Adventures in Pop
JUDE MONTAGUE
Adventures in Pop has been running original creative rock and pop nights at the Jenny Lind for over a year. The scene has built up, and the First Tuesdays have become a music hub on Hastings’ High Street, with Electric Palace Cinema running music films on the same evening.
Mystic Shed at the Jenny Lind
On Tuesday 5 May the pub was busy with electric sounds and enthusiastic audiences, as fans and friends came by to see guest bands Thee Headshrinkers and The Mystic Shed, local bands who created a wild musical happening: punky, loud and vibrant. The two bands were joined by house band Mars(the lately renamed Montague Armstrong Rippengal) who played their signature Anglo-Baltic electro-folk-pop, taking the modern music night to a loud, progressive level.
Thee Headshrinkers are a rock trio who cheerfully describe their music as garage trash. Rob, the lyricist, says: “Hastings took me in when I was very poor and virtually homeless. It has always had an edge, the people are the salt of the earth. As a band, someone will always give you an opportunity to play somewhere.”
The Mystic Shed developed their musical passion locally. Kit (drums) and Tom (guitar) began their band in the lunch hour at school. Kit remembers: “There’s something exhilarating about spending your lunch break making incredibly loud noise and then not being able to hear for the rest of the day. In a way it was also one of our most creatively unhinged periods because we had a lot of ambition, a modest amount of skill, too much time and none of the cultural exposure that can be simultaneously liberating and suffocating.”
The sound was driven through valve amps, mixed live by multi-instrumentalist Matt Armstrong, and both bands sounded acute and vital. Of the sparse lyrics Rob (Thee Headshrinkers) says: ‘‘I’m still not sure if I’m any good at articulating my feelings as opposed to just putting a brick through someone’s window. I have a fear of forgetting what I am doing and where I am at any given moment, so I find I have to cull the lyrics and repeat a lot.”
Both bands resist dominant trends and the way they play out in social media. Kit (Mystic Shed) continues: “I think one of the most depressing aspects of music over the last century is the creation of the band-as-commodity, like Elvis, the Beatles, Radiohead, Nirvana, et cetera. And on social media, we’re expected to emulate [these entities] by commodifying ourselves.” Kit explains further that The Mystic Shed is his relationship with Tom, not a commercial product, and an expression of who they are together.
Mars and The Mystic Shed played at The Jenny Lind, High Street, on Tuesday 5 May
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