{"id":7937,"date":"2010-09-15T13:29:08","date_gmt":"2010-09-15T13:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejoycollective.co.uk\/blog\/?p=7937"},"modified":"2010-09-22T19:01:49","modified_gmt":"2010-09-22T19:01:49","slug":"the-vaselines-haight-ashbury-john-mouse-clwb-ifor-bach-cardiff-19-09-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/preview\/the-vaselines-haight-ashbury-john-mouse-clwb-ifor-bach-cardiff-19-09-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"The Vaselines \/ Haight-Ashbury \/ John Mouse : Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff and Thekla, Bristol : 19.09.2010 and 21.09.2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Plenty of bands have built a legacy on a back catalogue as slim as theirs, but few have been held in such regard for so long as the Vaselines.\u00a0 Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee’s smutty bickering, single entendres and playful, hooky indie rock, pitched somewhere between ’67 and ’76 with a hugely refreshing Modern Lovers\/Velvets twist on more anodyne C86 values, burned brightly and briefly in the late 1980s but seemed destined to do little more.\u00a0 A handful of celebrated covers by you-know-who, an iconic snap or two of you-kn0w-who’s singer in a Captain America (Kelly’s next band) t-shirt, and a word-of-mouth legend was born.<\/p>\n

Captain America swiftly became Eugenius, and continued to benefit from superstar patronage that rather overshadowed some fine EPs and a great first album.\u00a0 McKee re-emerged with a new band, Suckle, to quiet acclaim.\u00a0 Kelly popped up in Cardiff in 2006, standing in for Mark Lanegan on Isobel Campbell’s\u00a0tour of their first album; their encore of the Vaselines’ ‘Son Of A Gun’ made this old man, and\u00a0several older still, very happy.\u00a0 Still, it was an unexpected treat to see\u00a0news of him reuniting with McKee for a handful of gigs in 2008, and even more so\u00a0to witness the reformed Vaselines live a year later as they\u00a0took to the festival circuit.\u00a0 Backed up by\u00a0two of Belle and Sebastian and one of the 1990s, the familiar hits managed to sound fresh and the onstage banter, albeit now between two teacherly fortysomethings, crackled with the old\u00a0i-dare-you sexual tension.<\/p>\n

To the present, and an unlikely follow-up to 1989’s sole\u00a0album, the mischievously titled Sex With\u00a0An X<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/strong>Little has changed lyrically, the two returning to their old ways with comfort, but there’s an implicit acknowledgment of age (particularly on the part of Kelly, playing the eye-rolling victim of McKee’s barbs) which works in their favour too.\u00a0 More importantly, it doesn’t feel like a revival-tour cash-in, which it so easily could.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Cardiff gig’s been moved from the Millennium Music Hall to the more suitable Clwb (tickets remain valid, etc), with support from fuzzy Glaswegian psych-poppers Haight-Ashbury and pigeonhole-dodging eccentric John Mouse.\u00a0 It might be another 20 years before the Vaselines return, and their sort of sailor talk would just be plain freaky from pensioners.\u00a0 Best catch it this time instead.<\/p>\n

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..<\/p>\n

P4 Music presents<\/h4>\n

The Vaselines \/ Haight-Ashbury \/ John Mouse<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Celebrated Glaswegian indie-poppers The Vaselines come to Clwb Ifor Bach on the 19th of September. Formed in \u201986, the band released two singles, \u2018Son of a Gun\u2019 and \u2018Dying for It\u2019, prior to releasing their only album, \u2018Dum Dum\u2019, through Rough Trade in 1989. Following the closing of the record label 53rd and 3rd, which they had originally signed to, the band broke up in 1990. However, they reunited later that year to open for Nirvana when they played in Edinburgh. Though they were not widely known during their original existence, covers of their songs by Nirvana and Kurt Cobain\u2019s tendency to mention them as an influence brought exposure to the band. With their songs \u2018Son of a Gun\u2019 and \u2018Molly\u2019s Lips\u2019 covered on Nirvana\u2019s album \u2018Incesticide and \u201cJesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam\u201d covered as \u201cJesus Doesn\u2019t Want Me for a Sunbeam\u201d on MTV Unplugged in New York, the band gained a new audience from people who wanted to discover the bands that influenced Cobain. The band have reformed for a small number of shows since the 90s, and return once again in 2010, playing Cardiff\u00a0on the 19th of September as a part of a number of UK warm up shows in the run up to All Tomorrows Parties \u2018Bowlie Weekender\u2019 in December. Tickets cost \u00a310 in advance (+SBF) and are available from: City Centre Ticketline: 02920 230130 www.p4music.co.uk www.seetickets.com www.ticketlineuk.com<\/p>\n

7:30pm | \u00a310\/\u00a312 | buy tickets<\/a><\/p>\n