Thing of the Day
RUDE MECHANICALS? MISS ROBERTS? METAL RABBITS?
January 30th 2011
Miss Roberts, Metal Rabbit,
what? Who are Rude
Mechanicals? It is a question we’ve addressed many times
before around these Organic parts, it isn’t a question that can be
addressed too many times though, as each time it is the voices in your
head will come up with a different answer.
The Rude Mechanicals will be celebrating the Chinese New Year of the
Metal Rabbit with a musical theatrical whirl of punk, poetry, film and
anarchy. It all happens at The Victoria in Dalston, East London, on
Thursday 3rd Feb. The event also features Anarchistwood and Susie Showers.
A small selection of The
Organ's previous Rude Mechanical coverage:
26th JAN '10: RUDE MECHANICALS – The Cyclops And The Wildebeast (Ex
Gratia) - Is there anybody there? Terms and conditions apply.... Stitch
me the perfect child, bodies found and left out in the cold, stolen
brains of a rich man... Who knows what goes on in the mind of Miss
Roberts – for it is her once more, Miss Roberts and her Rude Mechanical
symbiotic slaves (or something like that - less body fluids this time,
something far more sinister sounding). Rude Mechanicals
really don’t fit anywhere, musically or lyrically they really are
rather different – dangerously different, lot of people claim lots of
bands are different, Rude mechanicals really are.
Rude Mechanicals are things living in lofts, things behind twitching
curtains, they’re automatic priests and such, is there anybody there?
There’s a man on the train, eating on the train... Do I need a cup of
tea? Some large red fake eyelashes? That smell again? She killed him...
For the pleasure, because she needed something to do so...? Are our
organs compatible? Can someone please check? We are here today gathered
together under this beautiful sky... actually the sky is rather grey
and cold today and they’re a band so terribly ignored, London’s best
kept secret (and I almost had to bully this new album out of them a
week before official release, like some kind on sin eater with
indigestion). Tasting the sin, do you love it or hate it? Does it taste
of gin.... if Rude Mechanicals were a drink it would be gin,
gin from a cracked yellow teapot of an afternoon, while Derek was out
and birds were playing in gutters and... They’re a very strange band,
you’ll either love them instantly or just look at those who do with a
fresh air of suspicion - you like this, what goes on in your
head? Do I really want to share my space with someone who
likes music like this? Born in a Wednesday, full of grace or woe? And
this time around they’re even tougher to pin down than last
time... Is there anybody here called Wolfgang? A myriad of
lamps? You want to possess me? Well only if you’re sure, I don’t want
to start a quandary... Guess who I saw the other day, bloody
Greta Garbo, looking a little worse for wear, there was fish in her
hair... something something something, oh I know... So we
almost had to bully this out of them in time to play it on the radio
before the actually release, so we could write some words the week
before it comes out... Rude Mechanicals are such a well kept secret,
like him in the attic, a treasure, and the bodies and the gin in the
teapot and the appetite for human flesh (and candyfloss). Rudimentary
lungs inflating, we shall fight them on the beaches, armed with Winston
Churchill speeches.... Porn films for the deprived? The
depraved? What happens to the sin eater once he’s eaten all
your sin? Is it time for a new paragraph now?
Does sin taste of gin? Does it
taste better overnight? Rude Mechanicals really don’t sound like anyone
else, they don’t sound like English tea party Zappa fronted by powdered
wig Thatcher, or the sky cracked open or strange afternoon dances or
waltzing around lounge jazz or William D Drake playing disco
music or some kind of off-hinge performance art with big red
dress and even redder shoes and strange violin players called Lynda
Beast or keyboard bits from very English horror movies or ashes to
ashes, dust to dust, and what about those mobiles? It ain’t half cold
in here, there’s a bird in the gutter, and what about the people you
see on train journeys and visits to the seaside and fish and chip
eating monsters and more tea vicar... Strange lounge dancing and
English tea parties and cucumber sandwiches and there really is nothing
quite like Rude Mechanicals – they’re a delight, a very strange
delight, a very very strange delight, I do so love these Rude
Mechanicals, strange is good when strange sounds like this... Dare you
to go see..? www.rudemechanicals.org.uk
Rude mechanicals live: London, 10th Sept 2008
ANARCHISTWOOD /
RUDE MECHANICALS – Inn On The Green, Ladbroke Grove,
There were no red trucks in Ladbroke Grove and nothing was
wished on, we missed the Portobello film festival bit of the night but
there were Punkvert film-bites running through most of the evening and
well where do we start with this tale? There was already some kind of
vibe at 8.30pm, and well before the first band things were feeling
good, something happening here. Now I need to urgently get tonight out
on (virtual) paper and try and explain at least some of it before the
details – need to explain why I found myself out front on the
phone telling others they needed to get down here mid way through.
We’re at a Punkvert/Subterfuge night called A Fete Worse Than Death that’s
part of the Portobello Film Festival and also something called an
Ex-Gratia Recordings launch party night – I think that’s what we were
at. 
We’re under the Westway anyway, Clash-land, West
London and just along from the Earl Percy where that wanted a riot of
their own back there. There’s always different feel under the Westway
in Ladbroke Grove, this is Hawkwind/Killing Joke territory, that whiff
of head-punk counter-culture still hangs in the air and half the people
in here look like they were either Clash roadies or groupies back in
’79 – we are not in Hoxton and this certainly isn’t Camden.... There’s
healthy dub and the sounds of Sly and The Family, James Brown and
Public Enemy spinning while we wait for the first band, and did we get
a bit of the Battle of Britain soundtrack, the bit that sounds like Stench Of Honey?
