The Savoy runs a regular night called the Knock Knock Club on Wednesdays, the idea being, to use their own words, to allow you to hear small bands in a big room. One of the recent Knock Knock gigs featured a local Cork band called Tone Control supported by Exit Pursued By A Bear. Having visited Tone Control’s website beforehand, which is pretty nice by the way, I thought that they sounded kind of interesting particularly as they seemed to be heavily influenced by drum and bass. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I convinced Bat Girl that it might be worth going and as The Doc was already interested in seeing Exit Pursued By A Bear, he tagged along as well and brought Super CV with him.

After arriving around 10pm thinking we were late, we settled ourselves nicely up in the mezzanine section, which gave us a really great panoramic view of the proceedings taking place below, with The Doc immediately launching into a rant about how the first fifty people in the door were supposed to get a free CD. Of course unbeknownst to him, a member of the band had just walked up behind him clutching a big bundle of free CD’s while he was still in mid-flow. Ah yes, caught by the proverbial bollox! Tone Control were also making a DVD on the night, so we were all looking forward to immortalising ourselves by strutting our funky stuff in front of the cameras later on. Ok, that’s a complete lie, the only one of us that felt that way was me, the other three had every intention of running back to their seat screaming if a camera even gave the slightest inclination that it might look at them. I dunno, you can bring the friggin’ horse to the fecking water but you can’t make him dance! Like what’s that all about?

Around an hour and a half later, having by that stage endured Bat Girl’s tirade about how tired she was and about how she desperately needed to go home and get some sleep and how that if somebody didn’t take to the stage soon she was quite liable to do something real nasty to the fecking eejit that had dragged her there in the first place, I was beginning to feel a little vulnerable. Not to mention Super CV trying to convince us all that fifth and sixth class primary school kids are regularly giving each other blow jobs on the way to school - I dunno about you but I can tell ya straight up that there was none of that carry on in my day or at the very least I wasn’t getting any of it! Therefore, it was with no small sense of relief on my part that Exit Pursued By A Bear took to the stage at half past friggin’ eleven and finally got the proceedings underway.

Now, it wasn’t that I didn’t like them or that they weren’t very good, in fairness they seemed quite a capable bunch of lads and the lead singer did his best to inject a lot of angst into his work as well as relating a funny story to us about how they were once mistakenly called Exit Perused By A Bear. Look, it was funny at the time so, for feck’s sake, stop giving me grief! Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, they were fine but just not my cup of tea. Besides, Bat Girl was becoming crankier by the fecking minute as she grew more tired with each passing song, so I was desperately hoping that they would just quickly finish up so we could hear a bit of Tone Control and get the hell outta there! Hmmm, kind of paradoxical being called Bat Girl I reckon, when in complete contrast to your namesake you find it difficult to stay up past eleven o’clock at night. (Oops! I might just have just gotten myself into trouble there. Look that’s not a complaint but more of an observation, I’m sure you’re an absolute livewire in real life!)

Anyway, Tone Control eventually took to the stage at quarter past twelve and after one or two songs I found myself asking what I was doing there in the first place. Where was the bouncy drum and bass influenced goodness that I had promised myself? Where were the funky dance toons to which I could show off my fabulous moves to the expectant cameras? I’ll tell you where, fecking nowhere to be found! However, it was my own fault really as I had convinced myself that this band were going to be something completely different to what they turned out to be and that’s not really their fault. Also, The Doc says that the free CD is actually quite good, so I might change my mind a little when I actually get around to listening to it. Still, the whole night wasn’t a complete waste as I did console myself with a big juicy quarter-pounder with cheese from Abrakebabra on the way back to the car. Yummy! And no, I don’t want to hear any horror stories about food from Abrakebabra similar to Betty the Sheep’s post about her run in with some dodgy cheese and garlic fries. I don’t care what they put in them, it was still fecking yummy!

Labels: Bands, Rock

# Forged from the fiery depths by Pure Cork Boy.