Tonight is a rather hot and muggy night in the 2nd
city but I’m off to Digbeth to see some Ska. Arriving at the venue, the area
looks closed, the road is closed for re-surfacing and so we circle the block only
to come round to where we started to find a random open door with noise coming
from inside. We follow it in and it leads to a dark and damp smelling room, but
there's this nice little stage in the corner with an odd band playing.
The Sick Boys club are on stage and this 5 piece are
a local band and they are weird. The singer looks wasted (I never did find out
if he was wasted or just acting that way) and the rest of the band look odd
with the guitarist looking like he went to a wedding got drunk and jumped on
stage to randomly show off, but they play a mixture of ska based songs that
incorporate a bit of crooning and skat into them. It’s a weird mix off old and
new which goes down well. They play a
nice mix of the Danger Mouse theme tune slowed down into the cantina song from
Star Wars. They sound well and mix up instruments from bassoons to sax to keys,
its funky this sparse crowd seems to be having fun watching.
There’s not too much of a wait between bands as they
change over, this small stage now has to house 7 band members from Imperial Leisure
and obviously they are too big for this stage. The band consists of 2 singers,
a trombonist, guitarist, bassist, keys and drums. And it sounds excellent! Its
ska/punk/dub it’s fast paced and gets this small crowd feeding out the palm of
their hand. The room could probably hold 100 people, and there are about 40
people here, 7 of which are on stage and 5 where in the band before, so it’s
not very well attended, this is probably why there in this venue as it was
meant to be at the HMV institute originally.
But this doesn’t mean they’re not any good it just means they need more
press as they’re awesome! There set is fun and a blast, everyone is dancing and
the band move around this tiny stage like it was the main stage at the academy,
they own it. They burst into I'm in love
with landlords daughter and it’s sang like the room was full, as everyone sings
at the top of their voices. They play a great set, lots of highs and no lows.
They should be playing bigger stages for sure, so get behind the British Ska
scene, it was once massive in the midlands no reason it can't be again,
especially on these hot nights with bands like this!
Sick Boys Club - 2.5/5
Imperial Leisure - 4/5
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