EBGB’s and Jacaranda, Liverpool
I am big fan of self-depreciation and the lowering of expectations to all the more be pleasantly surprised when anything goes right or is good, so it’s great to report that Crapfest did exactly NOT what it said on the tin. The theme stemmed from its founders, the anarchic Wirral two-piece of the Crapsons setting up a gig of friends, established band connections, and any excuse for a party.More
Also sadly gone too soon, Marc Evans. A few years on from my early musical efforts I was back in Pen, when he (and Nige, the other guitarist) made the effort to come over from Wrexham from whence I had recently returned from a tour of college duty.
They were keen to get me involved in their new black metal project, and while I had known them from death metal gig-going over there, seeing the two of them play in Amethyst when the Memorial Hall was in its heyday, it was the first time we’d really chatted about the our interests and motivation in making music.More
[by mark watson-jones]
Sadly, this last week I lost two people who’d featured significantly in my and local musical history so I’ll take a moment in a couple of columns to celebrate the type of people they were and the positive examples that they set.
First, Dave Lewis, who I first think we met when he was doing weekend discos in the late 80’s at the remnants of The Grand Hotel in Pen, a huge Shining style decaying mansion and a haunt for our underage drinking practical lessons.More
I went to a festival in the summer of 2020. There, recorded for time immemorial, a monument to a
moment of “normal” chaos in the wider insanity of constrained, hushed times. Since 2008 I’ve
embraced festival going as my religious retreats, the epiphanies of self-destructive liver flagellation,
aural ecstasy, revelation, redemption and survival to a soundtrack of your choice. But the prayer rug
and the muddy earth pulled from beneath my feet this year with developing events, already had lost
Pit Fest in Holland in May, and the intended destination here of a return to the glorious Brutal
Assault was also postponed, the spiritual loss and the shaking of the musical pillars of my faith was
palpable.More
I’ve had a few requests from random Americans to join the Marine-core! Facebook group, I don’t think they are intending to visit North Wales, and this was not set up to fetish-ise some elite murder squad. Marine-core! is rather a celebration of the fact we can sustain alternative music in the area, as we have been for a few years before settling into our accommodating venue of choice. Sheer sparsity of numbers and disturbance of the gentrified peace is always against us, but we’ve proven that friends are still willing to gather for live original music whether they are particularly into the styles or not. More
