Is it me? Is it my ignorance? The fact I’ve spent most of summer away from the scene? The fact I’ve not seen any live music for a while or listened to the radio or really been online during the blistering holiday months…
Perhaps the break has done me good and the great music has always been out there, but I’ve suddenly come back from recent escapades and thought, ‘Right, let’s kick start the music scene again.’
Perhaps I should rephrase that, cos I don’t really do anything apart from get excited by what I hear and then jump up and down like a little kid at christmas and feel the need to tell you and everyone about it…
It’s people like Steve Rastin (Blood & Lipstick promoter), Dave Cox and Co. and Adam Walton who tirelessly fly the flag much to their inconvenience to bring you music and help those that make it. So when I say ‘Let’s kick start the music scene again’ I really mean, ‘Right, let’s help Steve, Dave and Adam kick start the music scene again.’
Something clicked inside me, things had been stagnating and I guess a break was the best tonic. On a local level, the shennanigans of last year when Blu and Billy’s fucked up the local live scene between them just about killed off any life in the locale. But hopefully Steve Rastin’s latest venture at The Zu Bar in Rhyl will sprout the shoots of recovery. I’m under no illusion, and neither is he that this won’t be an overnight success, but let’s keep talking, let’s keep reviewing, let’s keep attending, let’s keep enjoying.
Dave Cox was described on the link2wales forum as a local legend.. And quite right… He and his team, by hook and by crook have force fed the area with punk rock, and we’re a better race because of it. The Dirty Weekend on Friday and Saturday 19, 20 September is by far their biggest event in their 5 year history and I hope they pull it off…
Adam Walton was shoved into the furthest broadcasting corner that the BBC could find, 10pm on a Sunday night for 3 hours, not exactly prime time listening, and I curse the the beeb, cos usually by midnight and the prospect of getting up at 6am on monday, my head gently sinks into the pillow and the great new welsh music that Adam plays is subliminally broadcast directly to my receptors (I guess…) - thankfully the listen again button on the Radio Wales website allows me and you to, well… Listen Again… That’s Listen Again to Adam’s relentless championing the unchampionable, battling the cause of those who wouldn’t stand a chance in a world saturated by myspaced wannabes and NME brown tonguers. Some of it’s ok and some of it is absolutely fucking mind blowing…
I’m listening right now to Cardiff’s Sicknote - they call themselves electro-punk, I’d call them fucking superb, it’s brilliant stuff. Tag them onto the abso-fan-fucking-tastic new LP by Perfect Blue out now on Northern Star, chuck in some brutal brain bashing Bastions from Bangor along with the nail-bombing Anti-Virus from Colwyn Bay and you have a recipe hot enough to blow your stinking socks off.
But why stop there? Denbigh’s Streams are the ice cream sundae, a little soft in places but coated with nice crunchy bits, then you have the taste bud jerking Genod Droog who fizz in your mouth like space dust.. and fizz is what it’s doing - the scene is fizzing into life..

Spent 3 days in the searing scorching heat of rural France last weekend - it was the first time they had had sun in a fortnight so I was lucky enough to burn my pen moel (bald head to you non-Welsh) heathens. The barbecue smoked, the Crudlets and Frenchlets played and the Jack Daniels flowed (wine drinking is a myth, the French are strictly hardcore!) -
Celine had her iPlayer on random, rattling out all kinds of weird and wonderful sounds, until something very familiar pulsed across the Gallic countryside, ‘I know this… what is it?’ I enquired.
‘You should do, it’s The Racketears.’ She replied, well, perhaps not in such good English, but I understood. She had heard them on my podcast and downloaded as much of the Colwyn Bay band as was legally possible.
The power of radio…

Crud and Crudlet do a catalogue pose in Jeaumeville, France

Let’s hope we all go out to see, not only The Racketears, but whoever Blood & Lipstick promoter Steve Rastin puts on at the Zu Club in Rhyl. We need to support this new venture and do so regularly; not just those who live in the town, but the bods from Colwyn Bay, Holywell and inland. The opening night is on September 10th (Wednesday of course!)
Zu Bar