Friday 30 March 2012

Norwich Floodsport 6.3

I'd never visited Norwich before. I once tried to hitch there for a Fugazi gig but gave up when I got as far as Nottingham too late to continue, and that was where they were playing the next day. Almost a couple of decades later I finally made it there for Killing Joke. It seems a pleasant place, with a cathedral which I visited the morning after the gig and a castle which I'd have explored if I'd had time. What a shame it'll flood when the ice caps melt, along with London, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester and Portsmouth. I made it to the Waterfront just after Seattle band the Crying Spell had begun their goth rock set. Their most memorable song is the one where the dead walk. I enjoyed them and the Icarus Line more than in Bristol. The Icarus Line sound like 90% Stooges tribute, even with one song that sounds like "Dirt" with different words, but if you like the Stooges what's the problem with that? I got myself psyched up by hollering "In Excelsis" in the resonating acoustics of the stairwell between first floor toilet and ground floor bar which had the Gatherers in the bar laughing when I marched through. I spoke to several friendly people before the gig whose names I never found out but maybe we will meet again at futute Gatherings? Hello to Michael from Mannheim, who I spoke to because he had a Kiling Joke T-shirt I'd never seen before, Andrew who I'd met the night before in Bristol and the tall fellow with glasses and Specials T-shirt who was really going for it most of the gig getting enraptured. Youth was displaying greater levels of hygeine then back in the bad old days and had changed costume since Bristol, now he resembled a mutant cyberpunk holocaust survivor, not the sort of style the corporate elect will allow at their planned Fema Camps. I had my 'fuck off' finger waving moves down for "Fema Camp" which sounded even more desperately ferocious than the night before. First they scapegoated the youth and we said nothing. Then they locked up the Geordies and we said nothing. Then they chained up all the lovers of free jazz and made them listen to Ken Clark lecturing in semi-senile injustice. Then there were only old ladies left to complain and when they wrote to the Daily Mail demanding a little descency they found they were ignored as the papers were all owned by corporate elect who want us to WORK for cancerous growth of planetery armageddon. I think this was the gig where Jaz said, "2012? Youth's the optimistic one; he thinks there'll be a nuclear war!" although that might've been Bristol. As far as I recall the set differed from Bristol in that they dropped "In Cythera" and "This World Hell" in favour of "Requiem" and "Wardance." The Waterfront was a more compact and atmospheric venue than Bristol Academy and the cider flowed fast. The healing power of Killing Joke enables my slow gut to drink like a fish! I met Jon Chapman and Geordie Jim and his friend Kev after the feedback faded and they told me their train had been cacelled due to a death on the line. No such troubles with a fortnightly National Express Primobile go everywhere ticket. I was motoring back to Bristol to see the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion as Killing Joke were taking a day off to prepare for London. Before I left I had time to discover a doodad in memory of a Sheriff Coleman of Norwich in the cathedral, which also boasts a massive organ.

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