What a fabulous thing QUIMS is. Without it I wouldn’t have heard of the Lodger and so Lee and I wouldn’t have gone to see them support the Wave Pictures, who we enjoyed so much that we got a babysitter when we found out they were supporting Jeffrey Lewis who I also first heard at a QUIMS meeting. So we went, mainly for the Wave Pictures and hoping that Jeffrey Lewis would be good……and he was….very, VERY GOOD!

The WP’s did a great set including ‘Love you like a madman’. Chatting to them afterwards it turns out that the song listing the fridge contents will be out CD after next and the one about Johnny Cash is called ‘now that you’re pregnant’ and Lee is now the proud owner of a WP T-shirt.

I’m always suspicious of bands who record Low-Fi on purpose. A few bands like the Phantom Surfers can get away with it, but mostly things can sound a little too twee for my liking. The Jeffrey Lewis tracks I’d heard were a little like that…..but let me tell you people – live he is fantastic – Imagine Jonathan Richman but with the Roadrunner bits thrown in too.

The first track he did was backed by the Wave pictures “We did this on Marc Rileys show last night and it worked so well, we’re doing it again”. We’re 90% water which flows according to nature but it’s that other 10% that keeps going up hill was the basic premise.

photo:6Music
He did solo songs about bad trips on acid, how Herman Dune were better with 2 brothers in the band, had his band featuring his WILD brother Jack doing Crass covers, really tight interchange of vocals on ’shoot the head kill the ghoul’ and a song about the man with golden arm “You said my arm was made out of shit” – what a line! There was even education in the history of Communism in Korea sung with the aid of one of his large comic books. An encore of ‘The Chelsea Hotel oral sex song’ had us in stitches – what a joy what a joy!

Bob the Chiropodist