Monk label. (Turns out that they – later known by the more radio-friendly moniker Decaer Pinga, and now Blood Stereo – were actually from Blackburn as well !)
Anyway. It’s the next generation now. 10 bands who’ve been selected, somehow or other, to represent their schools, win a prize of musical gear (for the school) and gain a place at the Bathgate Music Festival. There’s also the offer of a photoshoot from Joe Turnbull, who apart from having been in and about the West Lothian music scene for ages, also manages a band, Capstin Pole. And (in his other incarnation as a musician himself) his first ever gig was on the same stage as tonight’s bands will perform.
If you have an eye for detail you’ll have spotted what looks like an error – 10 bands in two hours? Well under two hours in fact – each act will perform just two songs, with at least one being an original. Most of the bands, however, opt for the option of playing a cover. And, though they may not realise this, immediately put themsevles at a disadvantage.
For me however, most bands are already in trouble before opening act Flip Banshee have completed their set. School bands are supposed to batter their way through Oasis covers, or on occasion,strive to look and sound like the new Slipknot, or, for those who have done time in the school orchestra, play some smoothly sophisticated jazz funk. They might even have an emo bent though the emo kids usually don’t seem to be the ones heading around with guitars.
This trio however – on home ground as they’re from Bathgate itself – deliver two tunes who are firmly lodged in my head after one hearing – despite an equipment breakdown they still bash through them with plenty of energy and some very together interplay. With strong Scottish accents – something Joe picks up on right away – they don’t have any particular influences, but fans of (early) Biffy, Weezer, Frightened Rabbit and Pavement (and, oddly enough, The Frank and Walters) wouldn’t be disappointed.
It does seem rather churlish to try and get to the end of what’s been a rather long blog post with nine other bands still to come, especially as many were pretty decent and all the acts had enough qualities for us to fill the comment sheets (in the dark, so who knows what they made of them). But in truth, I handed in my notes at the end I can’t recall the exact names of the other bands who played, and don’t really want to insult anyone by stabbing a guess… We did, in no particular order, get (as expected) some slick jazzy funk, a curiously disinterested all-grrl 4-piece, a couple of acts whose members seemed to be a grab-bag of all youth movements with a musical style to match, at least one act who were making up the numbers (not listed on the programme, no original material).
And, running Flip Banshee closest, a pretty competent metal act, a quartet who, if their future songs all are up to standard, could be the next Coldplay, and a kind of singalong punk trio with an knack for “woah-woah” choruses.
All this added up to the reason that I was able to say with complete honesty that the decision was actually hard – as Joe pointed out, the other bands all had qualities. Which was really what we debated – whether technical ability could beat originality. So we filled in our forms and totted up our scores as last year’s winners played a bit of an extended set.
They were KyoKudo, by the way – a namecheck for them, but it might be unfair to single out any of this year’s runners-up anyway – after all, as someone once said, music isn’t a competition.