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Ah, that GW gig at the Garage last year ranks as one of my all-time favourite gigs ever. Why?
Because they played nothing but The Ramones for half an hour before coming on in leather jackets, shades, and combing back their greasy rocker hair every song interval with such an aura of cool that not even Eddie Cochrane could have bettered. Because they turned the amps up to 23 (none of this 11 malarkey) and played like their speed intake was overpowering their limbs (perhaps it was) until the quanitities of sweat on stage and in the audience was positively torrential. Because I decided to attempt crowd surfing and nearly broke my glasses - again. Because "Summertime Blues" played by Guitar Wolf is even better than the heavily-intense Blue Cheer version through the sheer power of noise.
I wish I had gone to see them in Hove the next day, but work beckoned. Everyone I persuaded to come to the gig was utterly overwhelmed with how great Guitar Wolf were, as was I. I'd only seen them on TV before, weirdly enough on Adam & Joe Go Tokyo, and had gradually been introduced to them as an idea for a while after. The reality was and is supremely more exciting.
The albums didn't grab me at first, but the Golden Black compilation got me hooked and I've been blasting my ears with it a lot over the last few weeks. The Lightning Bolt cover of "Planet Of The Wolves" is pretty much as frenetic as you'd expect, and I'm getting that mashed up with the GW playlist too.
Curent favourite tracks:
"Jett Beer" - any song which sings "Good Morning... Good evening... Jett Beer" (not actually in that sequence) has got to be great. Guitar Wolf (the singer) has such a great way of singing English with a heavy Japanese accent too, here and on all their songs - the emphasis of the language of Rock'n'Roll is changed into something yet more exciting and urgent by restructuring it with a Japanese inflection.
"Wild Zero" - ah yes - zombie thrash jump about music. A great singalong chorus too.
"Jet Generation" - this goes straight ahead like a rocket-powered motorcycle on a runway, shooting for the takeoff point where rock'n'roll smashes the sound barrier.
And more and more - and I want to enthuse a lot about them, but I'm not listening to Guitar Wolf right now so have to rely on poor memory instead - and it simply doesn't compare to the visceral now that their songs demand and embody. |
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