Nobunny / Bad Sports / Atomic Suplex / Wake Up Dead / Mean Bikini London, Brixton Windmill
Article written by
Paul M - Apr 24, 2013
Atomic Suplex
It’s the day after the annual major label rip-off, Record Store Day, and it’s gigs like this that remind you that going to see music performed live will always widdle all over queueing up for two hours just to be told that the last copy of the overpriced Bowie reissue you’ve inexplicably been after has just been sold to the smelly fella with the ebay account fatbloke23. The early evening start is to allow enough time for the six bands from both sides of the Atlantic to squeeze their wares into a few hours of our lives and means I miss openers Candy Highway. I do catch the decent shouty female post punk of Mean Bikini and then the patchy slacker scuzz of the Wake Up Dead but it’s fourth act Atomic Suplex that really get things moving. They’re a London four piece with a great manic drummer and a pair of lanky boy/girl string pluckers who bookend a guitar thrashing vocalist. All fairly regular so far, apart from the dude in the middle barely scrapes 5 foot and wears a black crash helmet, sings, no, make that screams, through a head mike while careering around the stage and audience. Their music may be familiar, short skidmarked bursts of full on mucky rock n roll, and the lyrics clichéd accounts of living life to the full, but it’s all so daft and entertaining that I’ll happily be checking them out again.
Nobunny
It’s a hard act for the Texans Bad Sports to follow and at one stage it looks like they won’t show at all as a quick nip to their hotel turns into a lost in the big city moment for the trio. Luckily, eventually via luck or the tracking skills of the venue’s famous Roof Dog they do and their fast and furious Ramones three chord scuzzed up power pop doesn’t let them down. They even manage to raise a brief crowdsurf from within the audience – no mean achievement in a venue so small and as narrow as this. They finish with an uncharacteristic languid wig out, probably to conserve energy as they are also the backing band for tonight’s headliner Nobunny. With the brief decoy of another leporid in full white outfit, including head, to distract us, the real thing appears to the accompaniment of a version of Glitter’s Rock n Roll Part 2. Sporting leather underpants, a tatty sleeveless jacket, a very filthy and threadbare rabbit mask, and little else, he looks like he’s suffering from myxomatosis. But, you know instantly you’re in the presence of a man who not only wants to kick some life into the event but anybody else who gets too close to him. One Italian, who’s clearly on something more potent than half a pint of shandy receives a wild eyed and expletive strewn vent of fury in his face, as do the camera wielding knobbers near the front (“Fuck your blog!!!”). Rules established though, and at one stage accompanied by dancing bunnygirls, he delivers an exhilarating and scary set of chaotic but melodic punk, highlighted by a messy but great Blow Dumb. Not many would attempt to finish their set with Pretty Vacant but our bedraggled chum does and even carries it off. We leave, grinning and on a high, pausing briefly to watch him wandering down the street, still dressed in his stage outfit. Only the bravest, craziest of rabbits would wander around Brixton at gone 11, dressed like that, but that’s Nobunny.
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