Do the hokey koko
Thrill Jockey Anniversary shows, 12 November, 2007. KOKO, Camden, London.
Yesterday I went to Camden’s trendy KOKO venue for the first time for a showcase of bands on the Thrill Jockey record label. We arrived at 3 pm, in time to see the last band - an old fella with a long grey beard on banjo and his pretty assistant on violin. His gloomy tunes didn’t do much for us, and when The Zincs were similarly flat we left for a spot of lunch and a wander.
After a few pints in the lovely bit of Camden - yes there is such a part, it’s near to Primrose Hill - we wandered past a copper with a machine gun guarding the entrance to a road. As I had become little bit uninhibited I asked him what he was doing. “Guarding the pub” he said as he looked towards the smart, or rather ‘lovely’, pub next to us. “Oh, ok, well it doesn’t look like it needs guarding” said I, “well, it does” he said with an amused smile. We both bade our goodbyes and departed. I must be so predictable, Al said he knew I’d start talking to the policeman. It turned out that David Miliband, the Foreign Secetary, and son of the country’s most famous Marxist soliciologist, lived down the road we had walked past.
Back inside the baroque, womb-like interior of KOKO we arrived just in time to see The Sea and Cake, who consist of two guitarists, a bass guitarist and a drummer. Their music is hard to pinpoint - it didn’t seem to fall into any genre’s that I was familiar with - perhaps I just need to learn more about musical genres. The singer’s voice seemed to remind me of Lloyd Cole and other British, eighties melancholists. Their versatile guitar sound sometimes made me think of Robert Fripp’s drone-ology, sometimes of African noodlism and quite alot I couldn’t really compare it to anything, but it sounded good.
The three members of Trans Am seemed to be a German band - they started by shouting “Ein, zwie, drie” through a vocoder in a Kraftwerk-esque tune. Soon however they betrayed an even-more-German love of metal. Things seemed to be getting seriously teutonic. The drummer had no shirt, only a huge string of beads - from the back I was sure they looked like teeth. To truly complete the effect he needed a bear skull on his head. Despite being metal shy, I was beginning to rock out… in my head at least. (It turns out Trans Am are a US band.)
The final band was the Fiery Furnaces, named after the steel producing furnaces of their native Chicago. The lithe female singer had a long seventies-style haircut that shaded her eyes, and was accompanied by a bass guitarist, drummer and a seventies-haired bloke on organ. They started off full of vim, the singer full of a jerky energy. Soon however the organ-sound became overpowering. People started leaving. I hear that the Furnaces can be inspiring, but for me it was the Sea and Cake who won the day.