Forgotten Karma & Winston’s Awake @ Charlie’s Bar 23.9.16 (Live Review
If you walk into any pub off the beaten track on a Friday or Saturday night then you'll find any number of bands like tonight's as of yet unnamed opener, churning out their own take on seventies rock. It isn't that these guys are bad per se, it's just that midway through their set I look on bemused as their guitarist/vocalist complains of being sweaty whilst the other band members, unmoved aside from their eye lines at an angle towards their instruments, look very much like they've just been sat on a sofa watching Eastenders all evening. Add this lack of drama and performance to a set list that musically has nothing emotive or remarkable about it and you have a performance that for me lasted (in slow motion) from the extinction of the dinosaurs, right up until the most recent conflict in Iraq. I've seen more stage presence in road kill (aside from valiant efforts of previously mentioned vocalist) and regardless of whether there is no-one at tonight's gig, I don't think it's good enough to just stand on a stage and do nothing but play anymore.
Luckily for me Winston's Awake follow and despite an utterly shitty band name, they are not only a great reason for me to stick around, but also an obvious segway into a rant I could have (but won't) into why people should always check out bands they don't know of, especially support bands. Tonight the band create a rock sound that belies the mere two piece. Dynamic, polished and mature, you can tell the two piece have not only spent a large amount of time rehearsing and refining the intricate styling of their music, but also that they have performed in front of people vaguely regularly. And while tonight, the band could definitely be considered more professional than energetic, there is something about them that allows you to close your eyes and imagine a pub full of sweaty punters hanging on their every note. On another night perhaps that would have been the case but not tonight. This doesn't however stop the band from being asked to perform an encore though (which they shyly do with permission from the headliners). Tonight Winston's Awake prove that they are someone worth keeping an eye on.
Headlining band Forgotten Karma haven't been around for while since drummer Ainslie left the UK. Tonight then is somewhat a farewell gig for the drummer as he announces to me before the show that he won't be coming back to the UK for awhile. Given that half the band have been in Europe you can vaguely forgive them for being under-rehearsed and while the duo's grunge punk sound reminiscent of '68 will always be tinkering on the edge with rawness often a brief moment from falling apart, tonight it does infact fall apart and several times. While this is met with an over zealously sweaty performance from the band complete with obligatory moving drum kit and blood curdling screams, mixed with laid back and often comical conversations with the dregs of what is now left of the audience, you can't help but feel this is a bit of an anticlimax. Seven or maybe eight songs in and the drums drop out of time and not for the first time, only this time they drop out all together (before much to the bands credit, coming back in time to finish the song) and it's at this point that I leave, thinking on my way home that sometimes things are best left untouched and in the past. Words & Photography by Craig Taylor-Broad