Andrew Dubber

A family outing to see Dufus ended in sticky disappointment.

Dufus just getting warmed up

Jake’s been doing some work experience for my friend Mark’s independent label Iron Man Records. As a result, he got to work on the setup for the Dufus gig at the Actress and Bishop last night.

I really like Dufus, and I’d seen them last year when they played at the Jug of Ale. This was my chance to see them again with a slightly different (improved) lineup, and also be there as Bobbie and Jake were introduced to the Dufus experience.

The three of us sat on the comfy couches on the sidelines and waited for the bands to start.

Sadly, Bobbie had work the next morning and was fairly tired, and Jake was exhausted from a big day at school, and the fact that he keeps insisting on getting up at five in the morning to learn how to do scripting in Second Life.

Dufus are a New York band, and to describe them, it’s easiest to just say that they’re very odd, but really great. Last night, they were in exceptional form.

But the evening started off with a couple of support acts, which moved things well into the too-late-for-us category.

It started off with an act called Theatre of the Absurd, which turned out to be one guy with a guitar. A student of mine, as it happens: Greg Smith.

Greg’s music is miserable in the way that Morrissey’s music would be miserable if his cat died, he fell off his bike, and it turned out that nobody had ever really liked him anyway. The mood was added to with a nice bit of dissonance, because several of the brand new strings on Greg’s guitar went out of tune from one verse to the next.

Holding it together was the fact that Greg has an impeccable heritage in that area of music, he plays guitar like he’s been listening to The Bats since he was a toddler, and there’s a self-effacing irony that keeps you just this side of sure that he’s probably not going to take his own life this evening.

Greg was followed by this country’s best kept musical secret. Outrageous Gay German Disco outfit Hot Spunk (who are neither actually gay, nor from Germany) were about as far in the other direction as it was possible to go.

Hot Spunk are real crowd pleasers. They’re hilarious, get the crowd completely involved, and put on a really great show. There’s nothing quite so surreal as being in a Birmingham pub with a room predominantly populated with straight guys singing along to catchy disco hits with titles like ‘Inside My Pants’, ‘Sexy Cock’ and this single – ‘I Like Boys’:

They’re going to be huge. I mean… what’s not to like?

Meanwhile, Jake’s energy had slowed to a moody crawl, and so I went to get him a juice from the bar. An orange and passionfruit J2. He shook it to mix it up, not noticing that the bottle cap had been removed by the bartender, and so managed to get quite a significant proportion of it over his hat, shirt, fringe and jeans, as well as on the wall behind him.

He was not comfortable – and as the juice dried to a contact adhesive, he became less happy to sit and watch bands. Bobbie was heading home — she had the legitimate excuse of work the next morning — but Jake was encouraged to stay by his boss, who not only wanted a decent-sized audience for his transatlantic band, but genuinely believed (and possibly correctly) that an evening at a Dufus gig would be an important and life-improving experience for Jake.

Either way, I was staying. This is what I was here for.

After a lengthy improvised piece that seemed designed to exorcise the disco demons of the previous act, Seth and the crew launched into a really great set of the melodic, nonsensical weirdness that Dufus is known for.

For a band that seems to record an album every other weekend, there was a surprising number of punters in the audience that knew all the words.

The photos, odd as they appear, do not do the strange world of Dufus justice. They are just delightful, and reaffirm just in time that the world is a far more surprising and joyous place than it might have otherwise appeared. For that, I love them to bits.

But Jake was not enjoying himself, and was agitating to go home. After a measly five songs into a two-hour set, we left and my enjoyment of the “best-ever” Dufus gig (thanks, Mark) had to be vicarious. Fortunately, Mark had time to describe it to me today in all its glory. Cool.

I consoled myself by listening to the last couple of Shriekback albums on endless repeat, while I put some finishing touches on my new website, New Music Ideas (a sister site to New Music Strategies), and built an online bookstore.

Those new Shriekback albums are superb. Amazing how much milage you can get out of a single chord and a slightly unsettling set of metaphors about the ocean.

After finishing his ‘Wuthering Heights sequel’ English homework, Jake headed off into town to catch another (free) gig: Sugababes, McFly, Scouting For Girls and some others you’ve probably heard of but which have had little impact on my musical world.

Apparently it was ‘all right’. Well, perhaps — but not a patch on those disco Germans.

Tagged: Music