Sassyhiya are an unpretentious group image-wise, looking like a group of friends you might meet in a café anywhere in the UK. This in itself is quite an appealing image, almost as though a collection of musicians from the open mic circuit have collided together like a bunch of asteroids and created a mini-explosion of creativity. I only know one name- their bass player Helen- because we agreed that it is a fantastic name. But I'm not a reviewer, I'm a gig-going musician, so I'm excusing myself from details for the day.
What is important is the music, and I absolutely loved their set, especially the new songs. Their drummer is excellent, scooping up the music into neat, punchy sections with a lot of imagination and skill. All of them, though, fit their respective instruments together like a complex yet very catchy jigsaw; the bass underpins the songs with riffs tailored to the different flavours of music; the rhythm guitar is steady and the lead guitar plays just enough catchy little runs to catch the ear and make you smile. The lead vocals are almost delivered deadpan live, but that just adds to the fact that the band are (oddly) serious songwriters. Some of their early songs belie this, but especially with their new songs you could hear the thrill they have in their creativity: 'Shall we try this? Yes! It works!'. I found this inspirational. I'm just about to start writing songs again, jumping into the sea of ideas, and it was lovely to see a band who quite obviously enjoy the journey of discovery as much as anything else. And as much as me! Go to see them- I know you will enjoy them.
The headline band was The Cords, who more than delivered on their promise (sorry for using the word 'deliver'). Loud, fast and relentless, they played pop-punk in the manner of The Ramones, again with a deadpan delivery: song title, song, quiet thank-you, song title, song, quiet thank-you, for 45 solid minutes. Their set was almost a continuous piece of music apart from a broken string incident, which was prepared for (I have one here that I prepared earlier), because thrashing a guitar like this is bound to break a string. But each short, punchy song was distinctive within its style, variations on a theme exploring just exactly how much you can do with guitar, drums and one vocal. The singer has a strong, strong voice with absolutely no frills and curlicues; it's absolutely great to hear a vocalist singing in a voice that is in effect their speaking voice, except singing. I love this. It's a major thing as far as I'm concerned that singers sound like themselves, and not like whatever machine is processing vocals at any particular point in time. Not once during the entire set did her voice falter, nor hers nor the drummer's energy levels decrease. They are Duracell musicians, with the same intensity at the end of the set as at the beginning. And did it bother them, the over-50s maleness of the audience? Who knows? We are all grateful that people come out to see us, whoever we are and whoever they are. There's a surprisingly big world out there for independent and DIY musicians.
They had already played Rough Trade West that afternoon and they were going on to do a session for John Kennedy after this gig. What stamina! I felt protective of them, because the music industry is a terrible beast with multiple sets of fangs. How patronising though: we all have to live our lives the way they pan out, good, bad, dangerous and exciting in equal measure. The music industry is something you dive into; it's like swimming across a sea and negotiating not only the shipping lanes but also the stinging jellyfish, copious effluent, and not even really knowing what your destination is a lot of the time. The prizes that show up are not from the competitions you entered (or sometimes, did not enter).
Before he died, my brother asked me a question that had clearly been bugging him for a while. 'What makes you carry on doing it?'. 'I don't know', I said, 'I am driven'. Afterwards, I realised that it's curiosity. What will come out next, and how will it appear? The genie of ideas never rests, and that is something that was apparent with both of Saturday's bands: an absolute revelling in ideas and what can be created by the 'tools of rock' a million miles away from the stadium and the Big Boy hustlers. Oh the joy of small corners on a Saturday night!
