Pretty Shitty City

The Garage in Uplands – 21st February 2009

Opening with their own song, Quietly Coughing, new stoner rock and roll band “The Pigs” don’t come across as your usual new local band. These guys don’t follow mainstream indie or punk like the rest of them; they like to take matters into their own hands. The trio coming from Mumbles and Bonymaen (watch your cars guys) seem to have a genuine click with each other and it seems obvious that they all hold strong relationships, which shows when they play on stage. With former guitarist from The Guffries; Jackson Pope – son of the blues musician Mal Pope, as their front man, The Pigs give off a good reputation with their chunky bass lines and cleverly distorted riffs. Jackson’s right-hand-man, and his brother (would you believe?) in this ensemble, Lewis Pope seems the quiet one of the trio, as he seems very settled on making his meaty bass riffs perfect. Apparently Jackson has had the idea of The Pigs lingering around for quite some time, but only recently has it come to surface. He was so determined for this idea to come into reality that he actually asked Lewis to learn to play bass just to be a part of the whole experience. The drummer, Daniel seems like he knows what he’s doing, and looks like he wants to have some fun whilst playing his shows.

One of the main things that I respect these guys for is the fact that they don’t try and define their band with one specific genre. To tell you the truth it’s very hard to! New bands these days seem to make music that’s easy to play which makes them sound good and make the crowd happy, these guys play what makes THEM happy and what THEY think is good. I think it’s a statement “Screw You” to the rest of the bands out there that follow mainstream, and even try and call themselves unique.

Having only been together for around five months, the band, although very in tune with each other, don’t seem to be putting on very much of a “show” so to speak. Except for Jackson, who does make some movement around the stage, the band is very standstill. There was no communication with the crowd and there was no knowing what songs were played and so on. This though isn’t a devastating thing; this is very common of a young band coming out of its shell. Once the guys get over this phase, then personally I see nothing wrong with them, they’ll be everywhere; around South Wales at least.

Watch this space

Beth Daniels

Rebellious Jukebox is a new club night coming soon to Sin City in Swansea. It promises live bands, skate videos, iPods, drinks, independent, punk, electronic and hip-hop.

It will hopefully fill a hole in my heart that Ice Cream Social left, just with bigger balls, stronger principles and less ice cream.

http://ohshititsrebelliousjukebox.blogspot.com/

Its been a while since anything has inspired me enough to actually write something proper for this site (rather than just regurgitate press releases :) ) but the slightly secretive exhibition held on Friday down The Strand was too cool not to mention.

Photography students Veronica Sanchis, Ryan Moule, Luke Stanton, Kirstin Binding and Francesca Denega from Swansea Metropolitan University had setup a Lens Based installation in an old run down building that was once used by fishermen. Apparently the river Tawe used to flow where The Strand road now rests, and fittingly the exhibition is called ‘River of The Forgotten’. The building was decked out with fairy lights, projectors, netting, fishing line, seaweed and even had framed “fresh” fish on the walls.

To top it all off a free punk show was organised and bands including Ssssnakes and Dead Rails provided the entertainment.

Right on.