"What's that coming over the hill...?"

"... is it a monster?

...is it a monster?"




Well actually, it's "STENDEC", the new five-piece rock band that we went to see at "The Red Lion", Goostrey, on Saturday night. Two of the guys are work colleagues, so I've been following the development of the band with some interest. It's taken a while for them to get the line-up right, with all the usual strife and comedy of "musical differences" that usually signal the departure of one or more musicians.
I've not been keeping score, but I think that they lost a couple of people here and there. Although this may have stalled their progress, they've stuck with it and on Saturday they made it to the critical, "First Gig".

It's always fun to watch your mates play, and as this was their first outing, it was one that I didn't want to miss. I've been through a few First Gigs myself, so I was looking forward to seeing just how close to blind panic they'd get. Disappointingly, they didn't seem to be awfully worried; there was no sign of obsessive equipment adjustment or excessive toilet traffic. They did a swift sound-check and everything sounded as well balanced as you can reasonably expect in a pub, then they went back to the bar. When they started the first set, they just got up and got going.

The gig went well. Actually it went very well. (Curses!!!)

They stormed through a sound choice of covers that suited the line-up well; 'Kaiser Chiefs', 'Franz Ferdinand', 'The Automatic', 'Sex Pistols', 'Blink 182' and more besides. All the songs were clearly well rehearsed and played with bags of attitude. If there were any mistakes they weren't obvious to me, so they either all played faultlessly or they've developed the confidence in each other that prevents a single player's error degenerating into an on-stage multiple car pile-up. I think that the latter is more likely, even though it is often a far harder thing to achieve.

Every song was perfectly paced thanks to some fierce and yet artfully controlled drumming, with a gloriously thick bass guitar binding the rhythm to the melody. On top of this were the two guitars, hacking out brutally crunchy rhythms and wailing through some mighty lead riffs, while the singer gave a stadium performance.
The crowd lapped it up, needing no encouragement at all to get up and dance. Once they were on the floor there was no chance of them escaping back to their seats, as the transitions between the songs were so crisp.

Altogether an excellent evenings entertainment.
I shall have to warn the rest of my band that the competition just got a little bit better.

[Photo by Mike Peel]