We certainly got the classical strains of Holst and Mars over the PA
and who is this man dancing around chaotically ballet-like is an orange
boiler suit? Is he some official part of the night or just a passer by
“enthusiastically” joining in? What’s he shouting about? Mars? Bringer
of War? - “Can we please have a
f**king band on stage” he eventually yells and goes and straps on a
guitar and starts ranting about Auntie Mary having a cannery before the
rhythm section shuts him up and ANARCHISTWOOD
quite literally kick off. Four of them, two orange boiler suits,
drummer in white vest and pint sized short-cut blond-haired ball of
energy in jeans and basque in control of it all – “we’re a punk rock
band” she declares as they launch in to a song called Stumpf**ker and a
rant about Tipper Gore while the girl in the box dances around the
audience - oh yes, the girl in the “feel-me” box - I think
that’s what she called it - she’s wearing it around her top half, long
legs and high heels, the box is painted silver, two holes cut in the
front, you can guess the rest. Anarchistwood are ripping through some
rather fractured, rather messy new wave proto-punk rock, they abort
half way through a number of songs, they have one about Snorting Whisky
that wasn’t the Pat Travers song (unless they really prank-rocked it up
while they drank cocaine). They sing about Rivers of Shit (I think
that’s what they were singing about) while animated films of pigs and
sheep in sunglasses go past, and tales of caution and seeing things in
another light. Singer girl – she maybe called Sistah Kist – certainly
had an energetic limit-pushing personality, born to shout at the front
of a punk band, and when she wants to, she really can sing. The band
thrash on here, bite and turn there and hey twisted mister you’re a
total wreck and agents of thee great cosmic joker and proud of it.
She’s good, they’re good, they’ve got this raged art-punk thing going
down, they’re messy, they walk a musical tightrope and you’re never
sure if they’ll make to the end, they’ve got a bit of Crass, some Patti
Smith a touch of Butthole Surfers and some kind of hint of situationist
chaos and a gloriously good punk rock mess...
So this is it then, the stories on other people’s shoes, RUDE MECHANICALS
have to be seen, no they really do have to be seen - they all look so
intriguingly good, they demand your full attention, your fascination.
Lynda Beast is with them tonight, mostly with her violin, sometimes a
trumpet kind of thing, long olive green dress, bow between her legs,
how was she playing it just then?. Kitty Kat is over there with blue
hair and red heels (that somehow later on end up on the dance floor and
have to be handed back) behind her keyboard and her oboe, Guy Avern
weaving in the middle of it all and mostly driving the bass. Dapper man
called Cos would be centre of attention in most bands with his refined
guitar, there’s so many centres of attention here though – both
visually and musically. Tommy G is at the back with his colourful
jazz-stroked drums gluing it all together – there’s some seriously good
musicians up there and it all seems to flow so so easily, so
effortlessly when it should be so uncomfortably awkward. How to explain
it? How! In an ordered alphabetical way while alien mice take over the
tube lines, or feeding Derek lots of pies and then there’s the
escalators that are to be considered nothing more than stair
impersonators.
And there in the middle, looking radiant in her
long red dress and big white hair and in finger-pointing control of
everything is Miss Roberts. Telling us how to dance in such a
charmingly refreshing (and wonderfully plummy) way – and we can’t help
but respond to her elegant demands that really do manifest in to your
deepest reality while her band of symbiotic slaves decorate the walls
of your insides with their questions concerning time and the invention
of the calendar and a later a Rotten Tango. Order up some Champaign and
drink the golden outrageousness of it all, the twitching behind
curtains and the life in carrier bags and looking though letter boxes.
Oh it makes such bizarrely good sense and all the thoughts on video
taken from inside of your head and strange noir and the sweet sweet
smell of back bar-room art rock and strange other-jazz - and
the smiling encroachment of my dancing neighbours for the frantic
finale of Disco Dancer where they take on funk in a deliciously
eccentrically English way and teach us all the routine. We’ve been
though all kinds of genuinely avante across-the-line jumping with art
rock and performance cabaret jazz and new-wave no-wave bites of blues
and Zappa and Beefheart and before the disco there was another routine
– oh yes, 1-2-3 hoorah!!! Most seem to already know that was required,
there’s a cult following and a genuine word of mouth thing going on,
Miss Roberts has clearly instructed them before – all seriously hard
boiled art rock performance and all such fascinating fun and we were
expecting good on the strength of the Glass Eye album, really wasn’t
expecting it this good though. Yes, such fun and watching you from the
other side... oh yes, love the existential angst and it doesn’t have to
be that way for Miss Roberts will take control. Rude Mechanicals are
wonderfully good They leave the stage to wild applauds and the sound of
the Dead Kennedys and then, after some more inspired choices from the
spot-on DJ, all kinds of ranting and filthy spoken word and
audience-baiting performance and removal of clothes from a man called
Handsum Pete - some writhing semi-naked boy-nuns and guitars and you
really had to be there, following Rude Machanicals was tough Hansum
Pete and his friends took it a whole different naked way ..
Anarchistwood: www.myspace.com/didtheypayyoutosleepwiththosepolarbears
Rude Mechanicals: www.myspace.com/flyingcaberet
or www.rudemechanicals.org.uk
www.punkvert.tv
A postscript from Funkcutter because Zoe deserves a proper
name check: “It was wonderful and top totty! we had a last minute
addition of our beautiful silver cake box girl Zoe Snelgrove - yum yum
- and of course the fabulous DJ Mr Johnny southside + KodeK VJ filling
in the large holes between live bands and all hail Handsum Pete, he
surely is the worm of christ...”
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