i-want-more

Vegan rent boy, you’re a wrong ‘un

I was gutted to hear the news today that Nick Sanderson (Sandy), erstwhile lead singer of the mighty Earl Brutus, has died. See his obituary here.

In all my years going to gigs, I have to say that I have never seen anything like Earl Brutus. My previous post bemoans the precarious balancing act that is art and fun, and I think, at their best, the Brutus managed it. After they did that of course, they poured beer down their front, started a fight and collapsed into a puddle of their own piss.

To me, they were the ultimate good time band. Their music was a lumpy cross between glam rock and techno. They employed a Japanese hairdresser to shout unintelligible stuff over their songs. They encouraged the audience to throw beer at them (and it turn, they threw it back at us). They looked atrocious: on one occasion Sandy was dressed in a 70s tank top and had black panda eyeliner; another time Jamie Fry was wearing a beige puffa jacket/baseball cap/nasty scouser moustache combo.

I saw them live twice, once at the Garage and once at the ICA. By this point they had long since stopped recording, but still commanded a fiercely loyal crowd of fans. I think my favourite of the two gigs was the ICA one. The audience was made up primarily of fans and partly arty types who showed up because the blurb in the listings had intrigued them. The support consisted of two blokes dressed in monks’ habits twatting about, and someone using an electric drill on a portable CD walkman playing their (one and only) Top-40 troubler ‘The SAS and the glam that goes with it’. Within 30 seconds of the Brutus taking the stage, the ICA types had scuttled to the back of the auditorium as a torrent of noise and abuse erupted, and the beer began to fly. That night they had a backdrop of the old British Rail symbol made out of sequins. I remember doing that thumbs-in-your-beltloops dance with toocoolforschool down the front, while being soaked in bar slops.

I feel genuinely sad that I’ll never have the opportunity to witness this carnage again. I beg of you, reader, go to i-tunes and buy everything of theirs that you can today, make Sandy a posthumous Top 10 hit, that'd be one to savour.

posted by deafdisco @ 11:06 am