Reviews
1 Feb 2009 by Cath Aubergine
manchestermusic.co.uk
I remember very clearly, which only serves to tell me what a strange one it was. Sunday night sees the Sir Ralph Abercromby pub next to the central police station turned over to up-and-coming local promotions company TJ Events - in just a few short months Ben Taylor and Matt Johnson have made an impressive mark on the local live music scene, snatching the best touring bands from under the noses of bigger and more established organisations and giving local bands a platform as supports. The Sunday Roast, as this session is called, is their ground level A&R project - a plug'n'play stage for new bands where a decent showing can lead to bookings on their regular bills. Except tonight the plug'n'play bit's looking a bit shaky - the PA is plugged in but isn't playing. As luck would have it, the ever reliable Alex has turned up with a professional sound engineer in tow. Whom he found in a pub, and who is the sort of pissed only people with cool rock'n'roll jobs can afford to be on a Sunday night. Still, he fixes it. Alex has told him there's a really amazing band on tonight. Which there is. The Plague Doctors. Although Alex has not told him exactly in what way they're amazing...
"What have you done with the other one?" we ask, whilst our pissed and highly talkative soundman is briefly lost for words. We don't get an answer. I don't think it's anything serious though. They are more shambolic and deranged than ever - cloaks on inside out, they've called Andrew Lloyd Webber a pig-faced c**t within five minutes. Why? Oh, you obviously haven't seen this then...
How wrong can a man be? "Wasting My Time" is everything a Eurovision entry should be - insanely catchy, unashamedly brilliant pop, and performed by people dressed like twats for no reason at all. Those previously unaware of Manchester's greatest pretend-Bavarian pop nightmare are alternately pissing themselves and flabbergasted. Which, as the main door to the street is open, includes several passers-by. The thing is comedy bands usually aren't very funny, that being the conclusion of a discussion I was having on an internet forum about Alberto Y Lost Trios Paranoias (like I said, there's not been much to do recently) - but this one is, that being the conclusion of a discussion about our masked friends themselves on Leedsmusicscene forum. I must have seen them five of six times now and they're still as hilariously bizarre as the first time. Probably because they have more ideas and imagination than 97 per cent of bands out there, and when they're singing about a robotically reanimated Princess Di, or shagging your old geography teacher, or how "work is shit, I'd rather be a pop star" they're doing it over proper tunes, delightfully cheaply rendered.
And tonight they even get an encore. Or at least when they say they're finished we kind of force them to do another one. But that's, surely, the point of an encore? None of this pretend-to-go-off-and-come-back-on-to-play-your-three-hits shite you get with "professionals". The Plague Doctors have to do another one because the majority of people in this strange pub on a Sunday night want them to. Andrew Lloyd Webber? Sod him, what does he know?