Admittedly, reviewing bands every so often allows you to see quite a bit, however there’s still a few things that are a bit of a rarity, take harps for example, as Garry Murphy says during tonight’s gig, “Harps are like mythical beasts, like unicorns, you hear a lot about them but you never see them.” Until now that is, slap bang in the middle of the stage on a hazy Monday night are a couple of huge harps, belonging to the aptly-named Harptallica who are touring Europe.
Usually, Monday nights down at the Craufurd mean the open mic with Chris Dobbs and friends, so it’s natural that Chris and Garry Murphy open up the proceedings for the night, taking up a short set each with Dobbs starting. It’s nothing exactly formal, pretty much the two going through some short sets like at your usual open-mic haunts with songs that I’ve become fairly familiar with.
Dobbs has his usual poetic blues infused workings with a bit of a vocal bite along with the licks that kick out, “Blood On The Guitar” being the prime example of one of his musical directions, while Garry’s tone is a lot more placid and chilled out like the languid Front Foot Forward, though he seems to be the more open of the two, telling us about his day and asking about the harps between his songs. The question of “who to open up before a harp act” is a hard one, but the two-pronged set from the guys behind the local open mic seems like a sound answer.
It’s a bit of a weird one tonight, mostly how to gauge the crowd, on one hand people could be singing along to the lyrics out loud, on the other everyone could be sitting at the tables and relaxing, it seems to be a case of the latter, or mostly at least. Opening up with a classical cover of “Master Of Puppets” pretty much certifies that the two know exactly what to do, as does the follow up of Unforgiven.
It just feels a little different, the mere idea is an oxymoron that could potentially divide by zero so hearing the riffs replicated on what can be described as the most innocent of instruments has mixed effects of head-banging, awestruck gazes and maybe a little drowsiness with mosh-worthy songs coming down on you with an unnerving calmness. The girls don’t just draw the line at Metallica either, as a few other heavy sounds from other bands also make a bit of an appearance, Black Sabbath anyone?
At least by the end the people watching have loosened up a bit and a few more people are singing along, whether Harptallica prefer a prim and proper audience or a rabble of metal fans is a bit of a debate and I keep kicking myself for not asking them.
And that sums up a very strange night, though I have to admit that it’s nights like that which make doing AMPjam worthwhile, we even got to chat to the girls for a short while which was pretty enlightening with talk of a certain band dealing out some capoeira and vomiting on the stage. But aside from that I’m not going to forget the image of a guy with a mohawk sat at a table, quietly listening to two girls playing on harps…
Craig \m/
Kid With Crows Feet (Chris Dobbs) on Myspace
Speeding Mellow (Garry Murphy) on Myspace
Harptallica on Myspace
