The Beat Surrender

I’d been passed a ‘taster’ disc with three of this band’s songs on recently and was quite impressed with their slick rock tracks which flirted a bit with the stoner sound at times. These were taken from the bands recently released “First Hit For Free” album which they are promoting at the moment.

After Kevin discussed the band with me, and once he’d found out I didn’t hate them, he wielded his influence and got me on the guest list for their support slot with Tygers Of Pantang down at my local Rock Club, The Gasworks.

So, once the band finally took to the stage I settled back to enjoy a good set. It was good to see the group dynamic; this is obviously a band that works well together and not just a studio based outfit – one of the questions I had about them after hearing the taster CD. Interestingly, the front man seemed to be taking his lead from one of the lead guitarists as to which song they would play next. Lead singers are usually ‘The Ego’ who call all the shots once a band’s on stage. He certainly looked like a rock star with half his face made up, floppy cuffs, leather pants, doing the sideways Axl Rose shuffle – yet he seemed likeable enough despite all this. And he possesses quite a vocal range, too.

At one point he left the stage and tried coming round doing the audience participation thing – passing the microphone to folk to sing what he’d just sung – big mistake in Bradford, my friend. The bloke I was stood with shot to the bar, several pairs of arms were folded and you could see people suddenly becoming very interested in the floor, the walls, their nails etc.

That’s something about the Bradford music scene; unless you’re mega big, you won’t get much response out of a crowd. Having said this, there was a handful of young ‘uns down the front who were having a great time and were really getting into the music – but a lot of the rest were older blokes who were stood around listening, but not really moving much. I reckon they were here to see the main act, who have been doing the rounds for years now. I think this also explains the cheeky winks I got from one of the barmaids – I was one of the few blokes in there under 50.

The band played for around 50 minutes. Sadly, I didn’t record the total number of songs they played – sorry about that. It seemed to be into double figures, anyway. I do know I had four Newcastle Browns while they were on (had to keep my barmaid happy), and two quick trips for a pee. The Gents in the Gasworks are proper Rock Club bogs, by the way – well worth a visit (if you’re a man). And the screens everywhere mean you don’t miss much while you’re at the bar.

One highlight of the set was they nearly started playing “Freebird” – they only played a few seconds of the intro, but it got me excited. Overall I was impressed with the professionalism and skills of the whole outfit…and I love to try and find fault, if I can. I think the band were let down a little by the sound, my ears were ringing when I left the venue and this was not down to the volume of the band. The instruments were clear enough, but there was a top layer of white noise which I think the sound guys could have tried tweaking a bit.

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