The bargain bin cant be a nice place to spend your
life. Rubbing shoulders with has-beens, couldve-beens and
never-ever-wouldve-beens, when you should at the very least be in the mid price
section with a cigarette, a pint and some remaining integrity. Playing to static
spectators in half empty clubs every night cant be the most enlightening feeling
either, especially when your past is largely critically commended and littered with
next big thing claims.
Musical chameleons Catherine Wheel are one of these bands. But, bless
their little cotton socks, they keep battling on regardless. Despite only receiving the
minimum amount of success as indie shoegazers and getting largely ignored as rock chomping
guitar popsters, theyve thrown caution to the wind and metamorphasised into a fully
fledged Radiohead tribute band, just without the Radiohead songs. Well actually, without
many songs at all by the looks of things.
Call me old fashioned, but I always expect a band to play quite a few
songs at a gig. Some old, some new, some borrowed, perhaps some you dont know. You
wouldnt blame me then for feeling disappointed that they just played the one. Okay,
it was an hour and a half long, had all of these little gaps in it and they even went off
for a break towards the end of it, but theres epic and then theres plain dull.
Alright, so there were times when I may have lightly tapped my foot,
times when I even hummed along to something I thought I might have recognised, but by the
end of the night Id developed cramp from general lack of interest.
To give them some credit though, because theyre not all that bad,
they do deliver with one hell of a passion. Singer Rob Dickinson performs like hes
got the devil inside his head and their lead guitarist doesnt believe in playing his
instrument with particularly nimble fingers. Image though, so were told, is
everything, and when you cant tell one action man style Catherine Wheel Bloke from
the next youre bound to have trouble establishing any kind of lasting celebrity
status.
Poor old Catherine Wheel. If only theyd been born in another
time, in another place, they could have been so much more. Like if theyd been born
in Oxford at the start of the 90s for example. But they werent. Never mind.