The Vectors + Duke live at the Rainbow 29/8/14

The Vectors

Local lads and good mates of mine Duke are going  in the world. on the 20th of September I will be joining them as they head down south to support Steve Craddock (Ocean Colour Scene/ Paul Weller) in London. I am planning to take part in this and will bring you blog's and some other projects.
last Friday was the only chance I'd get to catch up with the guys before this event, as it there last in brum for some time. 
Unfortunately I got there a little bit too early, and ended up watching the second band on. amazingly a band called 'Second Trip' started playing at 7 o clock, god knows if anyone saw them at all. the first band I saw were some geezers called Cynical Renegade. Now I am in now way going to state that rock n roll is a young mans game, but these blokes stood out hugely on a bill that was already stuffed with variety. Cynical Renegade are a band who wear their influences on their sleeves... and T shirts. No nonsense hard rock. Truth is though I'm not sure they're are as cool as they think they are. Their drummer wears a confederate flag for fucks sake. They're definitely talented musicians, but they lack the certain spark to impress me.
Next up was 'Onduwun'. I really could not tell whether they were a joke or not. At first they sort of seemed like a funk/hip hop hybrid who reminded me a bit of the 'Red Hot Chilli Peppers'  or 'Check Your Head' era Beastie Boys. Again, very musically talented, great funky bass playing, bit of guitar shredding, good drummer, but just very hard to take seriously. I think that might be the point though.   

The Vectors were the penultimate band that night, at first I wasn't so sure about them. They played a great cover which they called 'That song by that band that fall out sometimes' (I don't care by Fall Out Boy) and played a quite a few songs in a similar punkish-poppish vein it took me sometime to warm to them, yet somehow only when they only had about 3 songs left to play, they kicked it up a notch and became a brilliant band, it just all came together somehow.

I've lost count of how many times I've seen Duke now, I would tell you all about them but, you can read all of that in many other blogs of mine. To summarise; they're great guys, they're getting tighter as a unit the more they play and even if only a few people showed  everyone had a good time. They played a new song 'Good Time' which was every bit as good as  the other, more familiar tracks. if you've not heard Duke before then they are a great little indie band that sound a little like Oasis, yet have great songs of their own. They gave me a lift home too, which was nice. Roll On London!