Getting older as I am, I don't get to to see much live music anymore but in some attempt to keep the beergut in manageable proportions I do like to cycle a bit. Therefore, I had to look in on Velorock a couple of weekends back. Velorock is a “bicycle powered gig”. Cute.
A band of youngsters, the Crayon Fields, sort of geeky kids that got picked on at school, cranked up; a fog of deja vu descended...
They're playing in a clubhouse with no stage, just like the upstairs room of a pub in Bedford, back in the Mother Country, back when I was the right age for this sort of thing. Back in 1985, I reckon, Pastels, Razorcuts and Talulah Gosh on the bill. The Crayon Fields channel all these and dozens more like them, following the indie pop ethic of basic song structure, minimum drums & bass, simple riffs. The singer plays rhythm on a Rickenbacker, just like I always wanted to do, and sings flat & weak, just like I always did.
He even sort of looks like Stephen Pastel.
Even the crowd fitted in the deja vu fog, the anti-fashion, the fey girls I'd have a desperate crush on but not talk to. Only digital cameras everywhere and mobile phone conversations attempted remind me of the present.
I loved it, why wouldn't I? For half an hour I was nineteen again.
The Pastels, circa 1985
The Crayon fields, circa 2008
