Baldrics @ Wrexham N.E.W.I. University Friday 21 November, 2003.

Friday night in Wrexham, freezing your balls off, bored of Top Of The Pops (well, who isn’t?), nothing to do, nowhere to go. It’s the same old story…

So I get a call from ‘Tremendous Mike’ who has been involved with The Darkness for a while. He tells me to get my arse up to the N.E.W.I. Student Union to check out Ten Benson, and that’s precisely what I do.

I get to the SU at around 7:30 and find it’s empty, apart from the bands and bar staff. 8pm rolls around and a load of 14-16 year olds who have been knocked back at the door stand around wondering where to go next. So with 20 people in the place Sludgefeast take to the stage. They tell stories of blown amps, broken vans, the loss of a drummer and cancelled gigs. They swap instruments and play dirty, trash city rock; more Spinal Tap, than Spineshank, which at least brought a smile to my face…

Following them we get X-cell who are from the rock and roll haven of Towyn on the North Wales coast. The singer is about 14 (how he got in I’ll never know…) and is like Kid Rock fronting Busted. Now that may sound like a bad combination, but I assure you it isn’t, and for one reason: the song hooks are large enough to land Jaws and the band has an energy level that is second-to-none.

They play the gig like they are playing to a sold-out venue with the diminutive lead lad making several forays deep into the audience with his mobile mic. All this leaves me thinking that once radio gets hold of these songs and the guys get the video makeover, they will be huge. And they could well have the last laugh…

We then get some more hot rockin’ from the DJ booth, before wham, bam, thank you mam, it’s Ten Benson wearing the dirtiest string vests I’ve ever seen. They are a band that has been touted for great things many times from many sources, and they prove to be good and as tight as a duck’s arse. The band have the whole AC/DC/Zodiac Mindwarp meets the Datsuns round at Ginger Wildheart’s house thing, but therein lies the problem… They have great tunes, sound great, but each one makes you think of somebody else. Highlight of the night for me was ‘Rock Cottage‘ and, as you can imagine from the title, it’s a song that wouldn’t have been out of place on the Darkness’s PERMISSION TO LAND.

The older element of the audience (which had grown to about 40) seemed to really love this act, and while I thought they did the job well, they lacked the killer blow. Maybe it was lack of paying bodies that held them firmly in 2nd gear, or maybe it’s because they followed an act that never dropped out of 5th gear. When I got back home, I dived into my music collection and found a couple of the band’s albums that I’ve subsequently found are great to drive fast to. Definitely worth checking out…

JJ