This article appeared in issue 56.1 of the Aberystwyth Courier.
[edit] BrainSlug in the Bay
Diehard music freak Gary Lasagne follows a trail of slimeand [sic] goes for a Brain transplant at the Bay.
As you sup on your pint in the student tup-house, you can often feel a pulse thumping beneath your feet, coming from deep in the guts ofAberystwyth [sic], down in the fetid catacombs, some creature lurking in the Bay basement. An Indiesoc propaganda leaflet beckoned me down there. I followed followed a man in a top hat [see Sebb] down the winding staircase. I waded through the throng toward the stage, where Dylan was looking lovely and playing a shoop-showaddy sunshine ditty that spread a beaming grin all over my sentimental chops. Then the Oxygen Thief turned up and belted a comedy version of Outcast's 'Hey Ya'. A future at Butlins holiday camps could be observed during the "All right now fellas" bit; a muscle-rock incarnation of David Gray doing fretboard magic tricks to make the grannies dirty their woolly knickers.
With that, there were some strangers called Resound on the stage and they didn't look local. They looked like a back alley lobotomy - a dodgy brain-graft of indie band left-lobe to metal band right-lobe. Guitarist and singer had the ill pallor of a youth spent listening to music made by floppy people. Drummer and bassist looked like they spent their days wanking and shooting cats with gat-guns. They opened with a barging bit of bluesy stomping that got everyone going. The rest of the set rode this wave until reaching the watermark in their songbook where they heard the Strokes, White Stripes and that lot. Then it all got a bit Britpop and it was like towards the end of a night drinking round your new chum's flat when they reach the end of their cool CDs and start cracking out the Cast, Bluetones and Space.
It was at this point that this cunt in thick black specs and leather jacket came up onto the stage, lamped the singer to the floor and stamped achunky [sic] boot down on his head, skull crunching neatly in two. He grabbed his guitar and wielded it threateningly at the rest of Resound. Having thus comandeered the limelight, his dark cohorts emerged, slithering up from the shadows to become Brain Slug. I saw the singer's face glowering in the dim beacon of a cigarette beneath a cloud of of seething and matted, authentic crusty style dreads. I saw a pentangle emblazoned in blood on the bass player's naked chest between the ghostly curtains of his knee length black hair. I heard a voice behind me whisper that the drummer was genetically half bear.
As I heard the first barbed and studded note slithering loose of the amplifier's grill, I understood intuitively that my immediate situation would require some serious fucking fortitude in the testicular department, that the only reasonable course of action was to pour a pot of blood red snakebite-and-black down my throat, that there was an absolute imperative that I smash my head in there like a bastard. These fuckers dealt only in the darkest calibre: Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, "Don't Fear the Reaper". They sounded like rotting meat. They made me vomit backwards. Brain Slug are doomed to reign over Aberystwyth.
-- GL