Josh Scogin has proven time and time again that he thinks outside of almost every box imaginable. Thriving on chaos throughout his career, most notably with Norma Jean and The Chariot, Scogin isn’t just a force to reckoned with but one with something of a Midas touch. ’68 is his latest incarnation and it puts to the test and challenges what’s physically possible as well as how much noise only two people can make at any one time. Having just released their second album, ’68 descended upon London’s Old Blue Last for the only UK show on their current tour.
The line-up for tonight’s show certainly has a ‘cherry picked’ feel to it as all four acts performing are two piece musical duos. With support coming from Noisepicker, Dirty White Fever and fuzzy, rock n roll, noise instrumentalists 100% Beefcock And The Tits Burster.
There’s no introductions needed as 100% Beefcock take the stage, one half of which is adorned with Cheshire cat grin makeup that wouldn’t be out of place in one of Tim Burton’s nightmares. 100% Beefcock are the type of band that look more and more comfortable each time they see another eyebrow raised in intrigue or confusion. Their fuzz heavy drum and bass tracks range from punk ‘n’ roll sounding riffs to the darn right experimental. There’s a reason that this band have such an air of mystery about them and seeing them perform doesn’t really bring you any closer to answering any questions you may have had about them. Like a slow motion car crash, 100% Beefcock are almost impossible to look away from.
The Old Blue Last is an odd venue at times, when it’s jammed to the rafters it becomes the most intense little sweatbox but when it’s empty there’s no escaping the fact that it’s literally a room above a pub. Tonight’s a weird one as it falls somewhere between the two which doesn’t often happen with this venue and seems somewhat surprising considering who’s headlining. Be it the curse of playing on a school night at the start of the week or some other reason, everyone in the room this evening knows they’re in for something special and that won’t be repeated note for note ever again, for repetition just isn’t Josh Scogin’s style. To clarify this, one only has to look at how The Chariot and ’68 have approached their recording processes in the past, opting for live recordings with all the mistakes left in to keep them organic.
Ripping their way through a set that mostly consists of newer material, taken from their recently released second album ‘Two Parts Viper’, Scogin and bandmate Michael McClellan may well be staying put onstage but it doesn’t make them any less engaging. The two feed off of one another musically as though they were finishing one another’s sentences, a rapport that many musicians could only ever dream of having.
As ’68 wind things down they’re clear that there won’t be any form of encore, it’s not their style, and although their instruments are all still all in one piece, actually on the stage and there’s no piles of bodies littered about the venue floor, so what? Scogin doesn’t do repetition remember. Even though tonight wasn’t sold out, the show appears to have gone down a storm with those in attendance and will be one of those ‘I remember when…’ stories to tell in future. It’d be daft to think that this will be as good as it gets for ’68 as their intense performance is one that any other band would consider to be a ‘performance of a lifetime’ but with all things considered, the two parts viper are only just getting warmed up.
JAMES DAVENPORT