Vibe Bar, Brick Lane.

Details:

This second Vibe Bar show was partly organized by members of Surgery or the Bomb as part of a brief tour of South England with Soeza .

Performances:

Surgery of the Bomb, who play only in the summer months, repeatedly introduced themselves as Control Alt Delete. They played an exciting punk set, enjoyed by a crowd which included many of their friends.

Instruments specialise in a complex, mostly instrumental, math-rock and have a great drummer at their core. Like a more ambitious Sooks (Win Prizes). Your reporter was unimpressed from a distance but highly impressed close up.

Soeza, who have what can reasonably be described as a cult fan-base, are an essentially poppy band who obscure their melodic nature through the use of two drummers and unconventional time signatures. They played a characteristically confident and accomplished set to general acclaim from people who mostly already liked them.

Other observations:

This show was generally considered a success on all sides. My Tiger My Timing had to cancel at the last minute due to a personal tragedy. Ben Owen of Soeza publicly thanked Mike and Bengie of The Combination of, though Bengie was known to no-one.

Working Rooms, Kingsland Road

Details:

Although this event, an East London warehouse party, was orchestrated by Macbeth Promotions and although Selfish Cunt were booked by Mark Scaffer of The Macbeth, the music was mostly handled at short notice by The Combination Of. Mike Page dealt with the sound and faced a variety of issues, including Mark Scaffer’s understandable concern about his lateness, a room which was not designed for live music and Selfish Cunt’s extreme volume and lack of cooperation.

Performances:

Sweetbread: “Have any of you heard of a band called Oasis? Well check this shit out…”

Tom Brosseau, an American singer songwriter, appeared unbilled for contractual reasons. Often considered one of the best in the history of Combination Of live events, this performance was something of a coup for Combination Of organizer Daniel Blight , who had contacted Brosseau after seeing him support Mice Parade. Drummer Matt Kenny was called from the bar to perform, in a state of abject terror, when Brosseau realized that he and his acoustic guitar alone would not beat the volume of people talking at the other end of the party. He played a cover of Where is My Mind? and finished his set by taking a drum stool into the audience, standing on it and singing unaccompanied, to rapturous applause.

Adam Beattie (who appeared solo): “It’s the difficult thing with being a performer; You’re looking at me to make you dance and I’m looking at you to make you cry. It’s a frustrated relationship from the start.”

The Smart Set: “Every single one of you will die and you will die alone.”

Geoff Glees (Sweetbread) on Selfish Cunt: “It’s like everyone was having a nice party and then someone came in and did a shit on the carpet and pointed at it and said, ‘Look at that.’”

Macbeth, Hoxton

Details:

Your reporter was not present at this show.

Performances:

Sweetbread opened: a convincing acoustic folk revivalist with whom it is completely impossible to tell how much is done in jest and how much is serious. It could be the case that everything is simultaneously both.

Tessellators, a favorite of organizer Mike Page, played a solid set. Your reporter looks forward to seeing them.

The Outdoor Types, who were at the time making an album at The Combination of Studio, brought a large crowd with them. They played a rowdy, raucous, singalong folk-rock set which was greatly enjoyed by their supporters.

Line, an acoustic guitar led post-rock act featuring members of Soe’za and Surgery or the Bomb, put in a high quality performance.

Other observations:

After this show it was suggested in some quarters that a trend of mismatched acts might be developing, where one band’s audience was never going to really appreciate another’s. This charge led to a series of shows which were intended to be more a coherent whole than an eclectic mix.

Vibe Bar, Brick Lane.

Details:

Vibe Bar allowed The Combination Of to use its facilities for free, but did not allow a door charge. On the one hand this removed the fear that organizers might make a financial loss, but on the other hand meant acts could not be paid. An in-house sound man dealt with soundchecks and so-forth.

Performances:

Mark Lord was invited to play by The Smart Set. He played a four song opening set, made reference to the fact that elsewhere people were watching the FA Cup Semi-final and ended on a cover of Eleanor Rigby.

The Smart Set played a slightly louder and more aggressive set than at their previous Combination Of performance. They felt it was less well received, although someone in the toilet was heard to remark, “I saw this band at the Macbeth last month and they were shit, but they’re pretty good tonight.”

Sooks (now called Win Prizes) share one member with Le Band Extraordinaire but sound very different. A slightly mathy instrumental act, at this show they prefaced several of their numbers with lengthy descriptions of covers they were supposedly performing (such as Hip to be Square by Huey Lewis and The News) before launching into their own compositions, to general confusion.

Adam Beattie played this show with the Glasgow line-up of the Consultants. It was a heavier performance, closer to blues-rock than folk. Combination Of organiser Bill Kenny was spotted singing along with the track Dirty Water.

Other observations:

Due to the location of Vibe Bar and the lack of door charge, this show’s audience included, as with all Vibe gigs, a large number of people who simply happened to be in the bar. In a sense this makes the Vibe Bar gigs an interesting exception to other Combination Of live events, but the general outcome was only that there was more and louder talking during performances.

The weather was nice and many people sat outside throughout sections of the evening.

The Macbeth pub in Hoxton.

Details:

Soundchecks for this show were somewhat fraught. The Macbeth then had a less impressive PA than it has now. Le Band Extraordinaire were particularly affected by this, since their lineup included woodwind players. Their dissatisfaction was increased by an inability to reconcile their desire to play the headline slot with the time of the last train back to Brighton. Combination Of organizers declined to start the gig early enough that the headline band could begin at 8.45 on the grounds that there would be nobody present to see the other acts. None of this bothered Shock Defeat!, who turned up late for soundcheck and immediately began playing pool.

Performances:

The Show was opened by Adam Beattie, a folk and blues influenced Scottish songwriter who plays with an amorphous and shifting group of musicians called The Consultants. His performances have often been a highlight of Combination Of shows. This gig saw an unusually experimental Consultants line-up featuring a violinist. They went down well.

The Consultants were followed by Shock Defeat!, who play a likable if eccentric brand of dance influenced new-wave. Perhaps because this was their first gig in some time, a large number of loyal supporters, many of whom were based in south London, came to see them. This group of people included a recently released ex-con who was disquietingly talkative, executed a charming ska-dance at the front of the stage and spilt a pint of lager in the cash box. A percentage of Shock Defeat’s audience were somewhat irritated to find, on arrival, that the band were halfway through their set. None the less their reception was warm.

Le Band Extraordinaire hail from Brighton and play what might be best described as anemic Yiddish indie pop. This particular genre, of which they may well be the principle proponents, was not the most natural successor to Shock Defeat! but they played with conviction and the audience rewarded them.

The Smart Set played last. This first show was the best received of their combination of performances. There was a large and mostly responsive crowd and the band felt they played well.

Other observations:

This event was generally considered a success and a good start. It was well attended and although the line-up was comprised largely of acts personally known to combination of organizers, rather than acts that would logically share a bill, the audience was generous towards all the bands.